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lilfluffIt's been a touch over a year since my last post here and this was not the post I wanted to be making.
I dabbled a bit with short bits of fanfic in the early 2000s, not full stories but brief scenes. Sadly (or not, I'm not, this would have been very early and rough work) I don't believe any of those handful of scenes are still around. I've changed computers more than once and the forums where the work showed up have evaporated. Still, I started my first more than a single scene fanfic back at the tail end of 2009 with The Unquiet Past, a Terinu fanfic that I'd still like to finish someday. I posted two parts, then sadly things pulled me away from writing. Mostly during that time my creative writing energy went into RP forums. I had a couple of characters for Mars Academy and a couple on the old MZDM forums. Which is maybe in the same general neighborhood as writing prose but not quite.
The big change happened in June of 2011 when I happened upon Ravenswept's 30 Days of Flash Fiction challenge. This was a set of thirty prompts with a goal of writing 250 words +/- 50 to each. Prompts such as, "write a scene with a drunk mythological creature," (which also involved mythological figures playing cards) or "Write the final scene of a romance novel, Never Been Caught." I managed an entry for all thirty prompts, with some of them going on to result in later works. Three involved a character I'd created for a super hero online RP that never went forward, Tanya AKA Sparkler AKA Circuit Breaker having been kidnapped by a group of mutants while on a school trip when they realized she was also a mutant and who never wanted to be a villain. Day 20's "Write a scene starting with: I hate you; I just want you to know that." resulted in a prequel scene to The Unquiet Past. Day 27 "Trapped" was the first of multiple flash pieces involving Nyalla the catgirl who started not as an RP character but as an example character in a discussion about non-human races in RPGs. Another entry later provided a main character for my first go at NaNoWriMo.
Ravenswept's 30 Days of Flash Fic was soon followed by what I referred to as 30 Days of Flash Fic: Second Semester, a list of thirty prompts put together byaldersprig and kc_obrien. Lyn (of the username Aldersprig) commented on many of the entries from both lists, the comments from her and others gave me a taste of that thrill of seeing others enjoy something you've written. And in the years since then when I'd shared things I'd written Lyn often gave encouragement and advice. I also found myself eagerly reading when she posted something new whether simple life update blog posts or fiction. When Lyn did a followup to Addergoole, Addergoole Year Nine, I had the chance to introduce a character into the story. I even ended up writing a crossover fic that saw Cody ending up in one of Lyn's other settings. And a few years back, the year I hit 50K words in NaNoWriMo Lyn both offered encouragement during the initial world building and then as the word count progressed as well as providing a sounding board a few times when I found myself with some questions regarding life for a high school girl.
After that NaNo success I found myself later with an idea in my head that I have referred to as The Drunk Muse story, as after the idea came to me I asked my muse if it was drunk and did it maybe need to rest. If I'd wondered how the idea would be received, well Lyn said she wanted to read it. I even made a start of it for NaNoWriMo 2019. I'd hoped for that to be a restart to writing as I'd stalled out in late 2017. Unfortunately November 2019 was not kind to my writing attempts and I remained stalled. As NaNoWriMo 2021 approaches this was again one of the story ideas I considered picking up and doing.
But, f I write my Drunk Muse story I'll no longer be able to share it with the one who expressed the most interest in seeing it. As most publicly shared in A Last Post Lyn passed away last Wednesday. While I'd worried about the time she was spending in the hospital this year I never truly believed this would happen. I kept thinking, "One of these days when the pandemic is just a memory and my debts are paid down, I'll fly out to the northeast for a convention and while I'm there I'll visit my favorite Aunt and find a way to upstate New York and visit Lyn and her husband." I commented earlier today on the fediverse that for the past week this just hasn't felt real accept for when it has felt all too real. I'll read something and think, "I should send a link to Lyn, she'd like this," and then I remember.
The best way I can see to honor her memory is to try and keep encouraging each other as we seek to create. And as we are painfully reminded at times, let those who are important to you know that for we don't know when it will be too late.
If any of Lyn's family should read this, my prayers and thoughts are with you.
(The subject line comes from my fediverse profile summary tagline, La Malgranda Feneko. I've been far more active there than Dreamwidth or twitter recently. It's in Esperanto which I've been studying on Duolingo this past year)
I dabbled a bit with short bits of fanfic in the early 2000s, not full stories but brief scenes. Sadly (or not, I'm not, this would have been very early and rough work) I don't believe any of those handful of scenes are still around. I've changed computers more than once and the forums where the work showed up have evaporated. Still, I started my first more than a single scene fanfic back at the tail end of 2009 with The Unquiet Past, a Terinu fanfic that I'd still like to finish someday. I posted two parts, then sadly things pulled me away from writing. Mostly during that time my creative writing energy went into RP forums. I had a couple of characters for Mars Academy and a couple on the old MZDM forums. Which is maybe in the same general neighborhood as writing prose but not quite.
The big change happened in June of 2011 when I happened upon Ravenswept's 30 Days of Flash Fiction challenge. This was a set of thirty prompts with a goal of writing 250 words +/- 50 to each. Prompts such as, "write a scene with a drunk mythological creature," (which also involved mythological figures playing cards) or "Write the final scene of a romance novel, Never Been Caught." I managed an entry for all thirty prompts, with some of them going on to result in later works. Three involved a character I'd created for a super hero online RP that never went forward, Tanya AKA Sparkler AKA Circuit Breaker having been kidnapped by a group of mutants while on a school trip when they realized she was also a mutant and who never wanted to be a villain. Day 20's "Write a scene starting with: I hate you; I just want you to know that." resulted in a prequel scene to The Unquiet Past. Day 27 "Trapped" was the first of multiple flash pieces involving Nyalla the catgirl who started not as an RP character but as an example character in a discussion about non-human races in RPGs. Another entry later provided a main character for my first go at NaNoWriMo.
Ravenswept's 30 Days of Flash Fic was soon followed by what I referred to as 30 Days of Flash Fic: Second Semester, a list of thirty prompts put together by
aldersprig and kc_obrien. Lyn (of the username Aldersprig) commented on many of the entries from both lists, the comments from her and others gave me a taste of that thrill of seeing others enjoy something you've written. And in the years since then when I'd shared things I'd written Lyn often gave encouragement and advice. I also found myself eagerly reading when she posted something new whether simple life update blog posts or fiction. When Lyn did a followup to Addergoole, Addergoole Year Nine, I had the chance to introduce a character into the story. I even ended up writing a crossover fic that saw Cody ending up in one of Lyn's other settings. And a few years back, the year I hit 50K words in NaNoWriMo Lyn both offered encouragement during the initial world building and then as the word count progressed as well as providing a sounding board a few times when I found myself with some questions regarding life for a high school girl.After that NaNo success I found myself later with an idea in my head that I have referred to as The Drunk Muse story, as after the idea came to me I asked my muse if it was drunk and did it maybe need to rest. If I'd wondered how the idea would be received, well Lyn said she wanted to read it. I even made a start of it for NaNoWriMo 2019. I'd hoped for that to be a restart to writing as I'd stalled out in late 2017. Unfortunately November 2019 was not kind to my writing attempts and I remained stalled. As NaNoWriMo 2021 approaches this was again one of the story ideas I considered picking up and doing.
But, f I write my Drunk Muse story I'll no longer be able to share it with the one who expressed the most interest in seeing it. As most publicly shared in A Last Post Lyn passed away last Wednesday. While I'd worried about the time she was spending in the hospital this year I never truly believed this would happen. I kept thinking, "One of these days when the pandemic is just a memory and my debts are paid down, I'll fly out to the northeast for a convention and while I'm there I'll visit my favorite Aunt and find a way to upstate New York and visit Lyn and her husband." I commented earlier today on the fediverse that for the past week this just hasn't felt real accept for when it has felt all too real. I'll read something and think, "I should send a link to Lyn, she'd like this," and then I remember.
The best way I can see to honor her memory is to try and keep encouraging each other as we seek to create. And as we are painfully reminded at times, let those who are important to you know that for we don't know when it will be too late.
If any of Lyn's family should read this, my prayers and thoughts are with you.
(The subject line comes from my fediverse profile summary tagline, La Malgranda Feneko. I've been far more active there than Dreamwidth or twitter recently. It's in Esperanto which I've been studying on Duolingo this past year)
