November Activities 2009

[jenny b]

Our featured author for this month is the utterly fabulous Anna, aka Fantasium! Her authors page is right here.

• You must review the featured author for it to count as your monthly activity requirement.
• Post the link to your review here - you should also post it in the November review thread if you wish it to count towards your months' reviews.
• Questions in this thread are not part of the monthly requirement, but they are greatly encouraged. Also, they must have something to do with the subject of writing.

[jenny b]

This was suggested by the wonderful Kelly:

As November 1st was All Saints' Day (which is a day to remember those who have died), the drabble prompt this month is going to be remembrance. There's no shortage of fallen characters in HP, and your drabble needs to feature at least one being remembered in some way.

Rules/Guidelines

• Drabble can be between 250-800 words.
• Content should not be any higher than a 3rd-5th Years rating.
• All content that would require a warning on the MNFF Archive should be labeled.
• This thread is for responses only. If you have a question, PM me.
• Responses must be posted by November 30th, 2009.
• Please post using this format:
  
  Title: Losing You
  Word Count: 450 (This may be approximate)
  
  

  Story Text Story Text Story Text Story Text Story Text Story Text Story Text

• As with all activities within the SPEW forum, this challenge is open only to SPEW members.

[jenny b]

This has probably been done before, but I'm sure it'll be good to discuss.

In the discussion this month we're going to focus on reviewing and its effect on your writing. So basically how much your writing has changed/improved since you've started to put thought and detail into your reviews, whether reading and reviewing certain genres has propelled you to write different stories, if you tend to pick up faults in your own fics more often than you used to and so on. Feel free to talk about whatever you like; it's a pretty broad topic.

That's not too bad, is it? >.>

[Kerichi]

Thank Merlin (and Jennifer) for broad topics! Between nanowrimo and other writing, I wasn’t up to crying over a remembrance drabble this month, so I appreciate it.

Writing SPEW reviews hasn’t changed my writing, to be honest. I’ve always written a variety of pairings in different genres, and since I posted my first HP story over five years ago (on a non-moderated site where it remains proof readers will overlook a multitude of errors if they like the story, heh), I’ve strived to improve in the craft of writing.

I do feel a bit hypocritical, at times, pointing out things I’ve done in my own fics. Missing direct address commas, repetition of words (in an inadvertent, not meaningful way), using dialogue tags that retell what the dialogue clearly implied. It’s like reviewing with the snarky ghost of writing past whispering, “Yes, you would notice that, wouldn’t you?” in my ear. I have to remind myself that giving concrit isn’t saying you yourself are perfect, just that you’re growing as a writer and trying to use what you’ve learned to help others develop their craft.

That doesn’t stop me from wondering if one day I’ll get a SPEW review of an older fic highlighting errors I already know about but haven’t edited—and probably never will—because I’m too busy with current projects. And I wonder if I’ve done the same to others, and whether they nod and say to themselves like I would, “Yes, I used to do that.”

What I’ve discovered about writing in-depth, specific reviews is that there are writers’ workshop type benefits to it. You validate the need for writing to be taken seriously, and learn as much (and sometimes more, since you’re objective) from the constructive praise and criticism of other writers’ work.

[ms. leading]

My review for Between Two Points of Separation.

Questions for Anna:

Who is your favourite HP character to write and why?

Have you ever tried original fiction? If so, what genres do you prefer to write?

- Cassie

[Indigoenigma]

Cassie beat me to actually leaving a review by eight hours. >.> If only I hadn't fallen asleep.

But, here's my review for Between Two Points of Separation.

Out of a personal interest because I loved The Magnificent Malfoy:

Are we going to see you write any more stories with Jenna's Sins of the Father characters?

And now some regular questions:

What do you usually eat or drink (if anything) when you write?

Do you prefer silence or music when you're writing?

Do you tend to outline your stories and then write them or do you just write and see what direction the story ends up going in?

*squishes*

[inspirations]

Review :]

Who are your favourite authors? Is there an author or book that you feel has influenced your writing quite a bit?

-squishes-

[dory_the_fishie]

Title: Twenty-One
Word Count: 409

The marks on the wall number more than you can count. You know they are accurate, for you have meticulously added one every day for the past however many years, but you have lost precise count. Enough is how you quantify them.

As you scratch another mark into the wall today, slightly crooked but still roughly straight, you think of them.

They died today.

You were twenty-one when you were taken away. Twenty-one and an old kind of young, and you had been laughing, because it was all you could think to do. They were twenty-one when they died, and they will be twenty-one forever.

You forget how old you are now, or you don’t want to remember. You want to stay twenty-one with them, because it isn’t fair that you should grow older without them. You were supposed to do that together.

Every year today you remember their twenty-one-year-old selves, lost forever that way, frozen in time at just those twenty-one years. You remember how happy they were, despite everything, how determined they were to live their lives the way they wanted. You remember all those moments that somewhere along the way you might have forgotten. With the entire day to think, you remember everything.

You miss them, more and more each day. Today it is even more painful. Each year on this day, you think the pain could not possibly get worse, but it does, because each year on this day, you remember something else. The way he spilled his Butterbeer that one time in The Three Broomsticks, the way she had laughed, the way you had mocked him for the rest of the day. The way she fell asleep once in History of Magic, the way he had spent the whole class doodling on her arm, the way you had denied any involvement in such antics. The way you dragged them both to the top of the Astronomy Tower for that meteor shower, the way he had gazed, the way she had shed one tear that she hastily wiped away and thought you didn’t see but of course you did.

The way they loved you, and you loved them.

Tomorrow you will add another mark to the wall, and today will be gone, blended in amongst its fellows. You are determined to never let them end up that way, forgotten. You will remember them as long as you can, until you are taken away again.

i eat ham and jam and spam a lot

[coolh5000]

Title: Untitled (because I'm useless at thinking up titles and haven't got the time to spend on it now.
Word Count: 564
A/N: Ok, so tihs isn't my best...

“Teddy, are you ready?” His grandma’s voice came floating up the stairs. Teddy did his best to ignore it.

“Teddy!” Her voice was more insistent this time and getting closer.

He sighed and closed the book he was reading.

“Yes,” he replied, leaving his room to meet her on the landing.

“Teddy! Why aren’t you dressed? We’re supposed to leave in five minutes.”

“I am dressed.”

“Don’t be cheeky – you know what I mean. Where are your dress robes? I put them out on your bed this morning.”

“Then that’s where they are I suppose,” replied Teddy, shrugging.

“Honestly, Teddy, we don’t have time for this today! We’re going to be late.”

“No we’re not, because I’m not going.”

“What!”

“I don’t want to go. You can, but I’m staying here. I have homework to do.”

His grandma seemed at a loss for words.

“But…Professor McGonagall allowed you this weekend off school especially. You have to go. They were your parents – you can’t just not go to the memorial.”

“Why? It’s the same every year. We go, people make sad speeches about brave everyone was and then they come up and tell me how much I’ve grown and how much I look and act like people I never even knew!”

His voice had been gradually increasing in volume and he almost shouted the last four words.

There was a silence that seemed to last forever. Teddy couldn’t bring himself to look at her; of all the ways he had planned to tell her, this was not the scene he had imagined, but somehow, the feelings he had been bottling up for so long, had exploded in a sudden rush of emotion.

“I’m sorry,” he muttered after a few seconds, his voice hardly audible.

“I don’t understand,” she said softly. “If you’ve been feeling this way, then why didn’t you say something.”

“I didn’t know how. It all means so much to you. But I never really knew them, Grandma – I can’t feel sad about people I never met. When everyone tells the stories about wonderful they are, all I can think about is the fact that if they were so great, they’d have stuck around to be with me.”

“But, you know it wasn’t like that.”

“No I don’t. People have only told me that. I know nothing about them other than what people have told me, and how am I supposed to know who to trust or who to believe?”

His grandma gave a small shrug of her shoulders. “I can’t tell you that. It’s up to you to make up your own mind about who they were. And they might not be here, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist anymore – they still live on through you. And perhaps I can do more to show you what they were really like. But please, Teddy, come to the memorial. If not for them, for me – I need you there. I don’t think I can stand it without you."

Teddy stood for a minute, torn between his desire never to attend one of the damn events again, and his love for his grandma. But then he realised his decision was easy. He may never have known his parents but his grandma was the closest thing to a mother he had ever had and if she needed him to be there, and to remember, then he would be.

[XhayleeXblackX]

My review for Belonging to Bellatrix .

Questions:

What do you love most about Harry Potter? About fanfiction?

-Haylee