magibrain

Title: Beneath A Beating Sun ch.17: Fury
Chapter Summary: The final battle.
Index post: [Fic] Beneath a Beating Sun - Index

( In which the hour of reckoning arrives. )

Title: Beneath A Beating Sun ch.15: Reunions
Chapter Summary: The Tok'ra and Free Jaffa seem to have something up their sleeves.
Index post: [Fic] Beneath a Beating Sun - Index

( In which allies new and old are found. )

Title: Beneath A Beating Sun ch.13: Redux
Chapter Summary: Sometimes all you can do is order your people out to die.
Index post: [Fic] Beneath a Beating Sun - Index

( In which SG-1 has been in this situation before, and they didn't exactly all make it out, back then. )

Title: Beneath A Beating Sun ch.11: Angels
Chapter Summary: Allies appear, and make things worse. The situation at the SGC slips a little farther out of anyone's control.
Index post: [Fic] Beneath a Beating Sun - Index

( In which desperation and damage darken the door. )

Title: Beneath A Beating Sun ch.09: Portents
Chapter Summary: Unwelcome news, unwelcome diagnoses, a side jaunt into epistemology, and a rather odd day.
Index post: [Fic] Beneath a Beating Sun - Index

( In which the SGC braces for the coming storms. )

Title: Beneath A Beating Sun ch.07: Attack
Chapter Summary: Something comes through the 'gate.
Index post: [Fic] Beneath a Beating Sun - Index

( In which a new danger arrives. )

Title: Beneath A Beating Sun ch.05: Eulogy
Chapter Summary: Exactly what it says on the tin.
Index post: [Fic] Beneath a Beating Sun - Index

( In which a memorial service is planned and held, and another situation looms on the horizon. )

 Title: Beneath A Beating Sun ch.03: Deus
Chapter Summary: The shoe drops.
Index post: [Fic] Beneath a Beating Sun - Index

( In which a blow is struck. )

 Title: Beneath A Beating Sun ch.01: PV1-542
Chapter Summary: An alien installation, an unlimited source of productive energy, and an alien species just out of range for first contact.  All in a day's work for SG-1.
Index post: [Fic] Beneath a Beating Sun - Index

Jack inhaled as he stepped onto PV1-542 – a habit he'd never been able to shake, even when on occasion the smells coming from the 'gate region were less than pleasant.  Usually it was good to take a deep breath of fresh air first thing on a new planet; most of them were untouched, or relatively untouched, wildernesses, invigorating in the absence of car exhaust and smoke and too many people.  Unfortunately, this wasn't one of those.

( Read more... )

I spent most of yesterday beating fanfic into shape, which is something I haven't done in a good long time. But yesterday was something of a special occasion: just under a week ago, I finished Beneath a Beating Sun in draft, and on Sunday, I'd finished my preliminary polishing of the first 16 chapters. (The 18th – final – chapter still needs more work, but it's done in draft, and that gives me enough confidence to move ahead.) So Sunday was the day when I went twenty rounds hand-to-hand with Fanfiction.net trying to get BaBS updated and the new chapter posted. (Among other things, FFN no longer allows you to use things like single hyphens or asterisks to indicate scene breaks. To which I say verily, what the fuck.)

But as I was reformatting the BaBS chapters to retain their line breaks, I decided to go back and add line breaks back into some of my older works, like Antipodes and Scars. And looking back on those, Scars especially, was... humbling.

Because here's the thing. Scars was meant to be my farewell to the FF8 fandom. I'd been writing for FF8 since 1999 – it was my first fanfiction community, dating back to the days when the FFGurus Forums were still going strong, and my work there is honestly responsible for a huge amount of my writing skill. It was my alma mater, in a way. And Scars was, if not precisely a thesis, still a final exhibition. At the time I wrote it, revised it, and posted it, it represented the best of my writing ability.

That was back in 2005, and when I look at it now...

I won't say it's bad. It still has its charm, and I think it still gets its message across. But I look at it now, and I can see where it should be tightened, where the pathos should be toned back, where it should be punched up, where characterization needs to be tweaked and how the tension arc needs to be smoothed out, where the description falls down or fails to set the scene. There are layers upon layers of improvements. And it's wonderful, and a little terrifying, because when I wrote that, I did not know how it could be made better. And now I do.

And the stuff I'm writing now? Oftimes, I don't know how it can be made better. And sometimes I'm afraid that I'm not going to get any better, that because I don't see how I can improve, I'm not going to. And in a way, getting over that means having faith in the past; in that what was possible then is still possible now. The stuff I write that's the peak of my ability now may look like my first-draft stuff, years from now. And I can do this. I've done it before.