On Writing Fluff

Wow, it’s been a while. I know, I’ve really dropped the ball on the regular updates to this blog so far – in fact, on having updates at all – and my own tendency to constantly switch my focus between different projects has thrown a spanner into the works, as I knew it would before too long. But I also have another theory as to why I’ve been reluctant to update this blog: I’ve been setting the bar for myself too high. Lately, at least, I’ve been trying to make each post absolutely meaningful and worthwhile on all levels – either saying something insightful about writing; containing a lot of info about, or a new instalment of, the story; or doing a kind of review-slash-informational-piece about someone else’s work for Recommendation Tuesday. And I figured it was better to update the blog less frequently with more meaningful posts than to scrape the bottom of the barrel for interesting content.

Recommendation Tuesday: TPB AFK

This is one of those Tuesdays I mentioned where I will recommend something that's not-so-directly linked to The Neverland as a project, but has themes and subject matter in common. Is it still awesome? Oh yes.

If you're an Internet user, you may well have heard of The Pirate Bay, one of the biggest and most notorious sites for pirated downloads. But have you heard of the documentary that tells the story of the users behind The Pirate Bay, their beliefs about freedom of information which led them to create the site, and their recent court battle against the Swedish government?

Chapter One | The Darling House | 11:47 PM

Author's Notes: I tried SO hard to get this post up on time. I really did. I sat for hours yesterday with a blank document open and couldn't think of the right words to start off. I stayed up until 1 in the morning trying to write something that didn't sound godawful. I managed a couple of paragraphs before giving up. Then today, I went to visit a friend who lives in another county. On the train journey there I opened up the Notes on my iPod and immediately knew how the next bit should go. On the way back not only did I finish the post but I started planning out character arcs and suddenly a whole load of ideas came together. I won't spend forever talking about them here, but I am super stoked. Clearly what I need to do is just write every word of my novel whilst riding around on English trains x3
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That night, Wendy lay awake for an hour after her parents had gone to bed, until she was sure that they must be asleep. She crept out into the corridor and strained her ears for the murmur of her parents’ voices, but all she could hear were the sounds of deep breathing and John’s light snores coming from the bedroom he and Michael shared. Perfect. 

A Little Too Caught Up in Research

This is a question for writers as well as for anyone who’s had to do in-depth research on an obscure topic, perhaps for work or school: Have you ever got so caught up in researching your subject that you forget most people aren’t experts on, say, global warming disaster theories or foreign policy in Tang Dynasty China? It happened to me the day before yesterday. I was with a group of friends, hanging out at someone’s house, and I got up to go to the loo. When I came back, the topic had somehow turned to the Internet in the early 90s and one girl remarked that at that time, not that many people in America used the Internet.

Pretty much all of my research for this fic has pointed towards that definitely not being the case! Certainly amongst such users that were online in the early 90s, America had the biggest demographic by far. In true online forums fashion, I chimed in on a discussion in progress having only heard the most recent comment. “But there were quite a few people on BBSes.”