[The Ruined Abbe]

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.

[The Ruined Abbe]

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.

[The Ruined Abbe]

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

[Learn to touch type]

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.

[some short sci fi erotica seeking spell checker]

Hi Mars,

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

[Learn to touch type]

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!

[If the Doctor from Dr. Who was real and asked you to go with him...]

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...

[Who Do You Write Like?]

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.

[What's your writing process? Do you write without thought or not?]

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.