akda;adfog ad;fkgl;adf I can has big SLEEP now big bang draft is in?

[spoopy.livejournal.com]

I feel like a "FLAIL I FINISHED AND HANDED IN MY BIG BANG DRAFT" post is in order!!

Bigbangers, HOW DID YOU ALL GO?

What was your final word count? (Me, I got to 33,685.)

Were you rushing like hell to get it finished (*raises hand!*), or were you super organised and had everything ready to hand in on or before the due date? Or did you have to drop out at the last minute because you realised you wouldn't be able to get it all done in time? (That was me, too, almost. I almost lost heart a few times and if it wasn't for people who encouraged me to keep going, I'd probably wouldn't have finished. I owe those people so many thanks, it's not funny.)

How many of you are ready to collapse from writing like crazy to meet the deadline?

CAN I SAY FLAIL. FLAIL. SHARE YOUR FLAIL. Are you happy with how your fic came together? Did you find your fic frustrating or easy(ish) to write? Was it a story you'd had plotting in your mind for a long while, or was it something that you came up with as you wrote? Talk about how you went; if you panicked, if you felt confident you'd finish the story, if you reached any spots where you got stuck on your story, if you scrapped entire scenes (or even entire fics??), anything!

Share your big bang journey! (I know this is just the first draft we're talking about, but that's the toughest hurdle overcome, I say!)

Edit: Aaand... seeing there's still a fair way to go before Big Bang actually goes live, how do you feel about the editing and fine-tuning ahead of you? Got a beta? Think you'll be able to edit relatively smoothly? Think maybe you'll end up tearing your hair out?

(TOO MANY QUESTIONS, ahahaha)

Comments

[hwshipper.livejournal.com]

FLAIL FLAIL FLAIL

Wow Ticcy well done! & 33K words awesome!!!!

I was organised enough to hand mine in the day before, all 25,881 words of it. But I might not have done if I hadn't been off work all this week. I'm supposed to be on study leave working on my PhD thesis ARGH! *chews furniture at thought*

YES I am happy with it, although thank God we have another month to edit. I very much wrote it as I went along. Also, the ending turned out completely sappy which was not what I envisaged at the start at all... will be interested to see what my beta makes of it. Fic is already more than half beta'd, again thank God.

This is the second year I've done a crime fiction crossover written from the crossover's POV. Memo to self: DO NOT TRY THIS AGAIN NEXT YEAR. TOO MUCH HARD WORK. ALSO, LOTS OF PEOPLE WON'T KNOW THE CROSS AND WON'T READ IT. AND, YOU'LL NEVER GET AN ARTIST. FAIL FAIL FAIL

*goes off to try & do some actual study*

[imissimissyou.livejournal.com]

Also, the ending turned out completely sappy which was not what I envisaged at the start at all...

I can say you are not alone in that, my ending is the king AND queen of sappiness.

[bell]

I'm technically on lj hiatus, but I love bigbang so I dropped by to see if there were any post-duedate posts. <3333

I WAS A BIG, OVER-PREPARED DUMBASS. I'M SORRY. I helped turn in two fic, one with the help of the lovely anna_bm, and the other on my own. :D

The cowritten one (~25,000 words) we finished a rough draft... shit, back in October, I think? But it only got edited recently. It still needs revising. And I still think we were crazy for writing it (THE PREMISE, I'M TELLING YOU, THE PREMISE) and are crazy for sharing it, but!!!! Obviously sanity is not a requirement for bigbang. ^__^ I'm worried about getting out the last of the typos/stupid mistakes. And, uh, about it being massively stupid. *cringes*

The other fic (~36,000) took me longer because I kept getting interrupted by rl (alkjfaldjf) and my own hang-ups. But I did have have a first draft done ~Jan 2nd. I am, by turns, massively proud and hateful of it. (That's pretty typical of my brand of writerly angst. :D) I tackled some new things with it-- threesome and 1st person pov-- so I'm glad on at least that much. It's good to try new things!

I am scared of editing. Editing will eat me while I sleep. Editing will devour me during the day. I shall be slain by editing. D: ...I think one of my concerns on that front is that I've yet to find a beta who will spank me viciously hard on what needs fixing, so I've been waffling about making major changes. Which isn't to say that my betas aren't awesome-- because they are! ♥-- but I feel uncomfortable when I don't get a lot of criticism/suggestions.

Anyway. ♥ Congrats to everyone that finished, I can't wait to see your stories and the art to go with it! Good luck editing! And to everyone who didn't make the deadline, I wish you luck in finishing those fic soon. ♥

[beeinmybonnet.livejournal.com]

THE PREMISE IS WONDERFUL, SHUT UP. ♥ (Do you remember that I gave you a list with five different ideas/premises for the fic we were about to write? You immediatly scrapped all ideas but the last one, which I had come up with half-awake, unsatisfied that there only were four items on the list. XD;; Even numbers are evil, you see.)

And you're silly. :P Not getting much critism means the fic is good. Gods, woman. ♥

[bell]

(*whistles, negates any memory of this ever happening*)

I WILL ALWAYS WAIT FOR THE CRITICISM TO LEAP OUT FROM THE BUSHES. IT'S GONNA HAPPEN, I TELL YOU. IT'S THERE WITH ITS TWITCHING TAILS AND PERKED EARS, WAITING FOR THE RIGHT MOMENT.

[oldblue.livejournal.com]

If you want to be spanked, you should just say so ;)

[bell]

Spank me harder, baby. ;)

(Though I'll also need to know what's working in the fic! :D)

FLAAAAAAAAAAAAIL!

[rosenskimmer.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I had the draft done early, but 2/3rds of it was handwritten and typing it was a bitch and a half. I was barely done in time, but I freaking finished. I was just a bit over 20,000 words. It was over 10,000 words typed in ONE day, about four hours. My hands were like pulp when I was done.

I don't have a beta...are there proper channels to go find one for such a long work? I plan to do at least two weeks of revision by myself before I send much of anything to a beta. I like stepping back and taking a look at what I've done and fixing any totally glaring errors before I send the draft out into the world.

Any help on locating a beta would be appreciated.

Congrats to the finishers and better luck next time to all those who didn't quite make it!

Re: FLAAAAAAAAAAAAIL!

[imissimissyou.livejournal.com]

It was over 10,000 words typed in ONE day, about four hours. My hands were like pulp when I was done.

*applauds* Now that is impressing.

About the beta, I went onto fanfiction.net and asked here if anyone was willing to be a beta, and I've gotten one responce =)

[mer-duff.livejournal.com]

Okay, I'm completely blown away that you wrote 33K words in 5 days. Wow!

I finished a draft on Jan. 2, which meant I had time for my beta to do a quick and dirty first edit (because she is amazing), which was a very good thing, because I kept changing things mid-stream and forgetting to make retroactive changes, including the gender and age of the last patient. Oops!

That being said, I've done a lot of editing already on certain sections, because I when I'm stuck in a long story, I go back over the parts I've already written and obsess about them for a while. So some paragraphs are polished, while others are barely coherent. And it's all very annoying when you have to go back and actually work out the logistics and -- even worse! -- the medicine. And this whole plot thing is very annoying. So I'm very glad we have another month to edit/rewrite, because I started editing last night and I already hate my fourth paragraph. Oh exposition, how you destroy me.

Ended up with ~25,500 words, which is kind of insane, because the original idea started out as a "Come As You Aren't" fic, and then spiraled out of control, so perhaps it is sort of what I am. It is my first cross-over, in a fandom I've never written in before, though, so I really have no idea what readers will make of it.

Congratulations to everybody who made it past the first hurdle!

[imissimissyou.livejournal.com]

I started as soon as I signed up, then I stopped writing in November with the word count 11000, and that was where I was until last week when I checked the dates and realized I had five days to write 9000 words (at least). So I rushed to get finished only to find that when I was at the final scene... I couldn't end it! It was sad when I had to wrap it up and send it away.
I finished with about 21 000 words! I'm really proud of it!

At first I was really confident about my story, and planned it out, then slowly this confidence faded away... Still I sucked it up and knew that it was just to keep going and hope I would regain that confidence again. I had the story figured out and longed to write the future chapters, but it never turned out the way I originally planned because it just didn't work to write it that way...
At the end I had scrapped two fics, one chapter and three scenes as a total.

Now it's time for the editing process, I will leave it for a while, send it off to a beta, and then go through it in about a weeks time to check for mistakes (I can't do it straight away), and then I will do this every other day, for stupid mistakes and idiot explanations. Then hopefully I will have it back from a beta, and I will work from that to get to my final draft.
I have no real experience in editing, but I'm going to learn from this, and hopefully it will turn out well! I probably will avoid my fic at times, and just ignore it, because that is what I do, but it will get done. I do my best work at the last minute.

Long answer to many questions... Now I'm going to read everyone else's! =D

hate keysmash...

[kimbari.livejournal.com]

but I will cop to MAJOR FLAIL!!!!!!11111`eleven

I got mine in a few hours ahead of the deadline, last count 26K+ words (don't remember the exact number because Kim = old). I came thisclose to bailing too many times to count. I wanted to write a big Huddy fic. My first attempt crashed and burned because I hadn't seen enough of the show to know what the hell I was talking about. (Lesson to new fic writers: do not attempt to write in a 'verse until you have watched all extant episodes at least twice. It will save you from looking foolish.) As the HBB rules forbade me using the beginnings of *that* fic (*whine*), I had to start from scratch... and ended up with a much better story.

If it were not for avidreadergirl, beta extraordinaire, "Adagio" would not exist. She flattered and encouraged and bribed me with Baby Ruths... and did I mention flattered? Anyway, she single-handedly kept me going (*I* certainly wasn't any help! LOL). Although I had an outline early on (85% of which was NOT followed, JFTR), I didn't get any serious writing done until the last couple of weeks. Yes, I was up until 4 a.m. a couple of days writing on this, and a really HOT mess went in, but it was duly accepted *is happy*. The EASY part will be the editing. I have two or three more sets of eyes, in addition to Goddess Sasha, so I feel very good that this will be one of my best fics EVAR. I've written long ones, but they were written bit by bit over a long period of time. That I got this one done with some kind of coherence really encourages me to write original (and possibly salable!) fiction.

Hey, thanks for giving me the opportunity to vent this! :D

Re: hate keysmash...

[avidreadergirl.livejournal.com]

Did not, I used both hands.

And I adore the fic, so flattery wasn't a problem, and you've even managed to anticipate some of what my notes would have been, based on the difference between the rough, rough rough drafts you got me and the draft you sent in as complete.

I'm very impressed.

Still, that was the cheer leading ::::puts away the Baby Ruths until the fic comes out in march::: and now comes the Beta'ing ::::gets out the big red pen:::: Just remember no matter how many notes you get, no matter what I say, I really do love the story.

Re: hate keysmash...

[kimbari.livejournal.com]

Did not, I used both hands.

And you needed them!

I'm pleased you're impressed. :)

...the rough, rough rough drafts...

You sound like Astro. LOL

Looking forward to your notes. :D I think I'll do some work on it before I send it to my other betas. ;)

[sodiumbisulfite.livejournal.com]

Oh man. I was writing up until the day I had to hand it in. I managed to get it to 20,053 according to my word counter.

I had a really hard time with it, honestly! My fic is a crossover: House/Arrested Development/Batman so I had to somehow flow three very different settings into one. It pissed me off a lot, but I think I finally got it into a place where I will be able to edit it into one smooth ride.

This was the story I wanted to write from the beginning. It became something darker then I had originally planned, because originally I had wanted something that might make people laugh, but it became something else. Which I guess makes sense since each fandom is a completely different genre. So hopefully in the end, after all of my editing, it will be a nice mixture of everything.

RIght now, Im somewhat happy with it. I have a long ride ahead of me though. I do have a trusty beta lifefeed who grew up with and still reads Batman novels and who turned me onto Arrested Development so I think he will help me out immensely. But I'll probably be editing it up until the end! :D My draft is reallly really rough, lol.

[rosenskimmer.livejournal.com]

It's going to be badass. I can't wait to read the whole thing! I'm so glad you finished, because a three-way crossover is exceptionally difficult.