hello

ah, my first post as my embarrassment-saving alter ego. i created this journal to keep my fanfic-related ramblings separate from my regular journal, since there's only so much public humiliation a girl can take. in terms of fanfic i'm almost exclusively interested in harry potter, specifically in draco, snape, tom riddle (oh yes, i do have a bad boy fetish), and for a bit of a change, the incomparable madame hooch.

i've been reading fanfic for over a year now, but i've only recently started writing it. i've been writing fiction about original characters for many years, all exclusively for my own personal enjoyment; i've shared a couple of pieces with a couple of people over the years, but have generally found it stressful to write for an audience other than myself. in the last few months, though, i've been thinking increasingly about writing fanfic -- partly to get some plot bunnies out of my head, and partly as a way of forcing myself to write for other people. considering how much fiction i write -- generally more than 100k words/year -- it seems silly to me that i'm not trying to make any money off it, but frankly, the stuff i write for my own enjoyment is pretty sloppy. fanfic seems like a good writing exercise, a way to force myself to write whole stories, finish scenes, go back and edit, and otherwise develop good writing habits. so here i am.

i'm currently working on what i hope will be a novella-length post-hogwarts draco/hermione fic; i've also written a hooch/mcgonagall cookie that may evolve into something more over time. i haven't submitted any of my stuff anywhere yet, since i'm not really satisfied with any of it.

isiscolo gave me the idea to create a separate journal for this, as well as having offered quite a bit of invaluable feedback on what i've written so far. hopefully spewing my writing dilemmas here will help me work them out in my own head -- and maybe i can get some more good suggestions.

whee!

hm.

so i wrote ~2500 words last night in a marathon session interrupted only by some intermittent chatting with isiscolo, who provided invaluable suggestions regarding spell naming, and ordering/eating cheap and fairly bad chinese food so i wouldn't pass out while i was writing. i ground to a halt near 2:30 a.m. when i realized i was too tired to think of what to do next, and spent the next two hours desperately trying to get to sleep while i argued with myself over the direction the story had taken.

i think i'll be rewriting about 1000 words of it; i think draco slipped out of character while demonstrating a wizard's duel for his DADA class with hermione, and continued to slide from there. i also think it was a mistake to have him lose the duel in front of his own class.

the idea was for hermione to find out in a dramatic way that he is still petrified of his father, even though lucius has been dead for years. in the course of the duel, draco throws a curse specifically intended to humiliate hermione, and she responds, angrily, by summoning a boggart, which immediately takes lucius' form. the way i wrote it initially, draco completely lost it and hermione had to banish the boggart herself, but in retrospect i think that the only thing stronger than draco's fear of his father is his pride -- and he'd never let that fear show in front of his class.

so instead, i think he'll tough it out, and hermione will discover only later just how shaken he is.

i'm still working out how i'm going to segue from that into her demonstrating the workings of a Zippo for him, but i'm sure i'll work it out somehow.

and ever since last night, i've been wondering what the chances are that i could get a Zippo with a Slytherin crest on it...