Never give up anything you can't go a day without thinking about

Have been writing tonight!

First, I re-read and edited my post-funeral scene (of Walter and Integra's big conversation - "Richard's a bastard traitor who tried to kill me but I shot him.  Oh and by the way, Alucard's back").  It doesn't fail quite as much as I thought it did!  Last main problem is perspective.  DAMN PERSPECTIVE.  Why can't we see how they're both feeling in one scene, huh.  But I think it's fixed it up quite a bit, yay - will be emailing it again to my two lovely Hellsing girls (givemethechild andmortal_maiden) for further critiquing.  And then posting!!!  I so hope.

Now I am working on my old almost-sex scene.  Siiiiigh.  It's so conflicting.  I don't understand how it can suck so much in places, and then be so incredibly decent to the point of possibly being described as "really quite good" in others.  CONFLICTION.  And both ways are really sunk quite deeply into the story, so re-writing is hard.  It's so long and well-drawn-out for a PWP, too.  Which gives me extra motivation for really fixing it up everywhere.

Have discovered through this that I have (perhaps mostly just had) a terrible tendency to write passively.  Not always in the passive tense, but I can be so inclined to write things "elegantly" that involve long phrases and nicer words than normal ones, that it comes off detached.  WTF, I just concritted an author about this the other day.  I'm really glad I can recognize it in myself, though.  Anyway, so am working on fixing that too. 

Word count 3,539 for this one, and just over 2,000, I think, for the post-funeral scene.

(I want to start a new Lily/Severus piece too, just a glimpse of their relationship.  Was inspired by this.)

P.S.  Yes I still remember that thing called the nightmare-story.  It's just that when I have so little time to write now, I really want to spend it on things which have so much more promise and are better-written.  Sigh.  Will have to figure out time to keep working on it, though.

ETA after reading a couple more stories written within the last six months:  WHY.  Why do I suck SO MUCH.  *a v. furious headwall*  And why did I actually SEND THESE to girls whose opinion MATTERS to me SO MUCH.  AUUUUGH. 

Thank God they lied, though, and told me they loved it, because I really couldn't have handled any other response in my extremely nervous state.  ...Those two stories were of a new sort of hardcoreness.

So.  This is for my own benefit - partly driven by an impulse to write it for myself, and also to make it public so I know that other people can see this, so they know I do, actually, have a higher standard in writing than I show in the funeral scene.

Because it was v. interesting - when I first wrote and finished the funeral scene (which was all done in a relatively short amount of time), I was in love with it.  Not all of it, but I thought the dialogue, particularly, was brilliant.  Then I typed it up, started editing, got it back from the beta's - and it had faded a lot.  Then, finally, the last time I was going to read it over before posting - I started reading, and realized in horror that the introductory paragraphs, with all the description, were downright awful. 

And of course, I could have decided not to post it after all, and keep it back and work on re-writing it - but I had just been through two rounds of editing with my beta, and I was just so anxious to get my first Hellsing fic (and some kind of story at all, since it’s been ages since I’ve posted anything) out. 

But now I’m going to make a list here of what I specifically find wrong with my scene, along with a list of what I think is decent.  I think this will be very valuable to myself later on, so I can look back and see what I valued and did not value in my writing, and how soon I feel this when I write something.

( What is less than perfect )

( What is decent )