pippychick

Ah... the Higher Power concept. It isn't God, unless you want it to be. So they say. Well, I'm guessing you know what the twelve steps are. I'm an atheist, but I believe in twelve step programmes. I'd amend 'higher power' to say 'something more powerful than me' which opens it up to lots of interpretations: the sun, the sea, the earth's gravitational pull. Let it be as literal as you want. Let it be mindless. It really doesn't matter as long as you keep it in mind long enough to go through step three. And, to be fair, it doesn't matter either if you believe it's going to work or not. No matter how wacky that step three seems, or how stupid you feel when you do it, as long as you say it, it works. If I had to guess, I'd say it's really part of step one, psychologically speaking. If you're at the point where regardless of feeling like a complete idiot, you're still prepared to say it out loud, then you're likely desperate enough to go on with the rest of the steps, which are the most important. The moral inventory and confession of that with a sponsor is incredibly freeing. All the steps, taken together, are really the psychological equivalent of a proletariat revolution. It sweeps everything away, and teaches you how to start again. The issues I have with twelve step programs is that the only people who will benefit from them are people who absolutely have got step one right, and, they do have a tendency to induce euphoric mania in some. If you really want to research, get hold of a copy of the Blue Book. In fact, there must be one online somewhere... http://www.aa.org/bigbookonline/en_tableofcnt.cfm You will probably find chapter five and six the most useful, though the chapter to agnostics isn't particularly helpful imho. But it was written a long time ago now. Sorry that was a long post. Hope it helps a bit. dafdes

Hey, I've never taken it, but my brother did (while he was alive). I've seen him go 'cold turkey' because I once booked us into a caravan in the middle of nowhere and stayed with him. Withdrawal is not nice. Aches, pains, high temperature, shivers, fever. As for therapies, he might be prescribed a beta blocker, which would stop heroin having an effect on his system. He could be prescribed a heroin replacement, like methadone. He could be enrolled into a twelve step style program like Narcotics Anonymous with meetings held on site. And, Naruto would be a counsellor, not a councillor. Good luck with the fic! dafdes

Fox, lioness... aaand I'm out.

On the off chance anyone is interested, a couple of new chapters are up, and the latest is that chapter. I tried.

Ok, there have been a couple of new chapters since I last posted on this thread, the last one in particular was quite tricky to write. I really did come close to giving up on this. Basically, I’ve given myself the challenge of writing some of Sade’s perversions in a presentable way, and you won’t be surprised to learn that’s impossible. There’s been a dominant blasphemous theme to the last few chapters, and I’ve found myself wondering what Sade would be so scathing of if he were writing today. Although, given all the scandals involving the Catholic Church, he’d probably still have a good go at them. On the face of it, it’s easy to imagine that if you could get a time machine and bring him here, he’d be very pleased with this world. But then, dig a little deeper and I begin to wonder. It’s a promiscuous world that has sex on every billboard, true. But it’s a world of slut-shaming, of sexual images that are so sterile, packaged and perfect they’re barely human. It’s a world where even the darker variants of our fantasies are sanitised (fluffy handcuffs, anyone?), instead of existing as they are, as a point on a spectrum that begins with desire, and ends in destruction. Anyway, enough of that. If you read, I hope you enjoy it, and if you enjoy it, I hope you’ll consider leaving a few words.

I just wanted to thank you for posting these. I have copy/pasted them into word for my use. You're great!

I just thought I'd throw in a website I found recently, that has a load of articles about writing a novel and is being really helpful. www.novel-writing-help.com It's not just novel writing, but writing in general too, with in depth discussion of things like POV, narrative, themes, symbolism and such. I just thought people here might find it useful too.

New chapter up! I really hope I'm writing this in a legible fashion. I hope it's not too wordy, or that the rhythm isn't off. Anyway, if you read, I hope you enjoy it! Please consider leaving feedback if you do.

I’m going to write down some thoughts on this story’s process and the ending, so if you’re following the story and want to avoid spoilers, don’t read any further. Coming Soon! Something I personally detest, though I’m quite sure some people like it, or it wouldn’t exist. And I know it’s a bodily fluid, but eww… just the thought makes me want to curl up in a little ball on my chair. In fact it’s the same reaction I have during occasional episodes of Call the Midwife. There are worse things I’d happily write instead. Murder, rape, incest – all of those would be easier, and predictable. Why on earth would I write it? Never write with a Marquis de Sade muse: he’s very cruel. First, I will have to read it, over and over again, many examples of it. Git. I don’t even know what it’s called, and so far I refuse to research it. But seriously, I know why. I have to write something I hate so that I can write about that experience. When I finally leave Coulmier alone, he’ll be where he was at the end of the film, desperate to write, to add to Sade’s collection of stories. Can we seriously think the character enjoys that fate? That he’d choose it? I think Coulmier would really rather not. That is why I must do it. Having figured that out doesn’t make it any more palatable. I don’t write like him. In the sense that as you read Sade, some (actually a lot) of the things he writes are more like reports than fiction. He tells you, and shows you, but he doesn’t always delve very deeply into the psychology of his characters. He delves deeply into the psychology of his readers. No two people would get the same experience from reading him. For instance, there’s an amazing amount of murder and incest in ‘Florville and Courval’ but it’s not the characters who really question themselves. It’s you, because you know things that the characters don’t, and you get to observe their reactions when they find out the truth. No, I don’t write like him. I wish I did. I wish I could write something perfect where, no matter where someone draws their own personal line, it’s always a knife-edge between titillation and horror. As it is, I must write the way I do it, which means I must thoroughly understand the conflict in Coulmier’s psyche, so that I can put it across. If I succeed at that, it will have to be enough. And so here I am, killing time instead of doing what I have to do. I swear, just the thought of it… Git.

Author: pippychick Title: The Ruined Abbé Summary: The Marquis de Sade finds himself in the vicinity of a potential conquest. Feedback: Yes, please. Fandom: Quills Pairing: Sade/Coulmier, Coulmier/Madeleine Warnings: Abuse, Anal, Angst, BDSM, Bi, B-Mod, BP, CBT, CR, D/s, Dom, Exhib, Fet, Fingering, HJ, Humil, M/M, M/s, MCD, Oral, Other, Rim, S&M, Solo, Spank, Tort, Violence, Voy... and Blasphemy, Bullying, probably more, but I've start warning on a chapter-by-chapter basis. Solo story or chaptered story: Chaptered. URL: http://movies.adult-fanfiction.org/story.php?no=600094870 As this story goes on, I keep trying to understand why I'm writing it, you can tell this from my ridiculous author's notes. I don't really have any idea why, except that it wants to be written. Aren't all stories like that? Anyway, if you read, I hope you enjoy it. And if you enjoy it, I hope you'll consider leaving concrit, especially if you think I've got something wrong, or not gone into enough detail, or missed something out. Thanks, dafdes

I had a little manual too, but portable. For a while it went everywhere with me. Apart from the nostalgia, you're all so fast! I'd practice, but I know for a fact that the last time I was trying for speed I hit a plateau in the mid-70s and couldn't break through it. I'm fast enough for my thoughts, which is enough for me. It's brought up an idea though. In the world now, with all the smartphones and tablets and such, are keyboards going out? Will typing one day become a skill akin to dry stone walling? Cute, but unnecessary. I hope not, because I can't stand writing with predictive text.

Hi Mars, I'm happy to read it through for you if you'd like.

I did a quick forum search, and didn't find a topic for this specific thing, so I thought I'd start one off. If you're a writer, and you can't touch type, it's a really easy (and strangely fun) thing to teach yourself. I did it quite a few years ago. I used learn2type.com but I'm sure there are other free resources out there too. Touch typing is a skill that is useful in lots of little ways you can't foresee, and it's also something you never forget. I know for a fact that I could never go back to writing longhand now, but that might be personal preference. When you can type without thinking about it, the ideas flow from your brain down through your fingers and appear on the screen like magic. Perhaps we could have a fun little wpm competition on this thread. I'll start, though it's a long time since I tried to be fast, so it's probably not all that good. .... Without any practice, my current WPM is 42. You can do better than that. Go on and have a go!

The Doctor would regret the offer. First, I'd make sure I had a tent and a placard. Then, I'd coolly inform him that I don't want anything to do with any of the future daleky time war idiocy, and I'd insist instead that we spend a weekend at Woodstock, followed by the opportunity to march in the civil rights movement and hear Dr King's "I have a dream..." speech. Then, after that, go back a bit further and meet the Earl of Rochester, John Wilmot, preferably before the syphilis. I'd probably insist on Harkness accomanying us there as bait. Oh, he'd regret asking me all right...

Well, I got the following (I've edited out the ones that make me want to uninstall my word processing software): Charles Dickens H P Lovecraft (2) Stephen King (3) Leo Tolstoy J R R Tolkien Douglas Adams Vladimir Nabokov J D Salinger Gertrude Stein Then I was curious, so I fired up my Kindle app, and found out the following: Stephen King writes like H P Lovecraft H P Lovecraft writes like Mary Shelley But, disturbingly, my favourite of the moment had an astonishing result... The Marquis de Sade writes like Jonathan Swift.... As if my fan fiction wasn't enough, two people are now restless in their respective graves.

For me writing fan fiction invariably starts with hearing dialogue. I've usually become inspired after immersing myself in whatever the canon is. If it's a visual canon like a film or television series, the voices are even clearer, and I'm aware that I will both consciously and unconsciously add in little mannerisms that the actors bring to their characters. Once the dialogue is in my mind, I have to write it. If it's insistent enough, I'll need to fill it in, and fan fiction happens. In the case of multichapter stories, I've never started writing one where I knew how it was going to end. A couple of chapters in I'll start seeing scenes from further on in the story - they're like little lights appearing on a darkened map, showing me where to head to. About halfway through the story, then I'll usually know the ending and the important scenes along the way, so my dark map is now a collection of beacons with little ley lines lit up between them. The strange thing is, that visualisation of the map with the lights isn't new on me. It's something I've been aware of for a while, which is why I posted a reply to this topic. Yet, if forced to say what it looked like, I'd say it seems more like a network than a continuous line, which doesn't really lend itself to a longer narrative. But then, perhaps I'm visualising the scenes as ingredients that lead to the conclusion, rather than a sequence of events. It's most like seeing a lighted up town from space, or a collection of synapses, or some strange mix of the two. Sorry if that doesn't make much sense. Somewhere I read something by Stephen King, talking about how it is for him, and he describes finding a story as if it were an archaeological dig, and he only knows the shape of it as he scrapes away all the dirt around it. I suppose it's different for us all.