die_traumerei | Entries tagged with weekly update

it’s a corker!

Writing

Yet Needed Most, I Bring: Finished and posted a chapter! I’ve started in on the next chapter, but I’m trying to work on these stories evenly, so this will probably be around the bottom of the pile until late this week.

Tumble Down Through the Years, My Love: posted a chapter last Sunday, and I’ve at least got a start on the next chapter. I’ve also started having some fun writing out of order scenes as they occur to me, so I’ve got the very rough arc of the story planned. Hoping to finish another chapter this week, though.

Of Angels and Knights: Just finished a chapter! That will probably go up tomorrow so I have a day to proofread.

(Family) Date Night: [title is tentative]. I got the idea for this while I was getting tattooed yesterday, and it’s pretty close to done? Mostly I just missed writing Bucky and Steve actually together (instead of getting them together), and I wanted to write something not multi-chapter. It is a throwback to 2013 Avengers fandom, in which everyone is friends and lives together and is weird and lovely.

Reading

Nothing finished this week exactly, other than a graphic novel about the Dior show where he debuted the New Look. I read it in one sitting in a bath (in between the cat stealing my mochi as you may recognize from an earlier story on this very blog) and felt gorgeous and luxurious.

Happy almost-the-Met-Gala day! I have to go into work a couple of days this week and HOO BOY am I annoyed as hell. I think I’ve got it plotted out so I don’t lost my morning writing time, but I’m not super worried, because wow it’s been a wild...okay, mostly today and yesterday.

Of Angels and Knights: Got a new chapter up last week, and I’ve at least started the next one. I’ll work on this more soon, too; I have the next few chapters planned, I just have to actually write them.

Tumble Down Through the Years, My Love: New chapter up today! Aaaaaaah, there’s so much to write! Aaaaaah!

Yet Needed Most I Bring: I just finished the next chapter. This storyline is not done yet, because Bucky needed a spanking. I’m hoping to proofread this and post it tomorrow or Tuesday. Maybe one more part to this arc? (ha ha i have said this before ha.)

...someday I’ll write something that isn’t a fucking endless saga. Someday.

Reading:

I forgot to mention last time that I’d finished We Who Are About To... Joanna Russ was recommended on Metafilter as literary SF, so, SOLD. (Someone described this book as like L’Etranger, but in space and with a lesbian. This is accurate.) I really want to read more Joanna Russ now; I’m really, really enjoying this style of SF. (Yes, I am still too chicken to start Dhalgren and I have accepted this about myself. Besides my next Delaney is gonna be Times Square Red, Times Square Blue.)

I also finished Vile Bodies for a book club I then played hooky from because I ran out of socialization spoons. It was fine. Everyone in it is a terrible person, even worse than everyone in The Great Gatsby. I love books about how utterly awful the BYT’s were though, and I quite liked it. Evelyn seems a little exhausting, but I think this is before he found Catholicism, so it’s different than the way Brideshead is a little exhausting.

Finally I speed-read Paperback Crush in like two days because it was SO GOOD you guys. It’s fun and smart and she cites Sisters, Schoolgirls and Sleuths a lot, and ~~now I want to read that~~ have placed a hold on it and should be able to start it this week thanks SPL! because it goes back to the nineteenth century and I adore Victorian morality series’, especially if they use disability to teach a lesson in the least appropriate manner possible. (Yes, I have actually read What Katy Did and it was terrible and great, and Take Up Thy Bed and Walk is on my to-read list. If anyone wants to recommend similar scholarly surveys, my ILL skills are READY. For that matter, if anyone has an actual series to recommend, my Gutenberg searching skills are all ready too.)

Can you tell that work is enjoyable but not real rewarding to my brain.

Whups, missed last Sunday! My sister was in town so was a bit busy hosting her. I had this past week off, though wound up not writing terribly much -- suspect my brain just wanted a break. I did get a respectable amount done though!

Writing

Yet Needed Most, I Bring: Still adding to this regularly in small bites. The next chapter will probably be the last one in this storyline? Maybe? Who the hell knows.

Tumble Down Through The Years, My Love: My world war threesome fic! Previously titled Tritone until I remembered that’s a dive bar in Philly and that kinda ruined the ambiance for me. Posted the first chapter and I’m well into the second, finding my footing with tone and the weird tense this story wanted to be written in. Going by the response, I have rather hit on the zeitgeist.

Of Angels and Knights: I have a couple chapters outlined, which is really nice, and I know the bridge between story beats now! I wrote a lot, have the next chapter almost finished. Hopefully it’ll be a longish one to make up for taking a bit of time to get to it.

Reading

Not that much, weirdly. I think the only thing I’ve finished is Nightwood, a very modernist novel by Djuna Barnes. It’s supposed to be a great lesbian classic, which means all lesbians in the book are deeply miserable. I think I’ll like it better on re-reads, and when I’m a little more in the mood for modernism.

Sorry for missing last week! That was, uh, mostly because I didn’t write anything the week before last. I’m making up for lost time, though!

Writing:

Of Angels and Knights: Another chapter up, and well into the following one. I think I know a few scenes I want to put in, so hopefully this should update this week.

Yet Needed Most, I Bring: Ugh, I know what I want to write even! It’s just...not really coming right now. I’ve the rest of the afternoon basically free, and I’m gonna take another stab at this.

Tritone: (title is....very tentative). I got the idea for this ages ago, played around with it, and finally started writing it. The storyline is, Peggy got the serum and is still alive and young, rescued Bucky in the seventies, and they’re there when Steve is unfrozen. Also a return to Avengers Are A Big Fambly Who All LIve Together So There, on top of the hawt threesome.

I am unspeakably nervous about writing Peggy again, but I think this’ll be really fun, too.

Reading:

I got a lot done the last two weeks! In general I’m reading more books, and very happy for it too.

Fanny Herself: So Edna Ferber was Ace, right? We can all agree on that? And that Fanny is an Ace Icon? WE WILL NOT SPEAK OF THE END OF THE BOOK. Honestly, what a shitty, tacked-on romance, Clarence is a schmuck and we all know it. The end is Devil-Wears-Prada-dreadful, and I’m going to ignore it in favor of how much I loved the rest of the book. I really have to read So Big now, Edna is my new fave.

Head On: An excellent little near-future detective story. I love John Scalzi. I quite like this universe, too, and I’ve got a hold on the prequel. I sort of feel like I should write about how this is also a meditation on disability and society but honestly, it...doesn’t get so much into that? Mostly I found it a great, fun mystery.

Semiosis: This was maybe a scotch too long, but I read it pretty fast, and loved it other than the one longish section. It’s a really good book about first contact, and living peacefully, and how to build a society you want to see. I think I’ll be thinking about it a whole lot now that it’s done. (It also looks like there will be a sequel, which I am very happy about. One thing I would have liked was that it starts out as a chapter per generation settling in a new world, but the latter part of the book is all one point in time with different viewpoints. I would have liked to keep tracking generations, and I hope the next book does that more.)

I just got distracted staring at my cat’s furry tummy for like forty-five solid seconds, so I think today will be a Good Day.

Writing:

Of Angels and Knights: I didn’t add terribly much to this, but got another chapter up. I want to edit and post a chapter today, and really turn my attention back to writing it, as I’ll have then basically caught up to myself.

Yet Needed Most, I Bring: This one really grabbed me this week! I am having so much fun! There is character growth, wtf! (Okay, it like 80% is Bucky getting a medical kink too, but still.) I have a chapter all edited and ready to go up later today.

(I’m working in the office all week and I can guarantee I am not going to want to get on a computer when I come home after being in a very small room with too many other people, all of whom are having conversations with each other.)

Reading:

I sped through Young Man from the Provinces last weekend. It’s a memoir from a golden boyman who was the toast of Gay New York pre-Stonewall; I’d last read it about fifteen years ago, but thought of it often and finally picked up a copy again. It’s pretty fascinating, and...very unusual, compared to the other gay history stuff I encounter. Alan Helms lived a glittering life, and doesn’t once mention the Mattachine Society or other homophile organizations; it’s kind of interested how much he is 100% ready to just slip into a different world, and has no real hope (interest?) in integrating it with mainstream society.

He’s pretty fucking miserable throughout most of the memoir, which can get grinding at times. And it does remind me that a fuckton of older gay literature is, like, required to be about completely miserable people. (To his immense credit, he is not miserable because he’s gay, but because he came from an abusive family and is not really able to get himself out of an unhealthy situation.) But he doesn’t get bitter, and the end of the book is sweet and peaceful. He’s still alive, and I hope he’s doing well.

It’s a glittery, gorgeous read, and oh my god the name-dropping. He’s shameless, and I love him for it. Then again, when you have an affair with Anthony Perkins, you are allowed, nay encouraged to drop those names. It was a miserable time for him but, I think, also breathless and amazing and wonderful too.