Fic-a-riffic!

In the felicitous absence of my children (they're across the road playing with a friend, and the baby is asleep) I have written Snape/Luna, for which lizbee is entirely to blame. And not only did the universe not end, I find myself dreadfully tempted to fix it up and submit it as an honest-to-goodness fic. Only I won't, because I have to write Hermione and Luna gen for omniocular's January Challenge instead.

In other news, omniocular replied to my post-rejection inquiry by telling me that they like my art, but not so much my fic. My fic, they say, is a bit too prone to telling rather than showing what the characters feel and making general statements rather than giving specific details (this on the basis of "Bewitching the Mind...", "First Impression", "Cold Water" and "Cry", links to which I submitted as part of my application).

I do not in the least reproach them for this, as it's a worthy ambition to avoid an over-expository style, but it's ironic seeing as my just-written Snape/Luna consists entirely of dialogue without any speech tags and only five words of exposition (and I was thinking about cutting those), and I deliberately wrote "Secrets and Lies" in impersonal third without once telling the reader what any of the characters were thinking. So one could say that particular problem has already corrected itself...

I guess the moral of the story is that I need to write more recent stuff in this less expository style. And that it needs to be gen (by the "no romance, please" definition of gen that omniocular seems to be using, anyway -- I know that by the other working definition of "no graphic sex and let there be an actual plot, please" I've never written anything but gen, but that definition appears to be less common).

Anyway, once I've written the Snape/Lily drabble I also owe lizbee and figure out something Houseish to write for cesario, I shall post links here to all the shortfics I've written in the last few days. It doesn't add up to much, but it's still good to be writing again.

Speaking of good and writing, if you haven't seen junediamanti's splendid Snape genfic The Shipping Forecast, go and read it straight away. It's funny and quirky and heartbreaking and a great deal more plausible than the author makes it sound in the summary, and it indulges my long-held belief that Snape's present speech pattern is self-taught rather than the one he was brought up with. So of course I was bound to love it.

More later, since all the children have returned at once and my son is regaling me with the entire plot of Home Alone II.