Writing Thoughts #1: Jelly beans

[jadesfire]

I'm thinking a lot about writing at the moment, and am trying to organise those thoughts into something resembling coherency (no sniggering at the back; I can hear you!). Rather than create a separate filter – I met many of you through writing, after all – I'm going to be very strict about cutting the thoughts, in order to save the scroll fingers of those who'd rather pass on by.



Yesterday, I put up a meme for people to ask me questions about my stories, and I discovered a rather odd thing. While I had certainly learned a lot from each story I wrote, and while some of them had potential sequels, very few of them had things 'left out'. I'm not sure if this indicates a lack of imagination on my part, or if it's another expression of my weird synaesthesia-induced writing method, so I thought I'd ask the rest of you about it.

When answering the question 'what did you leave out?' of a story, my answer was almost always 'nothing'. The only exception to this was my Martha-walks-the-world story, and even then, I didn't exactly leave things out. There were other stories I could have told that weren't sequels to it in a strict sense, but I don't actually know now whether they were part of A Life of Joy and Peace or not. My instinct is that they aren't, that they're part of a bigger story arc. That story is complete as it stands, like all my stories.

My betas will be able to correct me on this, but I don't think I usually have 'missing scenes' from my stories. I'll cut paragraphs, scenes, thousands of words from them, of course. That's not because they don't flow with the story, but because they're not part of the story. They don't belong there, which is why I delete them and re-work the ideas and lines I'm happy with back into the main story.

I'm fairly sure that my synaesthesia plays a big role in this. I write in a wholly linear style, starting at the beginning and working through to the end, and while I'll expand in editing, I rarely re-structure the whole story or write out of order. Even when my story structures play about with time,* I write in the order that you read. That's because I can 'see' the story taking shape in my head. Most stories are sort of jelly-bean shaped, and I can't think of any that have actual corners, although some have spikes. They're mostly blue-toned in colour, although that ranges from near-lilac to midnight-blue, and I have the odd crackfic that's pink. But if I start the story in the wrong place, it just doesn't work, like trying to blow up a balloon from the wrong end. Actually, a balloon's probably the best analogy for how I feel my way through the story. If a part isn't getting filled out properly, or it's not getting filled out at all (don't ask me how I can tell. I just know) then I have to take a deep breath and start again.

I think that's why I tend not to have lots of missing scenes from my stories. If they're not in the story, it's because they're not part of the story. I might find that they're parts of other stories, which are connected to the story I'm writing, but ultimately, they're not missing.

* Like Vegas or Difficulties in Mathematics where the scenes are not shown in chronological order. They weren't written in chronological order either. They were written with much scrolling up and down the page to check I was getting it right.

What about people who take a saner approach to the art of story structure? Do you find that you have missing scenes, the fic equivalent of DVD extras? Or does everything that you write end up in the story?

[apologies for spamtasticness today, folks. Cross-posted link to heretoutopia]

Comments

[apiphile.livejournal.com]

I think mine are like badly-rolled joints, kind of lumpy in the middle, and the more subplots they have the more spikes there are, only then it's more like a nerve ganglion than a spiky thing - there are other stories leading off it and you have to be careful not to follow them and just hack them away to get the, the root, the tuber, the story you were after.

Sometimes in longer fic there are missing scenes, missing because I imagined them but didn't write them. Team B has some. Sometimes I just can't be arsed to write a linking section or a sex scene so just leap over it and it never happens, but as my approach to writing stories shorter than a novel tends to be the "DEATH TO THE PIÑATA" approach (flail wildly while swearing until something explodes overhead and rains down more story than you know what to do with) I suppose that's inevitable.

[rustydog.livejournal.com]

the "DEATH TO THE PIÑATA" approach (flail wildly while swearing until something explodes overhead and rains down more story than you know what to do with)

I love that image!

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

This year, I plan to master the subplot. It's not something I've ever been able to integrate into my stories, which is ironic considering I write for TV fandoms which are usually predicated on the idea that there is an A and B plot*. I like the idea of it being how you've described - the visual image definitely works for me.

DEATH TO THE PIÑATA should be the name of a writing book. Definitely.

*Unless it's Criminal Minds, in which case what you think is the A plot is probably the B and oh look, you missed the C plot while you were faffing around with that. That'll come back to bite you...

[rustydog.livejournal.com]

That's not because they don't flow with the story, but because they're not part of the story.

I think that gets to the definition you're using of "the story." The story as its own entity, a complete work. So if something *doesn't* help fill it out, by definition it isn't part of the story. That makes sense in my head...

I have had "missing scenes" and things I'll write down, knowing they're not part of the story I'm working on, but because they're part of the *world* that's forming in my head, I want to save them.

I know I've said before that I find your synaesthesia and linear process fascinating. I'm trying to learn as much as I can about other people's writing processes, and the challenge is to not assume that if I do it differently, I'm doing it wrong.

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

Oh yes - I ended up with Sic Transit Tempus because of that world building. Stuff would happen in a story, and I'd know it was true, but I'd have to go and find out why and how it was true, so the 'verse just kept on going.

Trying to describe the synaesthesia requires more hand-waving than I can manage here (I'm not allowed to talk about writing while near glassware) but it does help, trying to pin it down a little.

One of the things that all the personality typing stuff has been really helpful for has been understanding that I just think *differently* to most people. It doesn't make either of us wrong, it just means that I need to take care when communicating because what's good for me will be gibberish to someone else. I'm learning to take the best bits from other people's advice and integrate it into what I do well. It's always, always a process :)

[azure-chaos.livejournal.com]

I start at the beginning and write until it reaches the end. I'm not able to bounce about as I know others can. Also, if I write it then it usually goes in. That's not to say that things don't get left out. I tend to work through a fic in my head before writing it down...sort of like playing chess and thinking three moves ahead. Sometimes some of the stuff that plays out in my head doesn't end up written down because it doesn't affect the story, doesn't build it, is superfluous or simply doesn't work. But, if it gets written it's unlikely it will be removed.

I find your synaesthesia fascinating, I can't imagine what it must be like to see things that way.

nate

nate

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

Do you know the ending when you start? And do you add things on editing? I never do and sometimes do :) I'm intrigued that so many other people write in a linear way. it's kind of reassuring!

it's hard trying to get down in words something that's a sort of nebulous glow behind my eyes. I feel it as much as see it (stories are also squidgy, and some are smooth and some are furry) - all my senses get in on the act!

[rivers-bend.livejournal.com]

I also write in a wholly linear style, and never from a plan, so there is nothing 'left out' in that sense. But if I go back and read the story again, there is always something that isn't in there that informed the writing but doesn't matter to the plot so isn't on the page. as an example from my meme, in the Thelma and Louise story I wrote, Louise called Thelma but never let the phone ring every day for nearly a month after she was raped in Texas. She never told Thelma, and mostly the story is from Thelma's POV (and wow, what a mess of POV I made in that, but never mind), and so it's not there. But I still knew it.

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

there is always something that isn't in there that informed the writing but doesn't matter to the plot so isn't on the page.
Do you consider those things to be part of the story, or not? I know what you mean about unseen things informing the story - I had to know exactly what a character had been doing in the war, although only his uniform made it onto the page - but I don't think of them as being part of the story as such. It's intriguing, and those are the things that sometims spawn sequels/prequels/monster-ficverses-that-you-didn't-mean-to-write.

[greyias.livejournal.com]

Sanity is overrated.

After reading through a post over at writers_lair, I started C&P'ing writing scraps in a separate file I like to think of as a "scratchpad". Mostly it's sentences, sometimes words or phrases, occasionally a scene snippet. (Whatever window I'm typing a WIP in looks strange at the bottom.) I don't often have missing scenes, fully written and formed, but I do have a lot of "false starts". Kind of... "I think this is what I want to say, but no, that's not quite right, ENTER ENTER ENTER ENTER, this is what I was really saying... *pause, stare* No, I wasn't saying that at all!" By the time I finish the scene, there's all sorts of things down there, and I'll kindly cut and paste it into the scratchpad, so it's not deleted, but it's out of the way. So there's extras in that sense, but nothing I'd put on a DVD.

As far as structure... uh... it depends on the length? That always usually gets away with me, but if it's a short musing or one-shot, like "Penitence" it kind of congeals and coalesces around the thoughts and bits of narrative, and I have to draw the little bridges connecting them.

Something where I find myself having a plot, I treat it like a movie, in that each scene is separate and contained, and serves some purpose within the story as a whole, and they're steadily working towards the "climax". If I don't know what the "climax" is, that goal that I'm working towards, I'm usually flailing around like mad, and I think it shows. Which is probably part of the problem with the current story I'm working on, come to think of it. I've got no earthly clue what that point is. Just a series of interrelated scenes in my head.

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

That's interesting about your scratchpad. I'll cannibalise lines and phrases and plot bunnies from failed drafts, but I tend not to actually save the stuff like that. For me, it's distracting and I'm better off getting rid of it and starting over.

Instinctively, I would have said I agree with you about structure being different in short or long stories, but I found with writing "Resonance" that actually it isn't for me. All my stories that I'd consider *have* a structure (there are some little character studies that don't, really) tend to fall into three or four parts - set-up, action, [results/more action], conclusion. My brain works in threes so I think it's comfortable there, and again, it's part of the shape - the bend in the middle of the jelly bean.

Um. That one sounded better in my head. moving on.

Out of interest, do you literally 'see' the story as a movie. I ask because that's how it felt to me in 'See No Evil' - it's how I write, and I suspect it's common to writers who like to write action scenes. That you block it out in your head and write it down? Those scenes really *worked* for me, so I just wondered.

the movie analogy is a good one, I think - every scene should push the story along. Is your goal usually a character one or a plot one? I thought I had a point for my Criminal Minds WIP, but it's proved to be a plot point rather than a character one, and the story is floundering as a result. I have to know what I want the characters to have learned/experienced by the end - even if I don't know the method - or I just can't write the story.

[wildcat88.livejournal.com]

I write linearly as well. Only once have I written a scene out of order and that's because it was the crux of the story. Everything that happened before and after depended on how this scene played out. It was strange, but it worked really well.

Sometimes I know exactly where the story is going. Other times I'm along for the ride. I have a general idea of what the story is about and let it flow. For example, I'm working on an SGA story now that is supposed to be the aftermath of rescue. I'm 5000 words in and just got to the rescue. I know in general what's going to happen but no specifics. I have another one in the works that I know exactly how it will end including some dialogue even though I haven't written a word yet.

Strange, no?

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

Even if I know there's a 'crucial' scene (which most of my stories have), I tend to write in order. I actually found myself blocked in writing a series, because I knew what had to happen in the sixth story, and because it was going to hurt like hell to write, I ended up not being able to write the third one! It's interesting that so many other people write in linear order too. I had the impression that it was a weird Jades-thing ;)

By 'where it's going', is that for the characters or the plot? I'm intrigued as to whether people write with plot direction in mind - I can't, at all. If I don't know what the characters are supposed to be learning or showing, then I just can't write.

I'm very very intrigued by knowing the ending first - does that happen very much?

[donutsweeper.livejournal.com]

the more I read about how others write the more I think I'm doing it wrong.

But I do love that you have a 'nope still getting weirder' tag

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

? What do you think you're doing wrong? Or what do you think they're/we're doing that you're not?

I *have* to over-think things. It's the way my brain is wired and I can't help myself. But there's lots of great writers who just *flaps hands* write. No tricks, no deep thinky thoughts. They just do it. Whatever works for you, works. That's got to be good enough?

Heh. I kept thinking that the more I tried to explain the synaesthesia, the more sense it would make. Yeah, right.

[dune-drd.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I usually cut scenes for the same reason, but they usually do fit in some way or another, just don't make any sense in that context or are just me rambling and giving too much of the plot away.

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

That's fascinating. I very rarely cut whole scenes. Re-work them back in, yes, but normally I have enough trouble getting down what I want to say without cutting stuff out ;)

[miss-zedem.livejournal.com]

I don't know how I write. Mostly, I need an image, and everything else kind of builds around that. My dS Match fic, Frozen? Happened because I couldn't shake the image of Ray and Fraser dancing together and Fraser noticing how cold Ray's skin was. My most successful stories (ie the ones I can bear to go back and read) usually have a strong sense of 'place' - south of France, war-time London, the frozen north... If I don't have that it doesn't seem to work as well, which is why I spend as long as I do looking at photos and reading about locations.

As for 'missing scenes', I think I do have them. While my stories are complete in themselves, and mostly say what I want them to say, there are always bits and pieces that I don't show. Usually they get left out because they don't add anything to the story - there's nothing wrong with them, exactly, but they just feel like an indulgence, or like treading water. I also like to leave stories in a place where the reader can continue it how they wish - if they want to think that Fraser and Alex lived happily ever after (in Frozen), then that's fine. I didn't explicitly tell them that that's what happened, but I hopefully gave them enough clues to lead them to draw the conclusion I wanted them to. Um. If that makes sense...

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

That's interesting. I tend not to do so well off of images - it has to be the idea that comes first, usually a simple but strong one ("John grieving for Elizabeth") rather than an image. Your stories always do have that strong sense of place, so it's definitely working for you.

Like you, I like to leave my endings open, but I'll usually know when I start a scene whether it's going to push things along or not, and if it isn't, I scrap it. It maybe comes back to what I was saying upthread about the idea of "the story" - they'll be details that are part of the world that won't make it in, but for me, 'the story' is kind of a fixed, limited thing.

If that makes sense too... ;D

[crystalshard.livejournal.com]

My stories build themself a bit like yours - they flow, from start to finish, and they form into shape as they do so. My subconscious is a lot smarter than I am. I don't see them in shapes, or in colours - I see them in moods, if that makes any sense. I have a goal for my stories, and they always get there, but they can take some unexpected and twisty paths in order to do so!

Speaking of stories - I have now signed up to TARDIS Big Bang. And it's all your fault. *grin*

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

Oh yes - I can't plot for toffee, so I'd be lost without my subconscious, which always seems to know what it's doing somehow.

YAY!!! *evil enabling grin*

[apiphile.livejournal.com]

I think mine are like badly-rolled joints, kind of lumpy in the middle, and the more subplots they have the more spikes there are, only then it's more like a nerve ganglion than a spiky thing - there are other stories leading off it and you have to be careful not to follow them and just hack them away to get the, the root, the tuber, the story you were after.

Sometimes in longer fic there are missing scenes, missing because I imagined them but didn't write them. Team B has some. Sometimes I just can't be arsed to write a linking section or a sex scene so just leap over it and it never happens, but as my approach to writing stories shorter than a novel tends to be the "DEATH TO THE PIÑATA" approach (flail wildly while swearing until something explodes overhead and rains down more story than you know what to do with) I suppose that's inevitable.

[rustydog.livejournal.com]

the "DEATH TO THE PIÑATA" approach (flail wildly while swearing until something explodes overhead and rains down more story than you know what to do with)

I love that image!

[rustydog.livejournal.com]

That's not because they don't flow with the story, but because they're not part of the story.

I think that gets to the definition you're using of "the story." The story as its own entity, a complete work. So if something *doesn't* help fill it out, by definition it isn't part of the story. That makes sense in my head...

I have had "missing scenes" and things I'll write down, knowing they're not part of the story I'm working on, but because they're part of the *world* that's forming in my head, I want to save them.

I know I've said before that I find your synaesthesia and linear process fascinating. I'm trying to learn as much as I can about other people's writing processes, and the challenge is to not assume that if I do it differently, I'm doing it wrong.

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

Oh yes - I ended up with Sic Transit Tempus because of that world building. Stuff would happen in a story, and I'd know it was true, but I'd have to go and find out why and how it was true, so the 'verse just kept on going.

Trying to describe the synaesthesia requires more hand-waving than I can manage here (I'm not allowed to talk about writing while near glassware) but it does help, trying to pin it down a little.

One of the things that all the personality typing stuff has been really helpful for has been understanding that I just think *differently* to most people. It doesn't make either of us wrong, it just means that I need to take care when communicating because what's good for me will be gibberish to someone else. I'm learning to take the best bits from other people's advice and integrate it into what I do well. It's always, always a process :)

[azure-chaos.livejournal.com]

I start at the beginning and write until it reaches the end. I'm not able to bounce about as I know others can. Also, if I write it then it usually goes in. That's not to say that things don't get left out. I tend to work through a fic in my head before writing it down...sort of like playing chess and thinking three moves ahead. Sometimes some of the stuff that plays out in my head doesn't end up written down because it doesn't affect the story, doesn't build it, is superfluous or simply doesn't work. But, if it gets written it's unlikely it will be removed.

I find your synaesthesia fascinating, I can't imagine what it must be like to see things that way.

nate

nate

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

Do you know the ending when you start? And do you add things on editing? I never do and sometimes do :) I'm intrigued that so many other people write in a linear way. it's kind of reassuring!

it's hard trying to get down in words something that's a sort of nebulous glow behind my eyes. I feel it as much as see it (stories are also squidgy, and some are smooth and some are furry) - all my senses get in on the act!

[rivers-bend.livejournal.com]

I also write in a wholly linear style, and never from a plan, so there is nothing 'left out' in that sense. But if I go back and read the story again, there is always something that isn't in there that informed the writing but doesn't matter to the plot so isn't on the page. as an example from my meme, in the Thelma and Louise story I wrote, Louise called Thelma but never let the phone ring every day for nearly a month after she was raped in Texas. She never told Thelma, and mostly the story is from Thelma's POV (and wow, what a mess of POV I made in that, but never mind), and so it's not there. But I still knew it.

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

there is always something that isn't in there that informed the writing but doesn't matter to the plot so isn't on the page.
Do you consider those things to be part of the story, or not? I know what you mean about unseen things informing the story - I had to know exactly what a character had been doing in the war, although only his uniform made it onto the page - but I don't think of them as being part of the story as such. It's intriguing, and those are the things that sometims spawn sequels/prequels/monster-ficverses-that-you-didn't-mean-to-write.

[greyias.livejournal.com]

Sanity is overrated.

After reading through a post over at writers_lair, I started C&P'ing writing scraps in a separate file I like to think of as a "scratchpad". Mostly it's sentences, sometimes words or phrases, occasionally a scene snippet. (Whatever window I'm typing a WIP in looks strange at the bottom.) I don't often have missing scenes, fully written and formed, but I do have a lot of "false starts". Kind of... "I think this is what I want to say, but no, that's not quite right, ENTER ENTER ENTER ENTER, this is what I was really saying... *pause, stare* No, I wasn't saying that at all!" By the time I finish the scene, there's all sorts of things down there, and I'll kindly cut and paste it into the scratchpad, so it's not deleted, but it's out of the way. So there's extras in that sense, but nothing I'd put on a DVD.

As far as structure... uh... it depends on the length? That always usually gets away with me, but if it's a short musing or one-shot, like "Penitence" it kind of congeals and coalesces around the thoughts and bits of narrative, and I have to draw the little bridges connecting them.

Something where I find myself having a plot, I treat it like a movie, in that each scene is separate and contained, and serves some purpose within the story as a whole, and they're steadily working towards the "climax". If I don't know what the "climax" is, that goal that I'm working towards, I'm usually flailing around like mad, and I think it shows. Which is probably part of the problem with the current story I'm working on, come to think of it. I've got no earthly clue what that point is. Just a series of interrelated scenes in my head.

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

That's interesting about your scratchpad. I'll cannibalise lines and phrases and plot bunnies from failed drafts, but I tend not to actually save the stuff like that. For me, it's distracting and I'm better off getting rid of it and starting over.

Instinctively, I would have said I agree with you about structure being different in short or long stories, but I found with writing "Resonance" that actually it isn't for me. All my stories that I'd consider *have* a structure (there are some little character studies that don't, really) tend to fall into three or four parts - set-up, action, [results/more action], conclusion. My brain works in threes so I think it's comfortable there, and again, it's part of the shape - the bend in the middle of the jelly bean.

Um. That one sounded better in my head. moving on.

Out of interest, do you literally 'see' the story as a movie. I ask because that's how it felt to me in 'See No Evil' - it's how I write, and I suspect it's common to writers who like to write action scenes. That you block it out in your head and write it down? Those scenes really *worked* for me, so I just wondered.

the movie analogy is a good one, I think - every scene should push the story along. Is your goal usually a character one or a plot one? I thought I had a point for my Criminal Minds WIP, but it's proved to be a plot point rather than a character one, and the story is floundering as a result. I have to know what I want the characters to have learned/experienced by the end - even if I don't know the method - or I just can't write the story.

[wildcat88.livejournal.com]

I write linearly as well. Only once have I written a scene out of order and that's because it was the crux of the story. Everything that happened before and after depended on how this scene played out. It was strange, but it worked really well.

Sometimes I know exactly where the story is going. Other times I'm along for the ride. I have a general idea of what the story is about and let it flow. For example, I'm working on an SGA story now that is supposed to be the aftermath of rescue. I'm 5000 words in and just got to the rescue. I know in general what's going to happen but no specifics. I have another one in the works that I know exactly how it will end including some dialogue even though I haven't written a word yet.

Strange, no?

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

Even if I know there's a 'crucial' scene (which most of my stories have), I tend to write in order. I actually found myself blocked in writing a series, because I knew what had to happen in the sixth story, and because it was going to hurt like hell to write, I ended up not being able to write the third one! It's interesting that so many other people write in linear order too. I had the impression that it was a weird Jades-thing ;)

By 'where it's going', is that for the characters or the plot? I'm intrigued as to whether people write with plot direction in mind - I can't, at all. If I don't know what the characters are supposed to be learning or showing, then I just can't write.

I'm very very intrigued by knowing the ending first - does that happen very much?

[donutsweeper.livejournal.com]

the more I read about how others write the more I think I'm doing it wrong.

But I do love that you have a 'nope still getting weirder' tag

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

? What do you think you're doing wrong? Or what do you think they're/we're doing that you're not?

I *have* to over-think things. It's the way my brain is wired and I can't help myself. But there's lots of great writers who just *flaps hands* write. No tricks, no deep thinky thoughts. They just do it. Whatever works for you, works. That's got to be good enough?

Heh. I kept thinking that the more I tried to explain the synaesthesia, the more sense it would make. Yeah, right.

[dune-drd.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I usually cut scenes for the same reason, but they usually do fit in some way or another, just don't make any sense in that context or are just me rambling and giving too much of the plot away.

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

That's fascinating. I very rarely cut whole scenes. Re-work them back in, yes, but normally I have enough trouble getting down what I want to say without cutting stuff out ;)

[miss-zedem.livejournal.com]

I don't know how I write. Mostly, I need an image, and everything else kind of builds around that. My dS Match fic, Frozen? Happened because I couldn't shake the image of Ray and Fraser dancing together and Fraser noticing how cold Ray's skin was. My most successful stories (ie the ones I can bear to go back and read) usually have a strong sense of 'place' - south of France, war-time London, the frozen north... If I don't have that it doesn't seem to work as well, which is why I spend as long as I do looking at photos and reading about locations.

As for 'missing scenes', I think I do have them. While my stories are complete in themselves, and mostly say what I want them to say, there are always bits and pieces that I don't show. Usually they get left out because they don't add anything to the story - there's nothing wrong with them, exactly, but they just feel like an indulgence, or like treading water. I also like to leave stories in a place where the reader can continue it how they wish - if they want to think that Fraser and Alex lived happily ever after (in Frozen), then that's fine. I didn't explicitly tell them that that's what happened, but I hopefully gave them enough clues to lead them to draw the conclusion I wanted them to. Um. If that makes sense...

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

That's interesting. I tend not to do so well off of images - it has to be the idea that comes first, usually a simple but strong one ("John grieving for Elizabeth") rather than an image. Your stories always do have that strong sense of place, so it's definitely working for you.

Like you, I like to leave my endings open, but I'll usually know when I start a scene whether it's going to push things along or not, and if it isn't, I scrap it. It maybe comes back to what I was saying upthread about the idea of "the story" - they'll be details that are part of the world that won't make it in, but for me, 'the story' is kind of a fixed, limited thing.

If that makes sense too... ;D

[crystalshard.livejournal.com]

My stories build themself a bit like yours - they flow, from start to finish, and they form into shape as they do so. My subconscious is a lot smarter than I am. I don't see them in shapes, or in colours - I see them in moods, if that makes any sense. I have a goal for my stories, and they always get there, but they can take some unexpected and twisty paths in order to do so!

Speaking of stories - I have now signed up to TARDIS Big Bang. And it's all your fault. *grin*

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

Oh yes - I can't plot for toffee, so I'd be lost without my subconscious, which always seems to know what it's doing somehow.

YAY!!! *evil enabling grin*