tikatu | Entries tagged with writing

Thunderbirds fanfic, based on a prompt from Tumblr's writeworld community.

The first is a sort of bare bones bit of story; not complete as I wasn't sure how to end it. The second is longer, and though I still don't know whether or not Lady Penelope lives or dies, she at least has a bit of hope ... I think. I'm not posting this on fanfiction.net unless it turns out to be part of my current NaNo novel.

Consider this an introduction to my new archive and blog site, too. I'd love feedback on the site itself, if you care to give it.

Current Mood: awake
Current Location: in the dark of the living room

Does anyone out there know of a good offline computer dictionary/thesaurus, preferably a free one? I really love having thesaurus.com up for reference while I write but I can't use that offline. Ping me here in comments or as a message. Thanks!

Current Mood: artistic
Current Location: my own little corner
Current Music: thunder outside

Within just a day, I’ve had the pleasure of hauling out my Thunderbirds knowledge (with all the attendant books and other paraphernalia) to help a couple of fellow fanfic writers and personal friends. It was certainly fun, especially all the stuff about Alan Tracy’s educational background. Add to this my posting the first chapter of one of my short stories (Burning Muses) at AO3 and uploading a new post to my RP, and I’m full of Thunderbirds at the moment. It’s given me quite a hunger for fic and for writing or editing what I already have up. I edited the first chapter of Burning Muses, making it tighter. In many respects it was like my edit of the little scene I wrote a few days ago. The changes I made brought forth Brains’s voice and made him less … poetic. (Because if Brains is anything, it is NOT poetic.)

Then, there was the chatter at the dinner table. We went from Gosford Park to Downton Abbey (which we have not seen) to Acorn (which streams Downton Abbey), and then to Netflix – where movies are more plenteous in DVD than in streaming. This led to BBC America (and how we could get it on cable), to other premium cable services, to Game of Thrones and whether or not the TV series matched the novels. That particular thought brought out movies that didn’t match their source material – Boy #2 brought up the Percy Jackson movie (The Lightning Thief). This brought the whole shebang back to … Thunderbirds! The Girl’s comment: “I knew there was another kids movie like that! ” Hubby brought up that Frakes had said in an post-film interview that he directed the movie that the producers wanted, even though he knew the fans would be “annoyed by it” (Hubby’s words, not Frakes’s.) I promptly chimed in. “Annoyed? Annoyed?” Which, of course, is far too mild a term to describe the old guard’s intense hatred of the film.

Maybe if he’d stayed closer to the source material, we’d have had another Thunderbirds movie. After all, there will be another Percy Jackson film, coming out this year.

Some fandoms get all the luck…

Current Mood: bouncy
Current Location: my own little corner
Current Music: the dishwasher running in the kitchen

I was rather hoping I’d go on doing a drabble a day until the start of NaNo, but something came up today that brought the drabble train to a screeching halt in favor of my novel. I’ll talk about it in a moment, but first, a recap of the whole drabble a day experience.

Writing time frame: September 16th through 28th.

Posting time frame: September 17th through 30th

Total writing time: 13 days

Days missed: 1, leaving 12 writing days

Drabbles written: 15, plus an alternate ending for one. Only one of these I thought was sub-par.

Drabbles posted: 14 as of today.

So, it was pretty good. I only missed one day of writing and the rest saw one or more written.

( Revelations )

Current Mood: bouncy
Current Location: Keeper's Realm
Current Music: "One Last Letter" by Aviators and Bronyfied

Well, it's been a week, and I've managed to write one drabble a day, sometimes more. Of the six I wrote in my previous update, all have been posted. Of the ones I've written since then, only one of them is what I'd consider sub-par and it brought out a 2 a.m. inspiration.Two drabbles were about Penny and one was about Tin-Tin. One of the Penny drabbles is currently being Brit-picked (I hope). I've taken the time to download the all_unwritten picture prompts into a folder for easier retrieval. Not quite done with that project yet. I've also started adding to the prompts at

fic_simplicity. It's been over 2 years since that comm has seen any action! I plan on trying to add a prompt a week. I've also updated Tikatu's Corner with the first five of these challenge drabbles.

Set written since last time:
--Shattered, all_unwritten prompt #374, "It only took a second to change everything."*
--A Perilous Wait, all_unwritten prompt #336, waiting for him*
--Unexpected Proposal, all_unwritten prompt #1408, "Will you marry me?"*
--Before The Fall, all_unwritten prompt #44, a moment of silence
--Last Rites, all_unwritten photo prompt #720, a picture of a church door opening, as seen from the inside
--Mayday, fic_simplicity prompt #37, critical malfunction
--End of the Line, all_uwritten prompt #472, the brakes screamed (spelled "breaks" in the prompt, I took some liberty to use a different spelling. This is the one I think isn't quite as good.)

So, all in all, 13 drabbles in 7 days. Not bad!

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Location: my own little corner
Current Music: crickets outside the open windows

So far, so good. I got on a roll the other day and wrote three, but one every other day. Today was hard, though. I went off and did beaucoups housework just to get away from writing. Finally, before dinner, I forced myself to sit down and scroll through the prompts I had listed. I wanted to write one for Brains -- he's underrepresented in all my drabbles. I did find one for him this evening.

I've noticed that Jeff (of course), Virgil, Gordon, Grandma, and Kyrano all seem to figure prominently among the characters I find easiest. John, Scott, and Alan less so. I don't think I have any Tin-Tin or Penelope ones in this batch like I do in the

30_beverages drabbles. They are both mentioned, but neither of them are the stars. That's something I'll have to take care of in the future.

I find I have to manually go through and count the words as Open Office just doesn't count them right. Hyphenated words I'm counting as two, except for Tin-Tin. It bothers me because it's obvious that some of my earlier ones just don't have enough words in them. I wish I knew how to get around that.

One of my reviewers (Xenitha) sparked a drabble sequel to an earlier one! That was fun to write! I've tossed them at susanmartha,

lillehafrue and

funkycheese to get feedback on them. I've also invited others to join me in the challenge. So far, no one has taken me up on it.

Written so far:
--Backfired!, sequel to "Salt or Not?"*
--Compulsions, all_unwritten prompt #1457 "trembling hands"*
--Journal's End, all_unwritten prompt #1453 "the last entry in a journal"*
--What's in a Name?, all_unwritten prompt #802 "My name is..."
--Two Worlds, all_unwritten prompt #1197 "water licking the boat"
--Shattered, all_unwritten prompt #374 "It took only a second to change everything."
The ones marked by an asterix are posted.

More updates later!

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Location: my own little corner
Current Music: the oscillating fan blowing in cooler air

Since Camp NaNoWriMo was such a bust for me (August is way busy at my house. Who knew?) I'm going to get myself back into the "writing daily routine" by doing a "drabble-a-day" challenge. If you want to join in, feel free. I'm using the traditional definition of a drabble: a story of exactly 100 words. I'm also trying to write fandom drabbles (mostly Thunderbirds as I know that best) using prompts from various sources -- particuarly

all_unwritten. Not all their prompts are in their prompt list; however, I went through and copied the list to a file, adding the ones that weren't on there. If you want a copy, poke me via email and I'll send it along.

So far, I've written a very depressing drabble and added it to Mosaic. Today I wrote two, one because a bunny bit for a missing scenelet and the other because I'd depressed one of my readers with yesterday's drabble. If anyone could give me some beta/feedback on them, I'd be much obliged.

thatgirlsix is currently swamped by real life (love, hugs, and prayers to you and yours, Six!) and

funkycheese has started back to teaching. (Girlfriend, you really need to update that name!)

Well, the Hubby is on his way home in our cute little 2006 Chevy Aveo (the Girl's daily commute to university really underscored the need for a second car, one with way better gas mileage and fewer repair issues. Credit unions are simply awesome at this loan thing.) I'll post pictures of it when I can pry them out of the Girl's camera.

Later!

Current Mood: determined
Current Location: at Sallie's side...
Current Music: the oscillating fan blowing in cooler air

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Location: here Nuff said
Current Music: the oscillating fan blowing in cooler air

Okay, here's the scoop.

With the awesome betaing help of the amazing

thatgirlsix I've been posting Moonstrike! to ff.net. So far, a whole chapter has disappeared, and other chapters have undergone (and will likely undergo) some big changes. Question is: how do I update it here? Do I start over again with a different tag? Do I gut the old posts and upload the new stuff? I'd rather not lose the comments, if that's possible. It's not a problem at dreamwidth as no one has commented there. I don't think it should be a problem at FanNation, either. I can just create a topic in the forums to explain the situation. But here, it's different. I'd like the old commenters to read it again as well as bring in the fresh and spiffy chapters.

So, what say ye? Start again or gut?

Current Mood: bouncy
Current Location: my own little corner
Current Music: birds outside my open window

Yes!! Another 50k on Moonstrike! Posted four days early with room to spare at 50,971!

Now, that doesn't mean I'm done with the story, but I have been writing the big stuff at the end. Definitely more to go! I'm gonna try to get the majority of this done by the 30th, which means lots of word wars with my wrimos, even I'm not counting the words for my total.

This is gonna end up as another corker, word-wise, I think, but far from the 300K that The White Winds clocked in at.

Still... woot!!

Current Mood: ecstatic
Current Location: my own little corner
Current Music: Ink Jet trying to get comfortable on my desk

Finally finished a bit of stuff that I didn't know was supposed to be part of Moonstrike! The more I post it at FanNation, the more I want to post it at ff.net. The files are there; I've uploaded them to ff.net to use their HTML capacity, which I've copied to FanNation as well as to my website files. I've had a couple of reviews, which have made me really happy (also got one for The White Winds today at FanNation - a bit of a shock, that!)

I just want this story to work, to be right, before I post it to ff.net. I want Rhea to be real, and to be part of the Tracy family without warping it too much. I've gone to the length of rewriting some of the family background, using ideas that aren't contradicted by canon (Jeff has siblings; Lucy has a part in planning IR before her death.) as well as bringing things out that are found in comics canon (John and Brains going to college together.) So far, I've got five chapters, and only one scene with Rhea!

So, I'm asking for feedback. The story allows for anonymous reviews, and you can find it here: Moonstrike! I'd post it here, but I've always found live journal awkward for just about anything other than short stuff. However, if people would like to see it here, I'm game to do it. I could also post it at devART for thems what wants it.

FanFiction.net is the site that gets the most traffic of all for Thunderbirds fanfiction. It's also the one glutted with the Tracy sister fics. As much as I crave the reviews, I want the story to be worth it.

Thanks for listening to my ramblings...

Current Mood: anxious
Current Location: under the air conditioner
Current Music: "Das Rad des Schicksals" by E Nomine

ganked from

eviinsanemonkey and

ellieet .

If I made Cinderella, the audience would immediately be looking for a body in the coach.
— Alfred Hitchcock

When I write a story, what do you immediately look for?

Just askin'

Current Mood: melancholy
Current Location: my own little corner
Current Music: the rumble of the air conditioner

I've been puttering around with a scene from Moonstrike! where Jeff takes his grown children to Mateo Island so they can see the progress being made on the Thunderbirds. In the comics, the Thunderbirds were built there as the facilities on Tracy Island weren't ready, and weren't really suitable, either, when you think about it. So, they're visiting, and Jeff's showing things off, and Brains is there, and when they get back to Tracy Island, Jeff is talking to his daughter about her proposed role in the organization. Right now, things are adversarial between them; she went off to get experience with a different company, and he's peeved about that. So she's looking at IR with a rather skeptical eye right now. She points out that he's basically giving his sons their hearts' desires, and reliving his own glory days, and there's got to be a better way.

Now it's Jeff's turn, and he's got to convince her that not only is IR needed, but why he can't exactly give or sell the technology they've developed for the 'Birds. Then he'll drop the bomb on her as to what he wants her to do.

So, I need input: what are his reasons? He's brought up that he's doing this in memory of Lucille, and that he doesn't want the family to go through what they did, yadda yadda yadda. I plan on him bringing up the whole governmental thing - them being outside of government controls. And being able to get there faster. He's already brought up the "equipment in the wrong hands" argument, too.

So, what say ye? Why does Jeff feel he must create IR? What advantages will it have over normal rescue personnel? Why should he put all this money and work into such an endeavor when he could spread the wealth around? Ideas, please?

Crossposted to my WordPress journal.

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Location: on my way to bed
Current Music: "Time Passages" by Al Stewart

Been working on coding things for my personal fiction site. I’ve finished and posted Mosaic – though that will be updated when the muse strikes – and I’m working on The White Winds. There’s still lots to do, but I’m almost halfway through the chapter formatting. I’ve managed to get it down to a routine. Open the .txt files, put in the chapter coding snippet for each chapter. Scroll down and add the back and forward buttons snippet. Tweak them to the proper chapter numbers. Remove the “next time, next chapter” stuff and paste it in a .txt file. Scroll up; add new title and cut the teasers and disclaimer. Then save as a .shtml file. Leave them all open, find a scene divider and change it with the short horizontal line snippet. Copy that, and do a global replace on all open files. Do a preview skim to make sure things look right, then save and close all. Really, I just did about 15 chapters and it only took an hour or so.

Seriously, the biggest time eater is finding images for the splash pages and writing the foreword. On Mosaic, it took me beyond forever to figure out which screencaps to use (and I found I’d duplicated some from earlier stories), and then the free photos that spoke to the drabbles. For The White Winds, I’ve asked my daughter to update a piece of cast art that she’d done for me earlier. Her artwork has progressed soooo very far that she was embarrassed by the old stuff. Since I’m working so quickly on coding this, I should poke her about that piece.

I’m also trying to decide if I should add my two non-Thunderbirds one-shots to the One Shots book. I’ve done one for The Incredibles, and one for Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. My fanfiction is so heavily Thunderbirds-oriented, but these deserve a home, too. (They are posted on ff.net and on FanNation.) Tell me what you think about that.

In other writing news, I’ve pulled most of my work from Lunaescence Archives. I have several reasons for this. Things that were broken aren’t being fixed is one of them (thinking of forum registration here), but an increasing dissatisfaction with the way the archive is being run, and the ever-stronger skew toward anime and manga (and reader-insert) stories are probably stronger reasons. I’m sad about this, really; so many archives tend to go downhill once their owners are no longer involved in running and upgrading them. And now this has happened (IMHO) to Luna. (Yes, this puts me in mind of Thunderbirds Central, and parts of IR:TNP that need updating, too.)

As far as my personal “cyberstalker” (Lillehafrue’s term) is concerned, I haven’t heard from her again. Hopefully, I never will.

Back to the HTML editor, Batman!

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Location: in the depths of my HTML editor
Current Music: hubby laughing at whatever he's listening to

I nearly had a cow this morning when I noticed that I was given a link to the TV section from my movies section bookmark.

At first, I thought they'd just deleted everything in the movie section, but it turns out they moved all the movie-verse stories - including the crossovers - into the TV-verse section. (I hope they also marked them as being Movie-verse, using the World filter. Otherwise, some strictly TV-verse fans are not going to be happy.) It would have been nice to get some warning on this, but as long as they transferred everything, I can't squawk much.

But, now is the time to mark your stories with the world filter, especially if you're a TV-verse writer.

Current Mood: relieved
Current Location: somewhere else but here
Current Music: the humming of my tower

Today, I called for a repairman to fix our ailing oven. He came early, worked quickly, and did it right the first time.

When I wrote this up as my FB status, I said this: I like it when repliance guys come early, fix things quickly, and do it right the first time.

Seeing my error, I deleted the status, then put up the proper word. But, being a writer, I needed to know if this was a real word or not. And, according to Dictionary.com, it isn't.

So, let's have some fun!

Define repliance.

Current Mood: mischievous
Current Location: my own little corner
Current Music: dogs whining

I had set up something in chapter 73 of The White Winds for the main character's track team: an indoor track and field arena for them to compete in despite the winter weather that was coming on. I put it in Worcester, MA, as being a rather centrally-located place, and said that it was at the University of Massachusetts at Worcester. My author's note mentioned that, though Worcester has a state college, maybe in the future (when this story is set), they would have traded up to the UMass system.

Today, I got the alumni e-newletter from the state college I attended, and lo, all the state colleges have been renamed as universities! So, there is now a Worcester State University!

That is SO weird to me. Has anyone else had this happen to them?

Current Mood: nerdy
Current Location: my desk
Current Music: the rumble of the air conditioner

Okay, here's the scoop!

I've got two stories, one I've been working on for a while called Resolutions Redux, and another that I did for NaNoWriMo last November entitled, Brainstorm. They both center around the character of Brains, who is International Rescue's genius-nerd in residence. The first begins at New Year's, and concerns Brains's attempts to become a "chick magnet". The second tells the tale of Brains's background, mostly taken from the authorized materials, and with a twist of my own. It happens in the early autumn, before Thanksgiving.

I've been toying with the idea of linking the two and making Brainstorm a prequel of sorts to Resolutions Redux. And I'm at a point in the older story where I should make this choice. There wouldn't be too much tweaking involved with the older story; the only thing would be the addition of a cat (there is almost always a cat, lately :mrgreen:

). The newer story is mostly finished. It would just need some polishing and a few scenes added here and there.

So, what do you think? Should I link to the two? Or should I keep them separate?

Current Mood: artistic
Current Location: Tracy Island
Current Music: Boy #2 muttering over LOLcats

Now that NaNo is over, and I can't use my absolutely adorable ML icon anymore, I've created a new one for myself. It's based on the favicon my personal site has. T for Tikatu, and the cat... well, it's the best silhouette, I thought. Reminds me of Tika. I made a cool banner for myself to use during NaNo... it's on my old hard drive, though, which makes me sad.

Haven't written anything beyond this today, and I really should. I should get in the habit of writing something every day--something fictional, that is, and perhaps creating a "to do" list of all the things I want to get accomplished in the next few month. First, though, is getting my old drive to the techs, and seeing what they can pull off of it. I've put it off because of money woes, and now I can do something about it.

Current Mood: cheerful
Current Location: on my way out
Current Music: rain, rain, and more rain

Nuff said!

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Location: the Upstate NaNo chatroom
Current Music: the trickle of water in the fish tank

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tikatu

As My Muse Moves

November 2016

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Tikatu's Travels Through Time

Cats, coffee, chocolate ... life is good

Entries tagged with writing

Two posts at my WordPress site, if you're interested.

Need a thesaurus

A little fangasm!

Well, the experiment has come to an end.

Challenge progress report #2

Challenge progress report #1

Challenging myself

A wordle from my long-suffering NaNo Novel

Moonstrike! - updating with new content?

Dancing hard and happy!

Got a little more up...

The Alfred Hitchcock fiction meme

Got on a roll writing tonight.

I’m finding that coding my stories is very… therapeutic.

The Thunderbirds movie section is gone!

Define this word

Writing weirdness

To my fanfic writing/reading friends--opinions wanted!!

New icon

Uh huh, uh huh, uh huh, oh yeah!