This year's achievements

[wiseheart]

Again, gakked from the lovely lethe_lloyd. She has the most amazing things in her journal.

Allrighty, the writing achievements of 2008:

I've launched Alternate Resolutions, a Voyager fic, with two chapters already posted and the rest roughly outlined. For the first time in my writing career, this is going to be a rather explicit het story, with the full version posted to otherworlds_lib and the butchered version to FF.Net. If I'm very lucky, I might finish it in 11 parts. Chapters 00 and 01 count 9,830 words, so far.

Tales from Halabor is a series of independent little LOTR vignettes, taking place in my imaginary Gondorian fishing town. So far, 5 chapters posted to FF.Net, Stories of Arda, the Tolkien Fanfiction Archive, Gildor's Library and edhellondawards. Word count: 26,106 and growing.

Finally came around to update Equinox Log #1 - Impossible Odds on FF.Net and otherworlds_lib. Again, full version will go to the LJ comm, especially as it's the ohmygod Ebol Slash, for which I already got chewed out by rabid homophobes. If they only knew what's still coming. *g* Word count: 33,211 and growing.

Added several new chapters to The Toreador Chronicles, which is probably the weirdest crossover story I've ever written. I'm up to 35 parts right now, and as always, the unbutchered version is posted to hiddenrealms. World count: 178,838 amd growing.

Made good headway with The Web of Darkness, my Forgotten Realms/LOTR crossover. Posted to all the places where I usually post Tolkienfic, save SoA, which, for some reason, doesn't accept crossovers. I wish I knew why. Currently at part 23, word count: 138,970 and growing.

Elf-root is my first ever Hobbit story, written - and finished!!! - in record time. 7 chapters, word count: 25,105.

Launched my ungodly long Dwarf-epos, The Book of Mazarbul, but run into a block after 2 chapters and 14,621 words.
edhellondawards members can take a sneak peak for later chapters that are posted to the comm, locked. It's just so that chapter 3 still waits to be finished, while three or four later ones are already written. Stupid muses, working backwards!"

Posted the so-far existing 2 and a half chapters of The Path of Wolves, my Buffyverse werewolf story. It's part of the Pathways universe. Pathways is the AU that slowly eats all fandoms, it seems. Word count: 11,947 and growing.

Tried my hand on a Cadfael story: Vox Angelica. Came to 4 chapters, before I ran out of steam, but will continue eventually. Word count: 13,639 and growing.

Pittsburgh by Night is a side product to "The Toreador Chronicles" that is supposed to be finished in 4 parts. 2 of them are done so far. Word count: 6,303 and growing.
That's one story I'm largely writing for myself. As it doesn't feature the hot guys of QAF, it gets completely ignored, but I have much evil fun with Cynthia, the only likeable female character of the show.

Selar is a TNG fic, which was originally published in the short-lived fanzine of the Hungarian Star Trek Club. Consequently, it's written in Hungarian. A short one in 3 chapters. Word count: 9,853.

Out of Legends is one of my personal favourites, although I got a lot of grief from rude reviewers for it. It's a SGA/Andromeda crossover in 20 monstrous chapters, which isn't very nice to Sheppard or Dylan Hunt, which might be the reason why some people got so worked up about it. Others, on the other hand, seemed to enjoy it a great deal. Word count: 135,981.

I'll add my Secret Sancta Kavfic afterwards, as we're not supposed to reveal who's written what. But if you want to make an educated guess, you can get over to kavtolanon and browse a little.

Phew! Taking a look at this, I have to admit that I've been a busy girl in 2008. Go me!

Comments

[lethe-lloyd.livejournal.com]

The ultimate end of the last book was very sad, also, but it was a conclusion of sorts - an ending. Harry's son ends up being raised in his late teens by Isambard, he had gone to try and kill him. Complex and beautiful and yes, very sad.

When Nan realized I was spending every evening at her writing desk, trying to write a story set in the War of the Roses, she told me to read the Heaven Tree because of the way the author used words. It also rather spoiled me for other books, since I came to expect that level of passion and excellence. Ellis Peter's was definitely a wordsmith of excellence and a creator of memorable characters.

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

Yes, a writer of such excellence can spoil you for other authors, especially considering the fact that most them - let's face it, even the professional ones - are fairly mediocre.

I've just got a book from the_wild_iris as a Christmas present: "Hangman Blind" by Cassandra Clark. At first sight, it seems very imteresting. Do you know it?

[lethe-lloyd.livejournal.com]

Yes, a writer of such excellence can spoil you for other authors, especially considering the fact that most them - let's face it, even the professional ones - are fairly mediocre.

You never spoke a truer word - the last twenty years seem to have produced less and less memorable books, or even well written ones. They seem to be aimed at the mass market, and people who are lazy readers :(

However there is a guy who writes published slash detective stories and is on LJ, who told some-one on my f-list that the fashion for short, choppy sentences is now turning about, and people are beginning to look for and want richer prose. I hope so! Words are beautiful!

A lot of your description is very luscious and Ellis Peters standard I think.

I've found better fanfic writing than published, the talent is enormous within a fairly small group of fanfic writers.

I seem to know the name Cassandra Clark, but have not read the books. Let me know if it is good, I can look in the library.

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

The same thing is true for translations. Hungarian translations used to be excellent, a few decades ago, as our best poets and writers used to do translation work between two published ones of their own... with incredible results.

For example, LOTR has been translated as the joint work of a poet and Árpád Göncz, an excellent writer who also used to be our President for a cycle. They did such a good job, that I fell in love with the language first and the story second. When I read the German translation, I was literally shocked. Then I learned English and got my hands on the original, which is, of course, amazing - Tolkien was a linguist, after all - but I still can declare with good conscience that the Hungarian translation has the same level, while the German one is a heap of crap.

I'll write a review of the Cassandra Clark book when I'm done reading it. I'm looking forward to it: it's a medieval mystery with a nun as the female lead - what else do I need to be happy? If it's also well-written, it will be a great experience.

[lethe-lloyd.livejournal.com]

I've about three German F-list friends and one is translating her stories into German and said it is a very hard process. I am really stupid about languages, as I thought surely for every English word there is a word in another language for it, and thought it was just that easy - apparently not.

Those medieval mysteries really took off after Ellis Peters, I have read a couple of others but none I enjoyed so much, although Paul Docherty did a couple of very atmospheric and chilling ones involving curses and ghosts and strigoi which I really enjoyed.

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes, translation is a lot harder than writing directly in a foreign language. I've got several complete novel-length Original Trek stories in Hungarian and German, which I'm slowly translating into English, but I'll tell you: I'd rather write ten new stories than translate one old one.

[lethe-lloyd.livejournal.com]

What interested me hugely was two of them saying that thye * think * of their stories in English. Being a dull monolingual I thought, whoa! I would have thought every-one * thinks * in their native tongue. But apparently not, they think in English as well as write in it - which is so complex and intriguing I cannot quite understand it, as I have never considered * thoughts * as a language.

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

Actually, thinking in English is a lot easier than trying to translate in your head. It's the same with every other foreign language. If I'm in a German-speaking country, I usually need a day or two to switch completely to German in my head, and about a week to strart dreaming in German, too.

Of course, I started learning German at the age of 3 and English at the age of 36, which is quite the difference.

[lethe-lloyd.livejournal.com]

That's just -- I don't understand.XD My uncle has read Chomsky talking about languages, I must see if he does.

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I understand myself. It's just how it works. *g*
Perhaps the fact that I grew up in a family where two languages were spoken parallelly (my Grandpa was German) has something to do with it.

[lethe-lloyd.livejournal.com]

My grandad grew up speaking only Welsh until he was about 12, I wish I knew whether he thought in Welsh or English.

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

My Grandpa lived so long among Hungarians that he was thinking in Hungarian most of the time. I don't know about dreaming, but he was always counting in German. He would sit there, look over the bills and stuff and murmur the results in German under his breath.