Writing Exercise #14

I technically wrote this last week, but, as is typical for the exercises, it has remained untouched since then (even though there are a couple spots with awkward wording and it's kind of killing me not to fix them). The reader response to this little piece was quite overwhelming, considering I wrote it in about thirty minutes and it has the aforementioned spots of awkward wording, heh.

Prompt: Vertical Horizon's "Consolation"
Fandom: Once Upon a Time
Character(s): Emma Swan, Captain Hook

Set after Season 3, Episode 6: "Ariel"

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Let's just sit a while and watch the cars go by,Maybe save the talking for another time.I just want make it to a better day.I wonder where they go to make it all okay.

 

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Alone time, Emma needed some alone time. She needed to sit for five freakin' minutes and just breathe. Just breathe and settle and calm down and just … she didn't even know. Just five minutes, all she needed was five minutes on her own.

After they set up camp, she slipped off under the guise of finding fresh drinking water. She heard … someone calling her name, but she didn't look back. When she felt she was far enough away, she stopped walking and sat down at the base of a tree, her feet flat on the ground and her knees in the air. For the first time, she noticed that her breathing was ragged. Calm down, she needed to calm down. She needed to breathe.

Echo Cave, her ass. That damn thing was torture. One emotional gut-punch after another. So, to recap: a pirate was falling in love with her, because yeah, that was what she needed right now. Her father couldn't leave this godforsaken island, because right, why should her family be complete? She wished the father of her son was dead, because sure, why should Henry have a complete family, either? Her mother wanted another baby …

Her breathing grew even more ragged.

She knew what happened when parents had another baby. She'd had her world ripped out from under her once already when parents had another baby, and she hated that her mother's confession had turned her back into that scared and confused three-year-old who didn't understand why the only parents she'd ever known were giving her back.

It was an utterly childish response, she knew. One kid doesn't replace another. And she knew she wasn't easy to get to know. She was trying, though … trying so hard to let them in, but she didn't know how to make them understand that twenty-eight years of pain and hurt and anger doesn't go away overnight. She needed time, time to learn to trust and learn to love and learn to be a daughter. She wasn't progressing fast enough for them, she guessed, because if she was, maybe her mother wouldn't feel this way.

But damn it all to hell, she was trying. And it wasn't enough and why the hell couldn't she just be someone's one and only for once in her life? Why the hell couldn't ...

A sound in the jungle caught her attention, a rustle of leaves. She shot to her feet and unsheathed her sword in one swift motion to face none other than Captain Hook himself. "Oh, it's you," she said as she dropped the sword, her voice a low monotone.

"Don't sound so happy to see me, love," he replied, giving her a light smirk.

"Not in the mood, if you couldn't tell." Emma sat back down against the tree and swallowed a groan when he sat at the base of the trunk as well, not exactly next to her but still within her line of sight. "Really not in the mood."

He tensed for the briefest of moments before letting out a sigh so soft that she at first thought it was the wind. "If you want me to leave you on your own, by all means tell me, and I shall."

Though she desperately wanted to tell him to go away, she couldn't seem to make the words come. Instead, she didn't say anything, choosing to stare straight ahead while running everything over and over in her head. Her stomach knotted as she fought the tears that were threatening to spill over.

Throughout it all, Hook didn't say a word. She could feel his eyes on her, feel him watching her every ragged breath, but he didn't say anything, for which she was absurdly grateful.

Eventually she managed to calm herself down, physically. Emotionally was another story. Her mother's words reverberated in her head, mingling with memories of love and loss and a little girl holding a small suitcase that contained everything she owned in the world. A little girl being shuffled from group home to foster family to group home to foster family, never once mattering to anyone she met. A teenager stupidly believing her first love, believing his tales of love and home and happiness. A teenager giving up her child because she couldn't even take care of herself, never mind a baby. A grown woman finally finding her place in this world in a little town in Maine, fighting tooth and nail for what was hers.

A grown woman finding her parents. A grown woman now feeling like she was losing her parents, now feeling like that little girl with the suitcase all over again.

Pan had threatened to really make her an orphan. Was this the first step?

"She's right, you know," she said after far more than the five minutes she'd originally wanted. She'd almost expected Hook to have left but he hadn't. Surprisingly, he'd stayed beside her through the silence. "I can't give her what she wants. What she deserves. I'm not eight years old anymore and I don't need a mommy and a daddy. I get it. I just … wish I knew what it was about me that I'm never enough."

"Love–"

"No, really. I wasn't enough for any one of the families I lived with growing up. I wasn't enough for Neal. And now I'm not enough for my own mother. Just once, I'd like be enough for someone."

"You're enough for your lad," Hook pointed out gently. "And you're enough for me."

The words made her heart skip a beat. It wasn't a line; she could see the sincerity in his eyes.

"I'm not going to, as Neal so eloquently put it, 'fight for you,'" he assured her. "I'm simply telling you a truth. You, Emma Swan, are enough for someone." She swallowed hard and blinked back the tears that were pricking her eyes. Before she could say a word, he continued, "I wish she hadn't had to admit that in front of you."

"You and me both," she muttered.

He gave her a small smile. After a moment, he pulled his flask from his coat pocket and handed it over to her. "As you once pointed out, rum is indeed my solution to everything, so drink up, love."

She accepted the flask and took a nice long gulp. She'd never cared for rum previously, but Hook's brand of rum was smooth, sweet, and held hints of a spice that she couldn't quite place. It was also pretty much lethal in terms of proof, which was quite the added bonus tonight.

When she handed the flask back to him, he gave her a teasing pout. "That's all? I was hoping to get you drunk tonight."

"Don't push your luck, pirate," she shot back, hiding the small smile on her lips at his teasing.

After a moment, he said, "You do realize that they're going to be looking for us soon."
She shrugged. Let them come. "Let's just sit a while, all right?"

"As you wish," he replied, leaning his head back against the tree.

That time, she couldn't hide her smile. She wasn't okay, not by a long shot, but she was surprised to find that a little bit of consolation from a pirate was not entirely unwelcome.

Writing Exercise #13

I have really missed doing the exercises, so I'm going to try to get back into them again. I make no promises, however. This one came about mostly because a reviewer on my previous exercise at ff.net told me I should post more of them.

Prompt: Golden State's "All Roads Lead Home"
Fandom: Once Upon a Time
Character(s): Emma Swan, Snow White, Prince Charming

Set after Season 2, Episode 22: "And Straight On 'Til Morning"

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Your blood, your fire

Your kiss goodnight,

Your words and touch,

They might be mine.

 

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She'd called them Mom and Dad.

In the bleakest of moments, Emma Swan had called her parents Mom and Dad. In that moment, she hadn't wanted David and Mary Margaret. She hadn't even wanted Prince Charming and Snow White. In that moment, like a scared little girl, she had wanted – aw, hell, if she was being honest with herself, needed – Mom and Dad.

She'd opened a door that could never be closed. She'd let them behind her wall completely, let them hold her and try to comfort her as best they could. And if she was going to die, standing there with her parents' arms wrapped around her was how she wanted to go.

But, of course, they hadn't died. They hadn't died because she and Regina had accomplished the impossible. Emma had tapped into something within her that she didn't even understand and focused, like Gold had taught her, on saving her family.

And she had. With Regina's help, she'd saved her family. She'd saved everyone. For a second goddamned time.

But all the damn power she had wasn't enough to save Henry from the clutches of two people who … hell, Emma didn't even know what their deal was. Honestly, she didn't give a damn. All she wanted was her kid back.

So now here they were, Emma and her parents, their archenemy, a devilish imp, and a pirate captain with a hook for a hand, all headed to Neverland to rescue the one kid who connected them all.

A rescue mission, however, was still a long way off. Hook said it could take days to get to the island. Days! They didn't have days. Henry might not have days. She kept telling herself that it was good that they'd taken him. Good because if they'd wanted him dead, they wouldn't have taken him first. No, they wanted him for something, and whatever that something was, they wanted him alive.

That was good. Much better than the alternative, at any rate.

Not that, in the end, any of that mattered. She wanted her kid back, and she wanted her kid back safely. She just wanted to hold Henry in her arms, the same way her parents had held her back in the mines.

None of that could happen until they got him back, though, and it was hard to feel like she was doing something to help him when all she could do at the moment was sit on the deck of the Jolly Roger and stare out into the night.

She was so lost in thought that she didn't hear the two sets of soft footsteps approaching her. She gasped when a gentle hand slid onto her shoulder. Startled, she looked up to find both her parents crouching beside her. She reached up to pat her mother's hand on her shoulder before returning her attention to the Neverland night.

Without a single word, her parents took seats next to her against the rail, her mother on the left and her father on the right. For a long moment, they just sat there on the deck, Emma watching the sky and her parents watching Emma.

And then David tentatively wrapped his arm around her shoulders and whispered, “We'll find him, Emma. This family always finds each other.”

With that, the dam broke. Tears welled in Emma's eyes, and when she felt her father tighten his grip, her careful resolve crumbled. Just like in the mines, her walls were gone, and all she wanted was Mom and Dad.

Snow and Charming reacted in an instant, Snow gripping her hand and squeezing and Charming holding her tighter. “Let it out, sweetheart,” Snow whispered.

The pet name was ultimately too much, and Emma finally let go, crying tears she'd needed to cry for twenty-nine years. Tears for Henry and Neal. Tears of longing and despair and injustice. Tears for the love lost and time stolen. Snow White was born to be a mother. Prince Charming was born to be a father. These people would have been fantastic parents, and they should have been hers.

Their blood ran through her veins. She had their spirit and their fight. As Gold had once said, she had her mother's chin and her father's tact. At the time, she'd been a little embarrassed, but now … now she was damn proud of it.

Stirring somewhere inside her was the Emma Swan who'd first come to Storybrooke, the Emma who wouldn't have been caught dead crying in anyone's arms, let alone David Nolan's and Mary Margaret Blanchard's. But after everything she'd been through, Emma needed her parents She needed their comfort, needed their help to not give up, to not surrender. She needed their optimism and she needed to hear them say that everything would work out all right in the end.

And that was exactly what Snow was whispering now, that they would find Henry. That everything would be okay.

Eventually the tears began to dry up but it wasn't until Emma shifted in her parents' arms that they let her go. No one said a word, but Snow gave her a little smile, drying Emma's wet cheeks with her thumb the way she had done in the nursery. David pressed another kiss to the side of her head, and once again, Emma closed her eyes against it for a brief moment, allowing her father's comfort to sink in.

“We will find him, Emma,” he said, trying not to sound surprised when Emma snuggled closer and rested her head on his shoulder. He once again wrapped his arm around her and gently ran his hand up and down her upper arm. “We'll find him, and then we'll take him home.”

A now thoroughly exhausted Emma could only nod. The night was still now except for the lapping of the waves against the hull of the Roger. After a few minutes, David shifted position, taking Emma with him so they were leaning more comfortably against the rail of the ship. Emma reached for her mother's hand, gripped it tightly in her own, and allowed her eyes to close as both her parents soothed her.

In that moment, she realized that after a very long, trying, and lonely road, she, too, had finally come home.

Writing Exercise #12

I'm back with a writing exercise! In the intervening months, I have been writing constantly, though nearly all of it is fanfic. As is this exercise, by the way, so let's get to it!

Prompt: Goo Goo Dolls' "Let Love In"
Fandom: Once Upon a Time
Character(s): Snow White, Emma Swan

Set after Season 2, Episode 3: "Lady of the Lake"

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The only way to feel again is let love in.

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Snow White should have been able to tell that her daughter was nearing a breaking point, but she hadn't. She'd been so wrapped up in her own emotion, standing in the nursery where she should have spent years with her baby, that her grown-up baby's tension hadn't registered with her. She'd been so lost in the maybes and what ifs and what should have beens that she hadn't seen how hard Emma was fighting against her own barrage of maybes and what ifs and what should have beens.

They should have had so much. They should have had love and time and little-kid cuddles and teenage snits. They should have had everything, and Snow had missed it all. Emma's first words, first steps, first haircut, first Christmas, first everything. Her precious baby girl had grown up in the blink of an eye, and she'd grown up so utterly alone.

Emma was angry, and quite frankly, Snow couldn't blame her. Snow was angry, too. Angry with Regina for casting that horrible curse, angry with the world for what it took from her. But Emma's anger … that hurt the most because Emma's anger was directed at Snow.

Emma could have the subtlety of a Mack truck when she wanted. She hadn't come right out and said that she was angry, but she'd done everything but. She'd argued and disobeyed and outright defied instruction and tried, in every single possible way she could, to let Snow that she did not need her.

The only thing was that she did need her, whether she wanted to admit it or not. Snow knew Emma was a survivor, and she knew she'd get the hang of the Enchanted Forest way of life in her own time, but underneath all her bluster, Emma Swan was a hurt little girl who was lashing out at the only person she could. A hurt little girl who wanted to be comforted but didn't want to want to be comforted and didn't know how to ask for it even if she did.

All she had to do was wait for Emma to get it all out of her system. Once the righteous anger was gone, Emma would be able to feel what she wanted – and desperately needed – to feel. But not until then.

One thing having to survive on her own had taught her was patience, so Snow had decided to settle in for the wait.

And yet, the moment Emma let her wall down still took her by surprise. Emma admitted being angry and not understanding and then … then her baby girl admitted she wasn't used to someone putting her first, and Snow could not stop herself from stepping over and wrapping her in a hug.

And when Emma squeezed back, for the first time in years, everything felt right.

Emma had taken the first step. She'd let Snow in. And Snow was determined not to let her baby girl down again.

Now she sat against the trunk of a tree at the edge of their campsite on watch. Emma was supposed to be on watch, too, but she'd nodded off a little while ago and Snow hadn't had the heart to wake her. And when Emma had snuggled into her side, unconsciously seeking warmth and comfort … well, Snow's heart had pretty much exploded with joy.

“Mary Margaret?” a groggy voice asked, drawing her from her reverie.

She looked down to find Emma blearily blinking up at her in the firelight. “Shh,” she whispered. “Go back to sleep.”

“M'supposed to be on watch with you,” Emma murmured but her eyes were already sliding closed again.

“I've got it. Just go back to sleep.”

She started to shake her head in protest but eventually slumped further against her mother as sleep overtook her.

Snow smiled and, after taking a breath, chanced pressing a kiss on the top of her baby girl's head. “I love you, sweetheart.”

She would never be certain whether she really heard it or whether it was a trick of the wind against her ears, but she could have sworn she heard Emma whisper, “Love you, too.”

Ficlet: All Is Said and Done (1/1)

I've gotta say, I've missed being able to do little things like this. Being able to think of something silly like writing a ficlet for the premiere of Once Upon a Time and actually doing it. Oh, inspiration, please never leave me again.

Title: All Is Said and Done
Summary: Regina didn't know where she was running. She just knew that she had to run. She had to find somewhere to hide.
Word Count: 910 by Works' count.
Spoilers: Takes place during 1x22, "A Land Without Magic."
Characters: Regina Mills, with mentions of Henry, Snow, Emma, and Gold.
Rating/Warning: PG-13, mostly for safety. Possible trigger warning.
Disclaimer: Once Upon a Time and its characters were created by Eddie Kitsis and Adam Horowitz and are owned by ABC. It's not my fault they created characters that are so much fun to play around with, but I'll return them unharmed!
Author's Note: Happy premiere day! I thought I'd celebrate with a little ficlet. Title and lyrics in italics from "All Is Said and Done" by Vertical Horizon. Enjoy!

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Oh, are you tired of running for your life,

When there’s no one left behind?

Just the chaos in your mind.

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Running in heels was a skill that, even after twenty-eight years, Regina Mills had not perfected. She had simply never seen the need. People ran from her, not the other way around. Now, though, she wished she’d practiced running in heels every once in a while.

She slowed just long enough to pull off her shoes. Much better.

Regina didn’t know where she was running. She just knew that she had to run. She had to find somewhere to hide. Everyone would be searching for her now. The citizens of Storybrooke would be forming a mob any minute now, one perhaps minus the pitchforks and lanterns, but a mob nonetheless. An angry mob out for vengeance, out for blood. Out for her blood.

For the first time in decades, she was scared. Really, truly, curl-up-under-the-covers-and-ride-out-the-storm frightened.

The stitch in her left side forced her to slow down and then stop completely. It took her a moment or two to realize she’d stopped in front of her house. The house she’d spent the first eighteen long years in alone. The house she’d spent the next ten years in with her son. A house, she thought with a pang of sadness, but not a home.

It used to be a home once. Or perhaps it never had been. She wasn’t sure anymore.

With a shaky breath, Regina headed up the walk and climbed the stairs to her front door. Her house was surely the first place everyone would look but … well, to be honest, she didn’t care. Let them come. She’d lost Henry. She’d lost, period. There was nothing left for her anyway.

Losing Henry was bad enough but losing him to Emma Swan, of all people, was devastating. How had Henry come to eat that turnover instead of Emma? What the hell had happened? Oh, gods, Regina had almost killed her own son. She had killed him. If not for Emma, that little boy would be dead right now.

Emma had saved him with true love’s kiss. On the one hand, Regina was forever grateful. On the other hand, she was absolutely disgusted.

She opened the front door, thinking of all the times Henry had slammed it on his way in or out. He’d never slammed the door in anger that she could recall, just in exuberance. Even still, she’d always spoken to him harshly, reminding him that she’d told him countless times to stop slamming the door.

What she wouldn’t give to hear him slam it right now.

She eased the door closed and leaned back against it, closing her eyes for a brief moment. She inhaled deeply. She could still smell a hint of the apple turnover in the air. The aroma she had not long ago equated with eternal victory now turned her stomach.

Somewhat on auto-pilot, she pushed herself away from the door and headed up the stairs, running her hand over the railing. It was only her imagination, she knew, but the railing still felt slightly warm from the last time Henry had grasped it.

When he ran down the stairs and out the door to go to her.

Up the stairs and down the hall she went. Without even realizing where she’d been headed, Regina found herself in Henry’s room. She ran her hand over the dresser, the top of the headboard, and finally his pillow. The pillow smelled like him. She picked it up and held it to her nose. She took a deep breath in and let the tears come.

She’d lost everything. With Henry gone and the curse broken, she’d lost her own chance at a happy ending. Goddamn Snow White and her family! What had Regina ever done to that woman to justify everything she and her child had taken from her? First Snow had taken Daniel and then her father. Then Emma had come along and had taken Graham and now Henry. Everyone she’d ever loved was gone now, ripped from her.

There was nothing left to fight for, and Regina had resigned herself to her fate. She would spend her last moments here, in her son’s room. Maybe being around his things would bring her a tiny bit of solace before the end.

As she set the pillow down, something out the window caught her eye. Something … abnormal. Something that shouldn’t be here, in this land.

Sniffling, she pushed herself to her feet and walked over to the window. She pushed the curtain aside and squinted. Was that … no. It couldn’t be. Could it?

Then it came into focus and she saw that it was. That sneaky little bastard. Gold had taken the egg from Emma, the egg that contained the one bit of magic he’d managed to smuggle into this land. She recalled the tone of his voice when she told him about giving up the rest of her magic to obtain the apple from the Enchanted Forest. Just like she had, he’d made magic from magic.

A grin curled onto her lips as she watched the cloud of pure magic writhe and rush forward, enveloping everything in its wake. She’d thought it was over. She’d thought she’d lost.

She was mistaken.

All was not said and done. Oh, no. It was just getting started.

Her grin grew wider. Let the battle begin.

On Process, and Changing Things Up

Back when I started on the fanfic train, I had a very simple process: write, edit, post. I've mentioned before that I used to do a lot of handwritten work. Mostly that was because I grew up in the Dark Ages before everybody and their mother had a laptop. However, as a college student traveling to and from school on trains and buses four or five days a week, you know what I did have? Waiting time and lots and lots of looseleaf paper.

I'd pull sheets of paper out of the binders I used for class and write on the train or at the station. I would then do a bulk of the editing when I typed up what I'd written. My first drafts are typically very dry; the embellishments come during editing so the handwritten drafts were pretty much just guideposts. So I would write whenever I could, type it up once I got enough written to make it worth it (because this was also back in the Dark Ages when an entire family actually had to share one computer), and then give everything a once- or twice-over before posting it to ... wherever I posted things to. A couple of mailing lists, I think, and a forum community.

Then I joined up at fanfiction.net and they had this nifty little system to divide your story by chapters. So my new process became write chapter x, edit chapter x, post chapter x, write chapter y, edit chapter y, post chapter y. And so on. Which is all well and good but then once in a while I would run into a situation where, three-quarters of the way through the story, I'd get stuck.

Getting stuck now presented a new issue. Since I had been posting works as complete units before, I'd never felt pressure when I got stuck. I'd set it aside for a couple of days and brainstorm and figure a way out of it. Now, though, people were reading my stuff as I wrote it. I didn't want to leave them hanging for too long. Because there are fewer things more frustrating than being really into a story and the author either taking forever to update it or never updating it again.

I mean, I get it. Most fanfic authors are doing this as a hobby. They all have lives outside fanfic and the muse can be extremely fickle. Just because you have inspiration for something now doesn't mean you're going to have inspiration for it a week from now when the show completely screws your plot to hell or your everyday life demands more of your attention. But at the same time, I felt a responsibility to my readers to give them some kind of closure. So I would just ... write an ending. It wouldn't be the ending I really wanted to write, but it was the only ending I could write at that point in time.

After that happened two or three times, I started waiting until I had a few chapters written before I started posting a new story. That way, I would always be a couple chapters ahead of myself, so if I did get stuck, I could release a new chapter on schedule without the undue pressure on myself to get around the stumbling block omgrightnow.

And then, as it happened, I got writers' block. The real and serious writers' block where nothing comes out the way you want and you hate everything you try to write. It lasted close to two very long, very excruciating years. By the time I was ready to try another multi-chapter story, I was afraid of getting a block again, so I decided to change my process yet again. This time, I'd write the whole thing, then edit chapter x, post chapter x, edit chapter y, post chapter y.

At first, that was a really difficult change to make. A large part of the fanfic process for me, especially if I'm writing a story for a new fandom, is the feedback. I love hearing when I'm doing things correctly, obviously, but I also want people to tell me what I'm doing wrong. It helps to refine my writing, and it helps me get a better handle on the characters. "You know, I don't think Sam would really say that to Dean" is just as helpful to hear as "Oh, that was so Sam! Great job!"

Doing things this way, I still got the feedback as I was doing the edits, so I could tweak things that weren't quite working in -- or add things that were working to -- future chapters. It just made the actual drafting phase very tense because I had no idea how it would be received.

With my Once Upon a Time fic, for whatever reason, I've pretty much been throwing caution to the wind. My first story, as I chronicled here, was "Breaking Point." I don't usually write multi-chapter epics the first time out. It's easier for me to get a handle on characterization with oneshots, so I usually do a couple of those first before tackling a multi-chapter, plot-heavy story.

My latest story, "Navigation," was supposed to be a oneshot. The reader response to it was overwhelming, and pretty much everyone asked me to continue it. So I did. I completely flew by the seat of my pants, going back to the write chapter x, edit chapter x, post chapter x process.

I was terrified I wouldn't be able to find a way to tie it all together (because this was not a story I'd intended to continue, there really was no laid-out plotline to follow and I only had a vague notion of what I even wanted to do with it), but apparently what I came up with worked, because the readers seemed to love it.

*whew*

So, yeah. That was an interesting exercise. And by interesting, I mean terrifying, of course. I had a lot of fun, don't get me wrong, and the readers were fantastic and made me feel wonderful. It was maybe just a touch too on-the-spot for comfort. At least going outside my comfort zone presented a nice challenge!

On Striking a Chord

I've been writing for a good long time now and I've been posting my stories for people other than me to read for over a decade. And yet, having one of my stories be really well-received still shocks the hell out of me.

As is obvious from my last few posts, I have been very into Once Upon a Time fanfic lately, both writing and reading. The most recent story I wrote, a little three-chapter deal titled "Can You Help Me," turned out, to my surprise, to be one of the most popular stories I've ever written.

The idea for the story was simple, really. It came from a song by the same name by Vertical Horizon that became one of my favorite songs of all time pretty much the first time I heard it. It's a lovely song, and as I was driving to work one day, the lyrics in the chorus gave me this little inkling for a post-curse Once Upon a Time story with a hurt and guilty Snow White trying to reconnect with a defensive and walls-up Emma.

It was just supposed to be a one-shot -- a complete story told in a few thousand words -- but as I wrote, it grew too long to post as a one-shot. I quickly decided to make it a three-parter and wrote the whole thing in about a week and a half.

I posted the first chapter less than two weeks ago, and the reader response to it has been overwhelming. It's been put on more alert subscriptions (which meant the readers wanted to be notified via email when I updated it) than any of my others, and it is the 4th most-favorited story I have on the ff.net archive.

To put things in perspective, I've been posting to ff.net since 2001. The three stories that are ahead of it in terms of being favorited are "Sorry" and "Locked Out," two Supernatural stories I wrote in 2007 and 2008, respectively, and the magnum opus for SVU, "The Heart of the Matter," which I wrote in 2005.

To have a story take off this quickly is flippin' insane to me. I'm thrilled to pieces, don't get me wrong, but it's insane.

It's just that it surprises me what strikes a chord with a readership. Like I said, "Can You Help Me" was a little idea I got on the drive to work. "Sorry" was based on, no lie, a real game of Sorry that happened in my family that I translated into a cute little pre-series Supernatural story, and "Locked Out" was an idea about a preteen Dean locking himself and Sam out of the motel room during a rainstorm that came quite literally out of nowhere. And "The Heart of the Matter"? I still have no idea why that story is so popular. It's a half-casefile, half-personal relationship, slow-burn Casey/Olivia story that I really don't think is anything super-special. Apparently, though, it is, for reasons completely unknown to me.

But things like that that also give me confidence. Having something that I don't think is in any way special resonate with an audience is an amazing feeling.

Ficlet: Faith and Fantasy (1/1)

Another response to a Facebook prompt: "Once Upon a Time - Indescribable." I'm not publishing it as an exercise because this is actually the second version of the piece and as such, I've done a more intense editing than I usually do for the exercises. That said, it's a little less polished than normal for me, but I kind of liked the rough way it was reading.

Title: Faith and Fantasy
Summary: That was when her streak of taking things in stride for the sake of the mission had come to a crashing halt.
Word Count: 1011, so sayeth Works.
Spoilers: The following takes place during 1x22, "A Land Without Magic."
Characters: Emma Swan, with mentions of Regina, Mr. Gold, Henry, and August.
Rating/Warning: PG for brief language.
Disclaimer: Once Upon a Time and its characters were created by Eddie Kitsis and Adam Horowitz and are owned by ABC. I borrowed the characters for a bit but I'll return them when I'm done!

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Writing Challenge: Breaking Point, Chapter Twelve (12/12)

Title: Breaking Point
Summary: Emma leaving town was out of the question, and that was perfectly fine with Regina. As a matter of fact, Emma absolutely must stay in Storybrooke for a long, long time. And she knew just how to accomplish that.
Spoilers: Up through 1x19, "The Return."
Characters: Mostly Emma, Regina, and Mary Margaret, with special appearances by Henry, August, Archie, David, and Dr. Whale along the way.
Rating/Warning: PG-13, mostly for language.
Disclaimer: Once Upon a Time and its characters were created by Eddie Kitsis and Adam Horowitz and are owned by ABC. I'm just playing in someone else's sandbox. Please don't sue me! You won't get much.
Author's Note: Coming in at 56 pages and a final word count of 24,728, according to Works, "Breaking Point" is the second-longest fanfic I've ever written. Posting this last chapter is rather bittersweet for me. It's been ages since I've written something this long and this challenging, so seeing it through to completion feels amazing. And yet, I'm kind of sad that it's over. From inception to finish, this thing was an absolute blast.

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Writing Challenge: Breaking Point, Chapter Eleven (11/12)

Title: Breaking Point
Summary: Emma leaving town was out of the question, and that was perfectly fine with Regina. As a matter of fact, Emma absolutely must stay in Storybrooke for a long, long time. And she knew just how to accomplish that.
Spoilers: Up through 1x19, "The Return."
Characters: Mostly Emma, Regina, and Mary Margaret, with special appearances by Henry, August, Archie, David, and Dr. Whale along the way.
Rating/Warning: PG-13, mostly for language.
Disclaimer: Once Upon a Time and its characters were created by Eddie Kitsis and Adam Horowitz and are owned by ABC. I'm just playing in someone else's sandbox. Please don't sue me! You won't get much.
Author's Note: I can't remember if I mentioned it in one of my previous author's notes or not, but Mary Margaret and Emma are the heart of this show for me. If the plotting of the story had allowed for it, I could easily have written the whole twelve chapters with just the two of them. I loved the period of time in the show between Mary Margaret telling Emma Henry thought she was Snow White and Emma telling Mary Margaret that Henry thought she was Emma's mother because I liked Emma knowing Henry's theory re: their connection while Mary Margaret didn't. I played with that a bit here.

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Writing Challenge: Breaking Point, Chapter Ten (10/12)

Title: Breaking Point
Summary: Emma leaving town was out of the question, and that was perfectly fine with Regina. As a matter of fact, Emma absolutely must stay in Storybrooke for a long, long time. And she knew just how to accomplish that.
Spoilers: Up through 1x19, "The Return."
Characters: Mostly Emma, Regina, and Mary Margaret, with special appearances by Henry, August, Archie, David, and Dr. Whale along the way.
Rating/Warning: PG-13, mostly for language.
Disclaimer: Once Upon a Time and its characters were created by Eddie Kitsis and Adam Horowitz and are owned by ABC. I'm just playing in someone else's sandbox. Please don't sue me! You won't get much.
Author's Note: I've written a few therapy session scenes in my time, but none of them came out quite as easily as this one. Once again, what you see below is not the direction I intended on taking when I started writing the scene. It happened as I wrote, and I decided I liked it a lot better than my original plan of Emma faking her way through the session. Also, I'm beginning to see why there's so much Regina/Emma fic out there. Their back-and-forth is really fun to write.

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Writing Challenge: Breaking Point, Chapter Nine (9/12)

Title: Breaking Point
Summary: Emma leaving town was out of the question, and that was perfectly fine with Regina. As a matter of fact, Emma absolutely must stay in Storybrooke for a long, long time. And she knew just how to accomplish that.
Spoilers: Up through 1x19, "The Return."
Characters: Mostly Emma, Regina, and Mary Margaret, with special appearances by Henry, August, Archie, David, and Dr. Whale along the way.
Rating/Warning: PG-13, mostly for language.
Disclaimer: Once Upon a Time and its characters were created by Eddie Kitsis and Adam Horowitz and are owned by ABC. I'm just playing in someone else's sandbox. Please don't sue me! You won't get much.
Author's Note: My original intention for this chapter was fluff for fluff's sake. Every story needs a little bit of fluff, and this one has been so heavy, I thought it would be nice to have some fun, just as a release. Well, the story itself had other ideas, and the chapter ended up being pretty crucial to the plot. Having Emma and David spend time together was fun but a challenge since the two of them didn't have a lot of hanging-out screentime.

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Writing Challenge: Breaking Point, Chapter Eight (8/12)

Title: Breaking Point
Summary: Emma leaving town was out of the question, and that was perfectly fine with Regina. As a matter of fact, Emma absolutely must stay in Storybrooke for a long, long time. And she knew just how to accomplish that.
Spoilers: Up through 1x19, "The Return."
Characters: Mostly Emma, Regina, and Mary Margaret, with special appearances by Henry, August, Archie, David, and Dr. Whale along the way.
Rating/Warning: PG-13, mostly for language.
Disclaimer: Once Upon a Time and its characters were created by Eddie Kitsis and Adam Horowitz and are owned by ABC. I'm just playing in someone else's sandbox. Please don't sue me! You won't get much.
Author's Note: The Henry/Emma dynamic is really fun, and Henry just kind of writes himself. I love when characters do that; it makes my job so much easier, hee. August/Emma is also kind of a blast. I love how August is one of the only people that Emma feels she can really bounce her ideas off of. Having August be the one to help her figure out her next step was a natural choice, and I thought his suggestion was a neat little Easter egg for his true identity.

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Writing Challenge: Breaking Point, Chapter Seven (7/12)

Title: Breaking Point
Summary: Emma leaving town was out of the question, and that was perfectly fine with Regina. As a matter of fact, Emma absolutely must stay in Storybrooke for a long, long time. And she knew just how to accomplish that.
Spoilers: Up through 1x19, "The Return."
Characters: Mostly Emma, Regina, and Mary Margaret, with special appearances by Henry, August, Archie, David, and Dr. Whale along the way.
Rating/Warning: PG-13, mostly for language.
Disclaimer: Once Upon a Time and its characters were created by Eddie Kitsis and Adam Horowitz and are owned by ABC. I'm just playing in someone else's sandbox. Please don't sue me! You won't get much.
Author's Note: This is probably the shortest chapter in the story, word-count-wise, and yet it's the one I've spent the most time on in edits (so far). It's such a pivotal chapter that I really felt like it needed the attention. The original version of this, Emma was more emotional rather than angry (actually, my first-draft Emma was a lot more emotional in general, which is something I had to reel in during the editing process) and I ended up adding a lot more inner monologue to the narrative.

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Writing Challenge: Breaking Point, Chapter Six (6/12)

Title: Breaking Point
Summary: Emma leaving town was out of the question, and that was perfectly fine with Regina. As a matter of fact, Emma absolutely must stay in Storybrooke for a long, long time. And she knew just how to accomplish that.
Spoilers: Up through 1x19, "The Return."
Characters: Mostly Emma, Regina, and Mary Margaret, with special appearances by Henry, August, Archie, David, and Dr. Whale along the way.
Rating/Warning: PG-13, mostly for language.
Disclaimer: Once Upon a Time and its characters were created by Eddie Kitsis and Adam Horowitz and are owned by ABC. I'm just playing in someone else's sandbox. Please don't sue me! You won't get much.
Author's Note: One of the things I really love about the Emma/Mary Margaret dynamic is that Emma's so closed off, but Mary Margaret instinctively knows what she has to do in order to reach her. I've tried to inject that in this chapter, with Mary Margaret wanting desperately to do something but knowing she has to do it Emma's way. Also, Regina is still ridiculously fun to write.

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Writing Challenge: Breaking Point, Chapter Five (5/12)

Title: Breaking Point
Summary: Emma leaving town was out of the question, and that was perfectly fine with Regina. As a matter of fact, Emma absolutely must stay in Storybrooke for a long, long time. And she knew just how to accomplish that.
Spoilers: Up through 1x19, "The Return."
Characters: Mostly Emma, Regina, and Mary Margaret, with special appearances by Henry, August, Archie, David, and Dr. Whale along the way.
Rating/Warning: PG-13, mostly for language.
Disclaimer: Once Upon a Time and its characters were created by Eddie Kitsis and Adam Horowitz and are owned by ABC. I'm just playing in someone else's sandbox. Please don't sue me! You won't get much.
Author's Note: I wrote the first section of this chapter at 11:30 one night and truthfully, I didn't change it all that much during edits. I mostly added clarifications because whipping something out in twenty minutes at 11:30 pm does not lend itself well to clarity. Trying to get a handle on poor Emma's emotional state after a night like that for the second section was a blast.

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Writing Challenge: Breaking Point, Chapter Four (4/12)

Title: Breaking Point
Summary: Emma leaving town was out of the question, and that was perfectly fine with Regina. As a matter of fact, Emma absolutely must stay in Storybrooke for a long, long time. And she knew just how to accomplish that.
Spoilers: Up through 1x19, "The Return."
Characters: Mostly Emma, Regina, and Mary Margaret, with special appearances by Henry, August, Archie, David, and Dr. Whale along the way.
Rating/Warning: PG-13, mostly for language.
Disclaimer: Once Upon a Time and its characters were created by Eddie Kitsis and Adam Horowitz and are owned by ABC. I'm just playing in someone else's sandbox. Please don't sue me! You won't get much.
Author's Note: The Regina/Henry dynamic is really interesting to explore, and I'm kind of bummed that the plotting of this story didn't allow me to do more of it. I may have to do a oneshot or two to play around with it a little more. Not that I'm complaining about that, ha.

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Writing Challenge: Breaking Point, Chapter Three (3/12)

Title: Breaking Point
Summary: Emma leaving town was out of the question, and that was perfectly fine with Regina. As a matter of fact, Emma absolutely must stay in Storybrooke for a long, long time. And she knew just how to accomplish that.
Spoilers: Up through 1x19, "The Return."
Characters: Mostly Emma, Regina, and Mary Margaret, with special appearances by Henry, August, Archie, David, and Dr. Whale along the way.
Rating/Warning: PG-13, mostly for language.
Disclaimer: Once Upon a Time and its characters were created by Eddie Kitsis and Adam Horowitz and are owned by ABC. I'm just playing in someone else's sandbox. Please don't sue me! You won't get much.
Author's Note: This was another fun one but this time the fun came from trying to hit all the appropriate emotional notes. From Mary Margaret's confusion and fear to Emma's panic and anger, it was all kinds of enjoyable.

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Writing Challenge: Breaking Point, Chapter Two (2/12)

Title: Breaking Point
Summary: Emma leaving town was out of the question, and that was perfectly fine with Regina. As a matter of fact, Emma absolutely must stay in Storybrooke for a long, long time. And she knew just how to accomplish that.
Spoilers: Up through 1x19, "The Return."
Characters: Mostly Emma, Regina, and Mary Margaret, with special appearances by Henry, August, Archie, David, and Dr. Whale along the way.
Rating/Warning: PG-13, mostly for language.
Disclaimer: Once Upon a Time and its characters were created by Eddie Kitsis and Adam Horowitz and are owned by ABC. I'm just playing in someone else's sandbox. Please don't sue me! You won't get much.
Author's Note: You have absolutely no idea how much fun this chapter was to write. It kind of frightens me how much fun I have with Regina. She's hard to find but when I do finally find her, she's a blast.

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Writing Challenge: Breaking Point, Chapter One (1/12)

So! I've gotten Writing Challenge to the point that I'm ready to start posting now. Picture me squealing like an ecstatic teenage girl. (No, seriously. You have no idea how fun this was. Or how exciting it is for me to actually be excited about having something to post. No writer's block on this sucker!)

And, yeah, it's fanfic. But it was friggin' fun fanfic. I had a total blast with this story. So, without further ado:

Title: Breaking Point
Fandom: Once Upon a Time
Summary: Emma leaving town was out of the question, and that was perfectly fine with Regina. As a matter of fact, Emma absolutely must stay in Storybrooke for a long, long time. And she knew just how to accomplish that.
Spoilers: Up through 1x19, "The Return."
Characters: Mostly Emma, Regina, and Mary Margaret, with special appearances by Henry, August, Archie, David, and Dr. Whale along the way.
Rating/Warning: PG-13, mostly for language.
Disclaimer: Once Upon a Time and its characters were created by Eddie Kitsis and Adam Horowitz and are owned by ABC. I'm just playing in someone else's sandbox. Please don't sue me! You won't get much.
Author's Note: As with Harper's Island before it, I was most emphatically not going to write Once Upon a Time fic. And then hiatus happened. Mad props to ViciousCircle on the TWoP forums for suggesting the basic plot for this story and to Aliasscape for suggesting someone turn it into a fic. I took it as a challenge. My first time writing in a new fandom is always very nervous-making for me, so feedback is much appreciated. Enjoy!

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Writing Challenge

A little while ago, a couple posters on a message board I frequent suggested a writing challenge. Well, actually, one poster jokingly suggested the plot go a certain way, other posters added to it, and a final poster suggested someone actually go write the fanfic because it sounded awesome. My original response was that I would try it myself save for the crippling case of writer's block I had going on.

But then, as it happened, the challenge got into my head. I started thinking of various ways to go about it but at first it was just flights of fancy. When I began dreaming about it at night, I decided it was time to start seriously thinking about trying to write it.

I had a couple of plot details to work out but I got one bit of inspiration from an earlier episode of the show and a final bit of inspiration out of the clear blue sky. So yesterday afternoon, I went out and bought a new notebook, some new pens, and set to work.

I decided to start on paper because, well, paper is my roots. I always used to start my stories in a notebook and do a bulk of the editing when I typed the story up later on. In more recent years, I've been writing strictly on the computer for a variety of reasons, not the least of which included the ease of transferring the file from home computer to work computer and back again. Plus, I type a lot faster than I handwrite, so it saved a lot of time.

But the big problem with writing on a computer, especially when you have writer's block, is that it's so freakin' easy to just backspace and/or delete if you don't like something. Then you get into a constant cycle of writing and deleting and writing and deleting and you never make any progress. Of course with a notebook, you can certainly white-out, but there's more of a thought process there than just, "Eh, I don't like this. *presses Delete*"

I spent most of yesterday afternoon and evening and almost all of today writing. It's not coming out as easily as it used to but it is coming out and I like it a lot better than anything I've written in the past year or so. And more importantly, I am having an absolute blast! It is indeed a challenge, but I'm having a ton of fun attempting to rise to it.

Perhaps this is what I really needed. Something completely new. Something to kickstart the creative juices again. I'll keep y'all posted!