Progress Report – March 2012

March 2012 was productive.

March 2012 Posted Works

I began the month by answering a prompt on Ad Astra about seasons. I had thought a bit about all four seasons but I was stuck a little on spring and autumn. But I liked winter, so I posted A Hazy Shade, which is a reference to the old Simon and Garfunkel song,  A Hazy Shade of Winter. That one will go in context at some point. I also added a story about the summer, called And the Livin’ is Easy. That, too, will get some context.

I also started to post A Long, Long Time Ago on Ad Astra. This is really the start of the Times of the HG Wells series, although I had also written a prequel, First Born, which I posted on Ad Astra, Trek BBS and Trek United. On the former two forae, I entered it into their monthly challenges. It did not win either challenge, but did receive some votes. Barking up the Muse Tree | Janet Gershen-Siegel | jespah | Quill | March 2012

Furthermore, I finished Reversal on Trek BBS and also spooled out Intolerance. Reversal and Intolerance have both gotten some very nice comments there, and a lot of views.

More Postings

The same has happened on Fanfiction.net, e. g. I’ve finished Reversal and am beginning Intolerance there. As on Trek BBS, these are the T-rated versions of the stories.

I also created responses to monthly challenges and posted them. These stories are A Kind of Blue (for Ad Astra’s Bring the Sunshine challenge) and The Black Widow (for the Trek BBS What if …? challenge). As is perhaps obvious, the two works took me in rather dissimilar directions.

Furthermore, I joined the Star Trek Logs forum and began adding fan fiction almost immediately. The reception has been good so far. I have added Voracious, Onions, Letters from Home, Paving Stones Made from Good Intentions, The Light , Waiting, There’s Something About Hoshi and Reversal (in progress) this month.

WIP Corner

In addition, I continue to draft the E2 stories. I am in the midst of the third book, and there should be four. It’s threatening to become about the same size as the Wells series. I have had a lot to say, and the characters have taken me in a lot of unexpected directions, for which I am grateful. So I am now beginning to circle back to some of the initial points that I had wanted to cover. But those chapters are rather long, and take a lot of time to write.

Prep Work

Prep work consisted of creating a bowdlerized version of Together and an HTML-coded version of Ohio.

This Month’s Productivity Killers

Looking for work continues to be both a boon to my writing (no real work distractions) and a hindrance (being home all day, I hear every little noise, plus of course I have to look for a job).

I also switched to Internet Explorer 9. While that fixed problems I was having with Flash and Java, it created other problems. So now I can no longer post in the Ad Astra archive, or put reviews there, or respond to reviews. Hence I use Chrome whenever I go to the Ad Astra archive. This eats up time.

Furthermore, my parents visited for a few days, in order to watch my husband and me run the first 5K of the season. Fun but of course, there isn’t a lot of computer time when we’ve got company.

More Distractions

Joining a different forum meant more time spent posting stories (and posting so as to get to know the other people on that board) rather than creating. Plus I overhauled my website a bit in order to better handle links to sites where my work is posted. However, I believe that the changes I’ve made in the website have made it easier to work on when I join more forums. One thing I have to remember is that not every story needs to be posted everywhere.

Posted by jespah

Shuttlepod pilot, fan fiction writer, sentient marsupial canid.