Cons and anxiety

I am not going to Denver next weekend, of course. No no I don't do cons, no matter how tempted I might be to go and demand my gay back from a certain someone. I know there is at least one person in lj land who is planning to ask him about the whereabouts of my gay, for which I am eternally grateful. I simply cannot wait to see what he says. Though, I fully expect him to say, "Huh?" Ah well. One's gay can only get so famous.

I have just discovered that there is an actual Q&A at this con, which means...what? If you wanted to ask him if he is aware that Ivy Blossom is having an identity crisis because he has stolen her gay, and does he intend to give it back any time soon, you can do it, what, in front of a crowd of people! w00t! I had no idea there was a Q&A. Doesn't that make everything very interesting.

Actually I had an anxiety dream about Denver this morning, I think. In this dream, my mother needed something from Vancouver, so I took my friend with me and went back to get it. You know, I do that all the time. It's only a six hour flight! I'd do that for my mother.

For some reason in Vancouver they didn't have toonies anymore (toonies are a form of Canadian currency; we have a two dollar coin and it is called a 'toonie'). In place of toonies they had little five or six inch tall Canadiana figurines, like trees and beavers and moose. They were sort of pretty, really. Tacky, but sort of pretty. So the bank gave me a bunch of these figurines in a sack, that was my walking around money. I was thinking, yeah, I could get a cafe mocha with a couple of these, when we happened upon this street downtown which does not exist that had a few very nice houses on it. There were people on scaffolds setting up lighting around them, so we knew they were preparing to shoot something. And then the cast of Smallville walked out, all chatting with each other.

Being Canadian, me and my friend both said, meh, whatever, like we need to watch a bunch of famous people standing around talking, whatever, but after a couple of minutes I broke down and went back to see what was up. There were a couple of people there now, watching them.

Then some stuff happened that I don't remember.

But at some point I was walking past some trailers and this girl with wacky braids in her hair came out. I think she was on Are You Hot or American Idol or something or other, and she was talking to me about how they had 60 beer in the back of the car and wow, they were going to have a drink, and I should follow along, and meanwhile I was like, who the hell are YOU on Smallville? but I didn't, like, say that. Cause that would be rude. And I haven't seen enough episodes to actually know anyway. Of course I don't realize that I'm dreaming at this point, so I'm concerned about being rude to imaginary people.

And right after that who walks past me but Michael Rosenbaum, in costume, even. Purple and black. And I said, "Michael!" You know, like I'm pleased to see him. Cause, let's face it, I am!

And he says, get this: "Ivy!" But he actually doesn't say "Ivy." He says my real name.

Insert me freaking out here.

Then I woke up.

Original fiction

I'm posting about original fiction because blackholly said she wouldn't mind.

Okay. I've been ignoring my original manuscript like...well, like a big thing that you ignore. I do this from time to time when I need to refuel, which is why you see ridiculous amounts of fanfiction pour out of me. Generally I use fanfiction to work out certain problems I run into with original fiction.

Lately: I've been worried about my hero. I've never written Harry very well, and lately I've been trying to explore Harry to see how to write a hero who is human but still, well, heroic. Which probably accounts for the fact that I take a lot of liberties with the canon in order to do this.I find everyone else easier to write, everyone else. Heroes are tough.

So to date I have 82,680 words on the original manuscript. I keep an excel worksheet for this, which is why I know exactly how long it is. I'm a bit disappointed with that number because I was hoping to keep it under 80k, but no luck. I'm sure a good edit will help some, but I'm not sure where the market sits on the size of a manuscript these days. If it went over 100k I would pull out all my hair, but I don't see that happening.

What I have left to do: one scene (ONE!) and apparently it needs a last chapter. I thought it was finished where it was, but I've been told by very intelligent people that it needs one more, and I can see their point. That will probably add somewhere between 5 and 6k to the total. So I'm still looking at a manuscript under 90k, which I suppose could be worse.

The first chapter probably needs more work. Other than that, I think it's pretty much good to go. Since it was me who wrote it, it needs a line edit, because I'm sloppier than a very sloppy thing. But I've edited the entire manuscript twice myself so far. I had to entirely rewrite the middle of it, and I'm fairly happy with it now.

What to say about it. I'm tragically bad at summarizing these things, I get too caught up in the details. It's the story of a highly-stratified society on the brink of collapse, a myth that turns out to be true, and a 16 year old boy who turns out to be the proof of both of those things. And if you think that sounds just like Harry Potter, you don't read enough fantasy fiction; it sounds like a helluva lot of stuff, actually.

Hopefully tonight I can crank out that last chapter, and that one stupid scene. It's not even a complicated scene, really. I don't know what stalled me for so long. Fear, I think. Fear that I really can't accomplish this.

Original fiction is a lot harder than fanfiction. You know why? ( Let me tell you what I think. )