Today's Post is About Lesbian Vampires

[netgirl_y2k]

I am 200% in favour of lesbian vampires.

No. Today's post is about writing and about my bumbling, baby attempts at writing something original. The reason fitz_y asked me to talk about lesbian vampires is that when I went to visit her in Germany over the summer I woke up one morning and announced "I've got an idea for a novella about lesbian vampires". You know, as one does. And when you're in Berlin, in a heatwave, drinking a beer by the river, chatting up a group of Australian lads about this novel you're writing (still a lesbian, just wanted to know that I could...) you feel like you could write anything, you feel like you could write Crime and fucking Punishment.

The other thing I found super-inspiring about being in Germany was being able to talk to fitz_y and H about writing. Because I generally don't. Not about fanfiction, not out of a sense embarrassment, well, maybe a little out of embarrassment. A few months ago I was watching The Hobbit on DVD with a crowd of folk, and somebody mentioned fanfic, not in a condescending type way, just in a I know this exists type way, and my immediate reaction was: stare into your drink, stare into your drink, don't make eye contact with anybody. And even mentioning that you write original stuff only prompts a bunch of questions, to which nobody is interested in any answer that doesn't end with you being the next JK Rowling and all of us going to live in a house made entirely out of fifty pound notes, so why bother.

Basically, I'm not sure what my family and friends think I'm always doing on my laptop; they either think I play hell of a lot of words with friends, or watch a hell of a lot of porn.

I've always made up stories and written them down. I have a friend, actually, who's a very talented pianist, and who was accepted into a really good music academy after we left school, and he emerged after a year looking like bloody Gollum, and saying he was going to jack it in because having to do it all day every day was ruining the piano for him, it was making him hate this thing which had been a source of great joy in his life. He's in traffic management now. Anyway, aside from the traffic management thing, that's pretty much how I feel about writing.

Anyway, I came back to Scotland with this idea for a group of all female old school vampires (proper Dracula, Carmilla types) failing to negotiate life in modern day Edinburgh. I know Glasgow better, but you can just imagine vampires in Edinburgh, can't you? And it's been a source of great amusement to me to work out the mythology and build up the characters, and I've been having great fun going through sets of writing exercises writing snippets in that universe.

But the other thing I'm learning is that fanfic and original fic are two entirely different skill sets. For one thing you need a plot, and I've spent many years learning to write in the gaps in other people's plots. Not to sound arrogant, but I think I'm a pretty good fanfic writer, and if nothing else I've carved out a niche which suits me, and I feel like I could write decent enough fanfic about the world and characters that I've created -- but there's no overarching plot, nothing coherent tying it together, which was why my attempt to actually write some of it for NaNo faltered on, like, day two.

Hopefully, something will come to me someday, but even if it doesn't, and it just lives in my "snips, snails, and puppy dog tails" folder, then it's still made me happy, and like writing fanfic or playing the piano, if something makes you happy and it doesn't hurt anybody then you should do it.

Comments

[fitz_y]

Basically, I'm not sure what my family and friends think I'm always doing on my laptop; they either think I play hell of a lot of words with friends, or watch a hell of a lot of porn. LOL. Yeah, I've been struggling with the issues of not having a premade plot to fill in, too. It makes it hard.

BUT I REALLY WANT YOU TO WRITE THE LESBIAN VAMPIRES. And I want my full-time job to be the person who hounds you about getting writing done, and does bi-weekly writing group stuff with you. Netgirl, we need a (relaxed, chill, non-micro-managing) patron to just pay both of us to write and entertain them at their soirees. Then life would be nice. Anyway.

I hear you though, about not wanting to make the thing you do for fun the thing you do for work for fear you'd hate it. I went through that with music when I was a teenager, too. I thought about going to conservatory for the double bass and didn't get in, and that ended up being a good thing, I decided. Because playing the bass was what I did to relax.

♥ you so hard, girl.

[havocthecat]

BUT I REALLY WANT YOU TO WRITE THE LESBIAN VAMPIRES. And I want my full-time job to be the person who hounds you about getting writing done, and does bi-weekly writing group stuff with you. Netgirl, we need a (relaxed, chill, non-micro-managing) patron to just pay both of us to write and entertain them at their soirees. Then life would be nice. Anyway.

I am 100% behind all of this, and want to encourage all the awesome lesbian vampire stories. And you would not write them failishly, which terrifies me every time I see any lesbian vampire anything. Ask me how terrified I am about Dracula being stupid, because poor Lucy is a lesbian and in love with a very straight Mina, which means things are going to end BADLY for her. (As well as for Lady Jayne, who is a bisexual woman on the show.)

Hey, who else is writing lesbian vampire stuff? Technically, I'm writing poly vampires, but the main emotional connection is between two women. I'm always a lot more flexible about that sort of thing than your bog-standard, old school, super traditional femslasher, I think. (Not that I'm bitter in the least, not at all.)

I will say, the reason I don't cook professionally, despite enjoying it and being very good at it, is because I don't want to stop enjoying it.

ANYWAY. I will happily talk through lesbian vampire fic with either of you and would love to help out in whatever way I can, because you two are some of the people I would trust to write non-faily original lesbian vampires.

[netgirl_y2k]

Oh God, I can't cope with Dracula, I really can't. Because I actually thought re-imagining the character of Lucy Westenra as a lesbian was inspired, but I'm also hyper aware of all the ways it could, and probably will go horribly wrong.

Also, I would read the hell out of poly vampires :-)

[havocthecat]

Every time I watch it, I start kicking the hell out of myself because it's Dracula, Lucy is 99.99999% chance guaranteed to die painfully (twice), and it's clearly not going good places. Especially since Mina found out Lucy was in love with her and asked her to leave.

Yay! I need to remember that people will actually read my writing posts and talk about my characters.

[netgirl_y2k]

I'm not not writing the lesbian vampires, I'm just going to let it percolate and stop trying to force it. ravurian made an interesting suggesting about treating it more like a fandom project, and writing fic and crossovers with my characters as though they were from an established canon, which I think might be a fun and motivational way to come at it.

Bear in mind that I'm not at all musical, so I've just googled the double bass... that's an instrument, isn't it? Talk about phallic symbolism. lol.

♥ you too.

[fitz_y]

I think you're right that letting things percolate is sometimes best. Chuck Wendig says that sometimes it's just not the right time for certain project. ::nods sagely:: He is the writing guru after all. That's how I feel about my pirates & werewolf hunters historical 3-part series set in the 1700s. It will happen someday, just not now. I'm glad to hear that you haven't given it up.


Ravurian made an interesting suggesting about treating it more like a fandom project, and writing fic and crossovers with my characters as though they were from an established canon, which I think might be a fun and motivational way to come at it. Yes! This is what I'm trying to do with the latest queer romance I'm working on. I keep bouncing back and forth between original fiction to work on. And finally I settled on a piece that I have 30k of an Inception AU for. I started it about 3 years back and it never went anywhere because I fell out of Inception writing. It doesn't look anything like Inception, but it looks a lot like Hitchcock, so I'm trying to rewrite it as an original fic not so blatantly cribbed from Hitchcock. Someone, I think it was junkshop disco, suggested writing lots of fanfiction for your fiction to help yourself figure your characters out, like a lot of random scenes and backstory and just whatever comes into your head. It doesn't have to fit in THE PLOT. This might also be a good way to let the characters take shape. I find it helps.

And perhaps this summer we could get back to our writing group? There's no way it can happen in the spring, unfortunately, because of work grinding me down with the force of 10 tons of bricks.

[kmo]

i'm wholehartedly 1000% supportive of your Lesbian Vampire stories in whatever form they choose to take. novel, novella, short stories, etc. and i applaud you for even taking baby steps toward writing original stuff. i have lots of ideas, even whole plots in my head (mine tend more toward Lesbian Pirates than Lesbian Vampires) but i have never ever tried to set it all down. i always say, "oh next year, I'll do nano" and it never happens. maybe this summer, now that the dissertation is done.

i also live in the fandom closet. i'm actually ok with that. i'm kind of a firm believer in only sharing parts of myself with the people who will appreciate them. and sure, maybe every one i know is a closet fanfiction writer (which would be hilarious) but i'd rather not have people shit on or be dismissive of what i do for fun.

[havocthecat]

Lesbian pirates are just as awesome and amazing as lesbian vampires, and I would love if you wrote anything about them. Or just talked about what you wanted to write. I'm easy that way.

[kmo]

you're very sweet! thank you for the encouragement. basically think Pirates of the Caribbean except new and improved with lesbians. also more historically accurate. ;)

[havocthecat]

That story sounds like awesome personified.

[netgirl_y2k]

It is baby steps, like newborn fawn baby steps. But, still. I'm happy because I always felt bizarrely guilty for not having any original writing projects, even though I do consider myself a writer, even though putting it like that sounds wanky as hell...

Ooh, lesbian pirates! Good luck if you ever do decide to set it down somewhere!

i'm kind of a firm believer in only sharing parts of myself with the people who will appreciate them.

That's a really smart way of approaching life, and makes me feel better about the amount of compartmentalisation I do.

[kmo]

even though I do consider myself a writer, even though putting it like that sounds wanky as hell.

the fact that you feel this way shows that you are not the pretentious asshole type of writer you fear becoming.

thank you! well, i did realize after you did your "happy lesbians" post that my orig fic had lesbian angst as part of one character's tragic backstory. i'm a cliche. :P

[ravurian]

Eh. You write, therefore you're a writer. Also: a storyteller, a literary theorist, an editor, reviewer and critic. So there.

[cleo]

I wholeheartedly support your endeavors.

[netgirl_y2k]

Yay! Especially as I'm not always sure that I support my endeavours.

[ravurian]

Eh, maybe you're looking at the original stuff as too distinct from the fannish stuff*. Why don't you try writing fanfic of your own world? Or a crossover with something fannish, approaching your characters as if they're from an established canon. What I think you'll find is that given enough exercise, they'll grow their own story quite by accident, and quite by themselves. You just have to take them out and about and you'll trip over something. The trick is, I think, in setting up a situation and then breaking it. You're still setting it up.

*Not something I believe I've said before. Interesting.

[netgirl_y2k]

That is a really interesting and smart way of looking at it. I think I'm going to try that. Thanks.

[st_aurafina]

I also write lesbian vampires! In modern-day Melbourne! It is an extremely satisfying thing to do.

And I'm like you - it's really hard to tell anyone IRL about writing or fandom or anything, because there's (especially in my family) a constant pressure to monetise your hobbies. And honestly, even though I could happily live in a castle made of fifty pound notes, I'm realistic enough to know that's not going to happen without a whole lot of time and effort and I'd rather keep writing my own porn and stashing it under the bed.

Oh, god, the last episode of Dracula killed me. Poor, poor, poor Lucy. My heart was breaking for her.

[havocthecat]

I also write lesbian vampires! In modern-day Melbourne! It is an extremely satisfying thing to do.

Do you happen to have this fiction posted anywhere?

[st_aurafina]

Yeeeeees, but it's a NaNo project, so fair warning that it's rough as guts. (And in this draft, the lesbians aren't as front and centre as I'd like them to be, though pretty much every character is queer.)

This is the tag-set for it: The Bearbrass Inmate. You're on the access list, but there's no obligation to read or comment or anything. I just needed an audience to make me keep hitting wordcount.

[havocthecat]

I appreciate the warning, honestly! You should see my first draft of space vampires. It's TERRIBLY rough, with vast chunks missing that I still need to fill in, and a possession plot where I couldn't actually figure out how the characters were possessed until just recently, partway into draft two.

Elle's not-quite-girlfriend Naomi gets possessed by a space telepath, you see, and Elle has to somehow save her (and Naomi's boyfriend too) without revealing to everyone that they're vampires. You wouldn't believe the ridiculous rationalization I came up with for telepaths.

[netgirl_y2k]

Great minds think alike, yay!

Poor, poor Lucy. I was unconvinced when I heard of the casting of Katie McGrath as Lucy Westerna, but the choice to reimagine Lucy as a lesbian was inspired, I thought, and Katie has been doing all the wistful pining and heartbreak so well. I'd actually be happy if we could have Lucy bitten, dispose of Grayson, and carry on with Lucy as the vampire fixated on Mina.