Tag: ato writes

Few Words Wednesday

From Cleaving.

“When Daddy was little, this was his favorite thing,” Zach said, taking Nathan’s hand and leading him to the back.  “And if you fall off, the snow is really soft, so that’s fun too.”

“Kay,” Nathan said, though he did not seem particularly convinced.

They decided it would be best if Chris was at the top of the little slope, getting him started, and Zach at the bottom where Nathan could see him and Zach could catch him if he started going fast.  

The first attempt was almost painfully slow.  Nathan sat in the center of the saucer, mittened hands clinging fiercely to the handles at his sides, eyes wide as the saucer slowly squeaked and scraped against the snow, until it finally bumped Zach’s foot as he crouched and pulled Nathan into his arms.

“What’d you think?”

“Again!”

Six(ish) Sentence Sunday

A longish one, since I skipped Wednesday.  From Cleaving.

“Nonna!  Snowman!” Nathan said, running toward her with awkward, high steps through the snow.

“I see that, sweet boy!  I have something for him.  Come look!”

Zach and Chris chose two fallen branches and started back as Nathan struggled to carry a large bag.

“Whoa, what have you got there?” Zach asked, handing the branches to Chris and running forward to relieve Nathan.  

“Nonna,” Nathan said, as if that explained everything.

“Let’s see what she gave us.”

He reached in, surprised to find small plastic spherical Christmas ornaments: two blue, two green, and two bronze.  He looked up at Chris, shrugging.

“For eyes, maybe?”

Of course.  He looked down at Nathan who was pulling a very long scarf out of the bag.

“What color eyes do you want our snowman to have?”

“Boo!”

“Blue it is.  Okay.  Time for finishing touches.”

They placed the branches and eyes.  A curve of rose hips formed a pink mouth, and tufts of dead Queen Anne’s lace made for wild, blond hair.  Zach lifted Nathan to his hip so they could wrap the long scarf around the snowy neck together.  Then they all stepped back to admire their work.

Nathan clapped his hands together excitedly.  “It Babbo!”

Zach bit back a smile and looked at Chris, because really, Nathan was right.  It hadn’t been deliberate, but the resemblance was real.  

“No,” Chris said, mock-thoughtfully, in the same voice he’d been using that morning when declaring himself ‘still cold’.  “I don’t think it looks like me.”

Nathan smiled broadly, knowing he’d already won the argument.  “Babbo eyes,” he said, poking at his own eyes.  “Babbo har,” he said, touching the top of his head.  “Babbo scaf,” he finished, touching his neck.  Then he leaned toward Chris, and Zach handed him over.

“Yeah, but where are his eyebrows?” Chris asked, wrapping his arms around Nathan, their faces inches apart.  “I have these bushy eyebrows.”

“There’s plenty of old weeds at the edges of this yard.  I’m sure we could make your brows,”  Zach suggested.

“C’mon Babbo!”  Nathan pointed to the fence where last years crop of Queen Anne’s Lace stood by the fence, willing Chris to walk that way.

Chris looked at Zach and raised an eyebrow.  Yeah, they were definitely missing from the snowman.  “I think it’s a great idea.  You two go take care of that.  I’m going to get something from the house.”

The house was so warm that coming back out into the yard was a shock to his system.  But what stopped him in his tracks was the picture Chris and Nathan made, standing by the snowman as flakes gently began to fall again.  It was perfect: exactly what he was hoping for from a Christmas at home.  No palm trees, or candy-cane forests in shopping malls.  No Hollywood costars… he shook his head and forced himself to focus on what was good.  This moment.  He took a quick picture with his phone before moving forward, reaching the snowman just as Chris and Nathan were putting the finishing touches on the eyebrows.  They were coming out more Walter Cronkite than Chris Pine, but they we’re well arched so the snowman looked friendly and a little surprised.  Both Chris and Nathan were giggling as Chris the last of the vegetation.  

“Now he definitely looks like a member of the Quinto-Pine family,” Zach said, “but I don’t think he’s quite finished.”  Zach placed another scarf around the neck and slipped the flipflops at the base, filling them with snow ‘feet’.  “There.  Now’s it’s Babbo.”  

Nathan squealed in joy, and Chris could hardly breathe for laughing.  He was bent over and leaning his shoulder into Zach’s chest, and it suddenly felt like a hundred other times they had laughed themselves nearly sick, stretching back to the filming of the first Trek film, definitely carrying them through Nathan’s first year.  Zach wrapped his arm around Chris’ shoulder and kissed his temple, reveling in the feeling of joy and humor and everything that being ‘Chris and Zach’ had always been while Nathan danced around the snowman and patted the snow filled flip-flops.  

Chris turned into the embrace and murmured, “you’re an asshole” as affectionately as any love sonnet had ever been read.

Zach’s cheeks hurt from grinning.  “I’m aware.  As you have been these ten years.”

“Daddy snowman?” Nathan asked.

“Yeah,” Chris said, wiping his eyes and straightening up. “Where’s Daddy’s snowman?  We need to make one with blue toque and some of those brown fern leaves for eyebrows.  And maybe Spock ears.”

Six(ish) Sentence Sunday

Look!  I made actual progress! 

Getting his two California boys ready for the snow was nothing short of hysterical.  Chris insisted on Nathan wearing so many layers that the poor kid could barely move his arms.  His little cheeks were flushing pink as Zach looked down at him and said to Chris, “This is reminding me of your favorite holiday film.”

Chris looked up from putting on a third pair of socks and glanced at Nathan.  “It’s not that bad,” he protested.

“Nathan, clap your hands.”  He could, but his range of shoulder mobility was clearly compromised.  Zach raised an eyebrow at Chris.

“I might have overdone it,” Chris admitted.  

“Ya think, Mrs. Parker?” Zach shook his head, smiling, and motioned for Nathan to come over to him.  “Let’s fix this, okay?”

“Nathan poofy.”

“Yes. You really are.”

They got outside after about fifteen minutes, all jackets and mittens and slivers of skin showing between the bottom of hats and the tops of scarves.  Nathan moved carefully, placing his weight on the new snow then looking up, concerned, as his foot sank several inches before stopping.  He tried a few more times, growing more confident as he learned to trust that his foot would stop sinking in a somewhat predictable manner, trying to stomp his feet to see what happened, his smile growing wider.  Zach loved watching Nathan discovering things about the world for the first time.  It was trite, maybe, to glean joy from a child’s innocence, but he often felt so jaded himself that it was a relief to share these simple discoveries.  Judging from the sounds of the shutter going off behind him, Chris was enjoying the moment, too.  Finally, Nathan looked up at them both, grinning.

“Snow squish.”

“Yeah,” Zach said, leaning down to pick up a handful.  “You’re pushing all the air out from between the snowflakes.  It’s called packing it.  Like this.”  Zach formed a snowball and held it out on his hand for Nathan, who picked it up gingerly.  “Now it will hold together when you throw it.”

“Throw ball?”

“Here, I’ll demonstrate,” came a voice from behind them.  Zach startled as a small snowball exploded against his shoulder.  Nathan’s eyes grew wide as he realized what had just happened.  Zach winked at him and took the snowball back, lobbing it at Chris’ butt as he turned to protect the camera.

“Careful!”

“Men holding $4000 cameras shouldn’t start snowball fights,” Zach said, sagely, making another snowball and handing it to Nathan.  “Go get him,” he stage whispered.  

10 Questions for Writers

I was tagged by @thatmysticbafflingwonder, who has one of my favorite online names ever… thanks!  Today is the first time I’ve had a chance to look at Tumblr for a week, and I woke up to a tag…it was nice.

1. Have you ever written in an unusual place? Where?  I mostly write on my computer at home.  I often write on my phone on the train during my morning commute, but that really only works if I’m on a roll.  I think the strangest place I’ve written is in a campsite, still on my computer.  Thank goodness for chargers that work from car cigarette lighters…

2. The word/phrase you know you overuse, but can’t get rid of it. Cock.  If you can find a good substitute that doesn’t sound ridiculously stupid or literally limp, I’m all ears.  Seriously, though, as much as I think I fall back on certain phrases, I think the far greater sin is that I fall back on similar sentence structures, and it feels like the longer I write, the worse it gets.  Maybe this is “developing a style” but mostly it feels lazy.  I look at my old writing and other people’s writing and I think, “Wow, they put that clause first..what a great idea.”  I’m not sure what to do about it.  I think that if I were serious about writing fiction I would need to workshop or something so I could be more aware of it and conscious about style decisions.  I was very conscious on “Compromised,” where everything is very filtered through Spock’s internal dialog until Jim literally breaks through it with dialog, but that awareness of style is rare for me. My Pinto fics for the most part follow a certain style and tone that I’m almost getting bored with.  So there’s that. **scrubs face with hand…thereby showing one of my commonly overused descriptions**

3. Do you keep notes? Do you have a notebook? What does it look like? Add a picture/screencap of your notes.  All my writing is in electronic form.  I may have notes in a gdoc, but it’s still electronic.  Even when camping, I’ll work on my laptop until it dies and then switch to an iPad before I’ll pick up paper.  When my husband once gave me paper and pen for writing in the car I snarkily asked him where the stone tables and chisels were.  So yeah, not notebooks, sorry.  I do have folders full of picspiration, both for smut and baby interactions and world building stuff for o-fic.

4. What’s the hardest part of a fic to write for you? (angst/fluff/smut, exposure/plot twist/ending)  It depends on the fic, to be honest.  But I think it’s introducing conflict that feels real and non-contrived and can also be recovered from, because I really don’t write tragedies.  I’ve been married long enough to know that misunderstanding can happen and grow between otherwise intelligent people who are just too frazzled to communicate well, but if you aren’t careful in fic you can end up with characters seeming either willfully ignorant or stupid, and others willfully obtuse or cruel.  And I always want the reader to feel sympathetic to both of my characters, even when they’re fighting.  I want the conflict to come from their interests just not quite aligning, and their perspectives being different but reasonable, rather than one of them just being an asshole.  So that’s always the struggle.  I’m struggling with it even now with my current wip (we’re using the word “progress” very generously, here).

5. Have you ever based something in your fic on your personal experience? What was it?  Always.  The Bleary boys’ experiences with Nathan are based on mine with an infant/toddler.  The Jumping boys courtship and explorations are similarly grounded.  Spock’s feelings of loss and isolation.  Jim’s attempts to build something from nothing… I’ve experienced all of it, though none of it in quite that way, of course.  The only thing I write that I don’t have personal experience with on some level at least is physiological… what it feels like for a boy getting various parts stimulated.  I have adequate proxies for some of those experiences, but have had to fill others with wishful thinking and fantasy, while trying to keep it real.

6. What’s that one fic you want to write but somehow know you never will?  God, I really hope it’s not the one I’m working on currently.  I haven’t made progress for weeks (work and PTA have been INSANE).  Part of me just wants to drop it, because I’m not feeling very motivated, but I really think it will be the capstone of the Beary!verse, and probably the last fic of that series.  I know exactly where it needs to go, but the actual writing has been difficult.  Other than that one, 30k words of Spirk that needs a final chapter that might never come, and an O-fic half formed in my mind that may never firm up.  Who knows.  Writing is my therapy, but a hobby, so until I retire it has to be something I just fit into the corners of my life and only do when it feels good.

7. What do you usually do when you procrastinate?  I’m usually writing when I should be doing something else, so the whole question is a bit on its ear, but when I have time to write but still somehow don’t, Tumblr is usually to blame.  Or lately, 00q fics.

8. What’s the funniest typo you’ve made? I’m not sure it’s the funniest, but “escellent” is so common that one of my betas has actually made it a word in her vernacular.  I think the funniest stuff happens when I writing one-thumbed on the train on my phone and autocorrect has its way with my text.  I can’t remember anything off hand, but I remember many times loading the new material onto my computer to edit and thinking “what the ever fucking fuck?”  Sometimes it takes ages for me to work out what I was trying to say.

9. Do you listen to music when you write? What kind?   Again, it depends on the fic.  For the Jumping boys, Nakhane Toure’s “Just Like Heaven” became their song, and I listened to that album almost constantly.  When I’m writing Christmas fics, I’ll play holiday music.  Otherwise it’s usually jazz or some other instrumental (classical or modern).

10. Your favourite comment a reader has left on your fic?  Anytime someone quotes a part of the chapter and tells me that it affected them…gave them chills, made them laugh, etc.  That’s the best drug. 

Since I’ve been largely absent from Tumblr the last week, I’m not sure who’s been tagged already (looks like a lot of folks), so I’ll add a few, but if you’ve been repeated, please ignore, and if you follow me and haven’t been tagged yet, please consider yourself selected.  @blushingkate, @cate-adams, @hopeforyouyet, @klinfield, @loves-pie, @multifandom-madnesss, @mightymads, @stellarbisexual, @seepunkrun, @suedescripture.

few words wednesday

Cleaving…

“Can I help with anything, boys?”

“I think we’ve got this covered, Margo,” Chris said, but he still cleared at spot at the table for her as she moved to sit down.  

“Well, I’ll just keep you entertained then,” she said, setting a stack of photos on the table.  The top one showed Zach with a bowl haircut, a green and red striped Garanimals shirt, and red corduroys.

“Ma, no.”

But it was too late.  Chris caught a glimpse of the top photo and grinned up at Zach with a gleam in his eye.  Zach tried halfheartedly to grab for the picture, but his mom was quick, handing it to Chris for his inspection.   

“This is great,” he said with glee.  Looking up to Zach’s grimace, he added, “Oh, come on.  You’ve seen dozens of my childhood photos and heard more embarrassing stories than I even remembered existed during all the family dinners at my mom’s.  It’s only fair.”

Zach couldn’t really argue that.  And though he wanted to be annoyed, there was something about seeing his mom and Chris practically conspiring around his childhood kitchen table that struck him as charmingly domestic — never mind the half-wrapped presents strewn between them.  He huffed his approval, reaching for the scissors as his mom asked, “Has Zach ever told you about the year he set a trap for Santa?”