trials and tribulations

One day, this will be over, and I will not be nostalgic. Sometimes I totally am about writing; I have fond memories of thete1 in AIM encouraging me through Handful of Dust and happy thoughts about And All the World Beneath.

This is nothing like that.



After chatting with girlnamedpixley about The Trek Fic That Will Never End (I think it would be best that no one ask about the word count at this point; I froze for three days last time I looked), I had this bright idea to make a character list. Because--I don't know. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Keep in mind I have Vulcan Institute on bookmarks because I needed Vulcan langauge questions answered, because this is Trek and I forgot how much I love this.

I mean, here is the thing--I seriously, and I do forget this a lot, love Star Trek. And sometimes, I forget this, and I forget there are many reasons that I haven't been near Trek since Voyager and in fact for about five seconds thought, okay, the fandom is not a good idea. You have met yourself. It's like--I spent hours at Memory Alpha looking for my characters because I want to be canon-compliant and that's kind of insane, I'll be honest. Who the fuck else cares who was the TOS transporter technician through most of TOS? Who else will notice? Why do you need to know which redshirt would most likely have been in security? Why do they need canon names? The girl in the messhall that Kirk talks to for five seconds does not need a life history. And yet. I have a character list and beside it notes to memory alpha and then my own notes added because sometimes, this happens.

This is no longer a story. This is like some kind of insane treatise on who's who while I look at screenshots from the movie and match who might be who by visual compared to TOS pics, because goddamn Abrams didn't give them all names and you have no idea how pissy that made me. Like about as pissy as realizing that there is a surgeon general of Starfleet Medical and I can't find out who that was (ep Turnabout, with Janice Lester, let me DIAF now). And I need that.

In college, I didn't do this much research for major papers, and I started a citation list, because I feel guilty if somewhere, someone, did something like this, which is insane. The problem isn't finishing it, as it turns out. The problem is I have turned into a scary anal-retentive person who threw a goddamn hissy fit when I couldn't find the specs for an Orion slaver ship, or even if they had slaver ships (they do, they are a race that enslaves beings, they've got slaver ships). I don't even recognize myself.

I am ten thousand words from the end, all I really need is to finish thsi section and conclude, and do you know what I am doing? I am going through my crew and making sure they are cross-goddamn-canon-compliant.

Also, I spellchecked. I think poor girlnamedpixley started getting shaky when she saw the massacre I was perpetuating on spelling.



In other news--I have none, did you not see the above? So I'm curious--anyone go into scary research mode while writing? Ways which kind of worry you when your research page starts to resemble a thesis?

Comments

[mclachlan.livejournal.com]

I'm in the middle of writing an alternate season 2 of Merlin and for a while I researched fairy tales and creation mythology heavily. By "heavily" I mean "after 11 hours, the librarian kicked me the hell out."

But your Trek-fic sounds like a vicious, life-sucking beast from which there is no escape. I can't wait!

[seperis.livejournal.com]

Vicious, lifesucking, and why does the transport tech need a name? I don't even know! I just know that now that I know it, so does everyone in the world.

*throws self on bed and cries

Oh man, a Merlin AU? *grins* They work so well with mythology.

[ladyholder.livejournal.com]

:: Hugs ::

So I'm curious--anyone go into scary research mode while writing? Ways which kind of worry you when your research page starts to resemble a thesis?

Uhm, yes. Ish? I spent most of an evening researching the theory behind building urban greenhouses in major cities. They are skyscrapers that are actual greenouses where you can grow damn near anything. And I think I still have all the research filed somewhere. Plus it all went into one chapter. A whole evening.

I feel your pain. And I am very impressed with your dedication too!

~L

[seperis.livejournal.com]

*sends you hugs* Now that is neat. I didn't know that.

What fic?

[christycorr]

Nothing that scary, but yes, something like this—I definitely research fanfiction more than I do college papers, which is horrible of me. But I sympathise with the insanity you're facing! Good luck ♥

[seperis.livejournal.com]

*curls up with you* Our lives? Hard. And yeah, somehow, fanfic just makes you go there. I didn't spend nearly this much time on my Cold War in the USSR paper and I loved that class. *sulks*

[transtempts.livejournal.com]

You know what I'm doing- watching that civil war documentary so I can have background for a Bonnie/Damon fic?

Yeah, it's best if we don't talk about my resource books, or that yes, I do similar research - I could tell you things about the Vulcan, Federation and Romulan intelligence communities..that nobody but me cares about.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

I kind of blame you with your links and your encouragement and telling me about your research in chat.

*moody*

[cathalin.livejournal.com]

That is one of the most awesome and creative writing-procrastinating techniques I've ever heard of! Those last 10k must be hard.

However you get there, it's going to be awesome in the long run.:)

p.s. I was just writing my fandom history for a thing on Idolmeta where they interview writers, and though I didn't name names, it reminded me of how long ago I started reading your stuff. <333

[seperis.livejournal.com]

GOD IT IS. And Memory Alpha and Memory Beta do not help with all those internal links promising enlightenment and joy and no sleep ever again.

Awww. Did you read me in SV? *curious*

[feanna.livejournal.com]

This kind of makes me glad that I can't actually wirite and therefore won't have to write the several novels that would be the result of this:
http://community.livejournal.com/kirkspock/372320.html?thread=2286688#t2286688
(possibly in conjunction with this:
http://community.livejournal.com/st_xi_kink_meme/2654.html?thread=1888350#t1888350)

These post make me feel totally torn up inside, because I want to feel sorry for you and sympathise with your pain, but mostly I'm just squeeing inside really loudly about what and awesome fic I'll get to read!

[feanna.livejournal.com]

Also, when I had to write a 6 page (single spaced) paper for uni I totally read at least 4 books, one of them just on one of the sections of the last part of my paper. I had like 40 links (or more) to long texts on the internet and yeah the paper was about 20 pages in the end, but that was because I had to limit myself and to finally decide to actually write something instead of reading another book.
Also the indexing and getting caught up in minor issues reminds me of the way I study.

[miss-porcupine.livejournal.com]

Heaven forfend I should be either canon non-compliant (even in my AUs) or RL-non-compliant (even when writing about life-sucking space vampires). I can waste hours tracking down stupid facts that nobody but me will ever realize weren't pulled out of thin air.

Which is how I spent way too much time looking up the names of Kosovar politicians or Eritrea's conflict history and what two Navy rating symbols are close enough in appearance to be easily confused at a distance... for one or two sentences of backstory reference. And that doesn't even get into my own bizarre habits with respect to naming OCs and planets to make sure nobody's a porn star or a Silmarillion character.

Writing with just the fandom's canon wikipedia (Gateworld, Memory Alpha, etc.) open in at least three tabs is for sissies. :)

[seperis.livejournal.com]

*sad* I had Memory Alpha, Memory Beta, the Vulcan Language Institute, a webpage that notes just the women of Trek wiht names, pics, and ranks and significant events, and IMDB open the other night to cross-check who would be on an away team typically, then trying to match reboot people with the TOS versions, even if Reboot had no names. While color coding my notes on what to change and what was already changed and what needed to be rechecked in the final draft.

See, but this is why your fic is good.

...okay, an OC porn star-turned-Marine would be kind of awesome, no lie.

[cjk1701.livejournal.com]

So I'm curious--anyone go into scary research mode while writing? Ways which kind of worry you when your research page starts to resemble a thesis?

Hah. Hell, if I put a tenth of the patience and time and work that I waste on fic (especially historical fandoms or those with extensive canons) into my schoolwork, I would have had a PhD by now. The hours I spent researching 17th century carriages (more difficult than it sounds), Trek ship layouts, contemporary address modes with German nobility (well, see, technically it's not nobility per se, as of a 1920 law, but...) and various other things that no sane reader would ever *notice* make me want to weep.

And the VLI has long lived in my bookmarks. Along with Ex Astris Scientia, Memory Alpha and so many, many other resources. Does the VLI still have those annoying .gifs?

[seperis.livejournal.com]

VLI--I have no idea. *blank* I am usually running through search looking for ways to figure out how to make several words work together to express a concept. Probably? I'm not even sure I cna tell you the background color.

*pets us both*

[wrenlet.livejournal.com]

I've also watched three total seasons of two different reality shows about oil drilling.

Yeah.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

Oooh. *sits with you* Yeah.

[devin-chain.livejournal.com]

Tractors once because why wouldn't LuthorCorp own a John Deere-type subsidiary, and why wouldn't some little patch of Lex's brain know all the models and their parts? Because Lex would research that heavily. You know he would.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

Goddamn Lex and his interest in everything.

Also, hi! *hugs you*

[bathsweaver.livejournal.com]

You have great skills as well as my respect and awe. And also a little bit of envy. SORRY.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

Aww, thank you. I am staring at my character list again and kind of hating myself. Again.

[beadattitude.livejournal.com]

Honey, don't beat yourself up, I'm a Trek fan, though I never wrote fanfic because obviously I wasn't running in the right circles and moved up to where there was NO CABLE in '96 and totally missed the last two seasons-ish of DS9, and I would totally do something like this, because up through Voyager I was diehard. Would, hell, I totally do this.

Can you remind yourself this this is fun and to just write write write and if you need, really need to go look up those people you can do it later. After you're done. Just right the story you want to write, honey, because what you're doing? Sounds like the kind of stuff I do when I'm procrastinating. And you can procrastinate yourself into suffocating all the fun out of it for yourself.

Let me show you my mounds of Inca/Aztec/Machu Pichu research for the Indiana Jones/SG fic I've never gotten off the ground. Or the amount of estate law, flower-shop business and small airfield procedures/safety guidelines/practices I delved into for the original novel that won't fly? I suffocated the life out of those.

Oh, and the three days of research on the little village in Devon that the coven from Buffy is on the outskirts of and also Devonshire accents, speech patterns and annual rainfall. Yeeeah. Ahem.

What's worked for me is to go work on a bit of the fic that doesn't need annual UK rainfall or Vulcan second person plural to make you like the damn thing again, go back and see the forest instead of just theh one tree. Or the one branch on the tree.

::smooch::

[seperis.livejournal.com]

*hugs you*

I think it's just so close to the end I'm freezing,and I can't even tell anymore if it makes sense or infodumping. Or like, if it's legible. Or possibly not written in alien dialects.

*whimpers softly*

[seekergeek.livejournal.com]

I haven't had the opportunity to go that crazy (YET) with any of my fanfic, but I certainly have done so in other endeavors. Like on one embroidery project where I wound up researching the chemical composition of beads made in Saxony in the thirteenth century. *wry smile*

[seperis.livejournal.com]

See, embroidery I get for some reason. My grandmother is a quilter/crocheter/cross-stitcher etc. Research is critical. My mom too!

What kind of project? *curious*

[unrund.livejournal.com]

There is a reason why my only two fanfics were my last two fanfics. I spend weeks on the memory alpha & beta and it was sweet, sweet hell with all these links that led me to new things and series and didn´t let me sleep until I knew them all. I seriously could have been infected with that Twilight Zone virus [computer lets people access the net via wetware and then develops a virus that makes people do crazy things like count all the grains of sand on a beach and ... I have to stop now or I will start researching how likely wetware is in the next ten years.]

Not that attempting to write ofic helps, seeing as I spent the time I wasn't laid up the last week trying to find out about the power structure of Italian Mob vs Russian Mob -.-

[seperis.livejournal.com]

*grins hugely* I'ts totes a virus or something. That--that makes perfect sense.

Ooh, the Russian mob? I sometimes wonder what L&O would do without them.

[lenkti.livejournal.com]

I once tracked down and read an obscure anthropological text (there were only six copies in the country) for a fic I never actually finished.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

...okay, that's seriously impressive.

[moosesal.livejournal.com]

I've been known to get ridiculous on fact-checking when editing pro-fic. Checking major details on a car that is mentioned in two sentences but something about the description just doesn't feel right (the problem of having so many mechanics in the family). I've also linked my authors to medical journal articles on things like "surviving gun shot wounds to the neck". And if I can't find conclusive information on whatever I'm researching I get really irritated and think, "Don't other people care about this? I can't be the only one. Tell me I'm not the only one."

[seperis.livejournal.com]

*salutes you* I am especially liking the "surviving gunshot wounds to the neck."

[proleptic-fancy.livejournal.com]

My trick was to do my research papers on subjects relevant to fic so I could kill two birds with one stone.

Also my friend still mocks me for spending a very, very long time teaching myself how to script and diagram football plays with all the proper terminology for one short scene in a fic, not to mention the hours and hours reading far-flung sports columns so I could imitate their styles. And then researching ritzy golf courses in north Texas for one throwaway line. And diagramming potential future playoff teams to be both realistic and avoid contradicting myself.

Labor of love, I tell you.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

*glee* That is awesome. I used to do entire multi-millennia genealogy charts as a teenager for my original stories. Color coded.

I like this killing birds with one stone approach. *thoughtful*

[droolfangrrl.livejournal.com]

I don't write fic.

but here, it's a short story, nuTrek....

well y'see there was this kink free story community, and...

Well anyhow, in case you haven't read it yet.

http://thingswithwings.livejournal.com/83233.html

[seperis.livejournal.com]

I hadn't seen the fic, but I did get some rumblings on that comm. *Goes to look*

Okay, I see this will be an intersting read. *g* You give good links.

[burntcopper.livejournal.com]

I don;t do this for normal fic. Nano, on the other hand...oh god. a good couple of evenings trying to figure out the travel from Lisbon to an obscure place in Africa, including asking little details, and I ended up just mentioning that 'they were on the train to here and a jeep from there'.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

That makes perfect sense to me.

[inteligrrl.livejournal.com]

I think you need a mac so you can run this: http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.html

either that or you need to find a 12 step group, but I support that option less.

[deadlychameleon.livejournal.com]

I started a citation list, because I feel guilty if somewhere, someone, did something like this, which is insane. The problem isn't finishing it, as it turns out. The problem is I have turned into a scary anal-retentive person who threw a goddamn hissy fit when I couldn't find the specs for an Orion slaver ship, or even if they had slaver ships (they do, they are a race that enslaves beings, they've got slaver ships). I don't even recognize myself.

Oh honey, you would fit in so well in grad school!

[seperis.livejournal.com]

You know, my best parts of college were the papers. I mean, not while doing them, per se, but because if I could paper it, I got an A, period. Classes that aren't programming and don't let me do papers? Never did well. But give me a topic and tell me ten pages, twenty pages? It worked.

Weird but true. I like multiple-questions, but give me essay answer and/or a research paper and most of the time, I did so much better.

(Programming, I was better at writing the programs. I think it's related to practical action as opposed to theoretical answers.)

(seriously, I'd never sleep again if I went to grad school. Ever.)

[deadlychameleon.livejournal.com]

Also: a lot of my fellow grad students use this:
http://www.zotero.org/

[seperis.livejournal.com]

Oh my God I want this.

[thepouncer.livejournal.com]

I totally do this. I think it reached its apogee (nadir?) with my last Yuletide fic, when I not only watched Apollo 13 multiple times, but also downloaded MBs of official NASA documents, including oral histories, mission reports, and films. CRAZY.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

Wow. I am beyond impressed with that.

[grey-bard.livejournal.com]

Oh god, I know exactly what you're saying. Not to that degree, but I do? What the hell IS it with Trek, I ask you? It has me doing math! It has me customizing freaking action figures (http://grey-bard.livejournal.com/67973.html). Whyyyy?

[seperis.livejournal.com]

*howls* SGA had me reading unproved graphing problems. It's goddamn sci-fi. It makes us all scary.

[malkingrey.livejournal.com]

Research is fractal.

I once spent several hours poking around the internet in order to find monthly rainfall patterns for Barstow, Arizona, 1972-1973. For a line of dialog in a 2500-word fic. (The same fic also had me looking up the paperback publication date of Toffler's Future Shock, and the history of grocery store chains in Kansas.)