Gabrielle's Life and Writings

Gabrielle Lawson, writer of Fanfiction. I will use this space to keep a journal about my writing, the progress I'm making, stories I'm working on, writer's blocks I'm having, our adoption process and progress and just life in general.

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Location: Missouri, United States

I'm multifaceted and highly educated. I have a BA in History and an MA in Museum Studies. But I couldn't make a living in a museum, so my hobby--computers--became my living. I'm now a charter member Microsoft Certified Desktop Support Technician. I aspire to be a professional writer and/or poet. I am a Christian and have been living by His grace for the last four years or so, despite the MegaStress and now the GigaStress. He keeps me going, and displays His glory still, in my life.

Monday, June 30, 2003

Status of Stories Update!



Introducing a new feature of my blog. Once a week, I'll try and remember to post a Status of Stories, so readers can quickly check to see if I'm working on the story they want and where I'm at.


    Status of Stories
  • Faith, Part III: Peace: 3 chapters written, 3 to go. I hope. Waiting until I finish The Journey
  • The Journey: Last chapter being written. Will need epilogue.
  • The Honored: 1 1/2 chapters written. A big climactic scene near the end written.
  • An as yet untitled The Young Riders short story: Needs only an ending and a title.


That's it for active stories.

Not a stitch


How does one write a stitch anyway? I wouldn't know as I didn't manage to write one this weekend. I was on quite a role Thursday while doing the laundry. But once the dryers said the laundry was done, I had to hustle and fold the clothes. I had to put the Clie down mid-scene and I found it hard to pick up the scene again when the few opportunities presented themselves on the canoe trip.

I am toying with an idea for Buck now that he's back in town and very close to decision time. What if he started to feel the pain again? In the spririt world this time. Would it be when he is leaning towards deciding to die? Or when he's leaning toward life? If he dies, his pain ends, so that might be reason to make the pain on the life side. If he choses life, he has to go through the pain. Makes the decision harder, and it certainly wasn't meant to be easy. The deck was stacked against him on purpose, and this would just add another card to the pile.

I'd like to finish this story this week so I can get back to Faith. One or two good writing days and this story could be in the bag.

House news: Not good. Seller doesn't want to cooperate with the program that could get me a 20% grant for a down payment from the city. This had me in tears last night. If you're the praying type, perhaps you could pray for a softening of the heart. Or that God will show me the better house He has planned. He did that with the car I now own. I had my heart set on a different one, and when things didn't work out for getting it, He showed me a better one and even sweetened the deal financially with an extremely low interest-rate. He can do immeasuably more than we can ask or imagine.

Friday, June 27, 2003

The journey is almost over


Last night was a very busy night. After work, I met with my broker to go over the seller's counter-offer. I won't bore you with all the details, but we had to check out the electricity in the house. My sister's friend is an apprentice electrician, so he came out and okayed the place. We decided to proceed with trying to buy the house. But we want the seller to do something about the guttering. It's not all there.

After looking over the house again, my broker took me to dinner. Then I got home around 10. Wouldn't have been a problem except that I had to do laundry, pack for a camping trip, and take a shower before I could go to bed.

I couldn't pack while I was at the laundromat though, so I took my trusty Clie, and I wrote. I'm about halfway through the last chapter of The Journey now. Teaspoon is angsty and Buck is watching from the spirit world. Meanwhile, the doctor has given a grim prognosis. Tompkins even had a nice moment until the past got in the way.

Today, I'm exhausted. Four hours of sleep just isn't enough. I'm just trying to survive the last hour of the workday, then it's off to camping and canoeing. With my Clie and a notebook in case I find some time to write.

Thursday, June 26, 2003

Waiting on the house and trying to write


I've been waiting to hear from the seller about my offer and took it as a good sign that they were considering and not coming back with a "NO!" too quickly. Today, my broker called me to say they'd responded. We'll meet after work to go over their response.

But on to the writing! Yes, I did write some yesterday. I'm working on getting Buck back to Rock Creek in body and spirit. It doesn't feel like it's flowing very well, but I'll just keep pluggin away and maybe it will come to me. I'd hate the last chapter to be the worst.

Not much more to say at this juncture. I'll update when I hear more about the house. Or Buck's trip to Rock Creek.

Tuesday, June 24, 2003

Haven't written a word


Actually, that's not quite true. I've written two sentences. But that was just when Sunday School started to annoy me. We broke into groups and I had to participate after all. It's not that I'm against Sunday School. It's the style of the teaching that makes me want to bang my head against the wall. I started going to a History of Christianity class and that is much better, but it didn't meet this week.

Mainly, it's the house thing that has kept me from writing. We made an offer yesterday. Waiting to hear now.

Friday, June 20, 2003

If I get chills, does that mean it's mine?


I went to look at two houses today. The first was small but very nice, and adequate for my needs. The second had smaller bedrooms, but was bigger overall, and I think I fell in love with it. I carry a Clie NX70V, a PDA that has a digital camera and can take still pictures or video (with sound), so I made a video walk through of each house. Watching them back in my apartment, I got chills and even a bit teary at the second house. I could very much imagine me living in that house!

No writing today. At least not yet. I went from work to the houses to home for dinner. Then I'm going up to my sister's to play with six-week-old kittens!

Thursday, June 19, 2003

It's short, but it feels like a chapter!


Chapter 12 of The Journey is finished. I actually finished it last night, but ff.net was down. Again. I revised the scene I needed to and finished another one. It's short. About as short as the second chapter. But it feels done. And hopefully, the next chapter will be the last. I'm going to try to write it straight through, but if I feel stuck, I'll go back to Faith.

Looks like this blog entry is short as well.

Wednesday, June 18, 2003

A Hunting We Will Go....House-hunting, that is.


So it's now Wednesday and I haven't updated this blog since Sunday. Well, Friday I found out my lease ends September 30th, which makes my moving a bit more (and here you get a chance to learn more about me. I lost the word I was about to type. This happens fairly often and has been happening for years, even before the MegaStress. Ah, wait! I think I found it! Or a close synanym....) urgent. I was thinking I would move at the end of October.

And not just moving to another apartment, but buying a house. I'm going to give it a try (while also saving money for a trip to Europe!). We shall see. I've been preapproved for a mortgage. Now I have to find the house and hope I can afford whatever portion of the closing costs remains to me.

So that's what I've been doing the last few days. Looking at houses. On paper and computer, at least. I should go see an actual house or three on Thursday.

I did do a bit of work on The Journey this weekend, as I'm revising a scene where Buck sees Emma to take her out of Sweetwater (where I'd put her with no canonical evidence). As I thought about it some more, I realized that if she was in Sweetwater, the boys might have seen her once or twice in the second season of the show. I called a friend who reminded me that Sam had become a Territorial Marshall and they probably moved to the Territorial capital. So I got on the Internet and went looking for history. While the capital was always Omaha, the legislature pretty much left everything but the kitchen sink behind in 1856 or so and went to Florence. Omaha was still the capital but in not much more than name. So it's rather vague where Sam would be stationed. Still, it's not Sweetwater.

So I began the process of unfamiliarizing the town and making it vague enough to be Anytown, NE 1861. Or Any-Fair-Sized-and-Civilized-Town, NE.

Monday, June 16, 2003

Sometimes writing just doesn't happen


Well, I wanted to write this weekend, but I ended up too busy to do it. My sister came over Friday evening to help me clean my aparment (I don't seem to be able to do it since the MegaStress. Oh, I'm suppose to explain that someday, aren't I? Well, not tonight. I have to get to bed soon so I can be at work by 8 in the morning). Then Saturday, I ran errands, had a nap, and then went to my sisters to play with kittens and play The Lord of the Rings Trading Card Game. I won two games and she won the third.

Then today was church, lunch, and then shopping. But considering I didn't get but four hours of sleep the night before, I had to have a nap. I slept from about 3 to 7:30 and I was just too groggy to do much else until 10 or so when I got on the net.

So no writing happened this weekend. Darn it.

Saturday, June 14, 2003

Sometimes life just doesn't cooperate


I turned down lunch with a friend today because I wanted to work on that chapter. I'm on a roll and I could just write and write if given the time. At work, I get lunchtime. So I thought I'd sit at my desk and write. But first, I had to take my paycheck to the bank. The bank is about four blocks away. It would only take five minutes or so then I'd be able to write the rest of the time.

But no. The bank didn't have any electricity. Not even for the ATM. So I had to drive to a different branch. And I'd put the actual food portion of lunch off for this. And I was starving! So I drive to the other branch and get to the ATM only to find that the PIN I had wasn't for the ATM but for the phone banking system. Grrrr. So I go to the counter. Fortunately, there was no line, and they had a platter of cookies there. That helped my stomach.

Still, by the time I got back to the office, forty minutes of my lunch hour was gone. Eating took another seventeen. Leaving me a whole three minutes in which to write.

Sigh.

Still, I managed to make some progress today. Word of Buck's immanent arrival has reached Lou and Rachel back in Rock Creek.

Thursday, June 12, 2003

Sometimes you just gotta stick with it.


It turns out, I was able to start my chapter off yesterday. I managed to stay awake reading those previous two chapters (the typos probably helped keep me conscious) and went back to look at those four paragraphs I'd written. There were two for Buck's POV and two for Jenny's. They weren't bad, really, but they weren't really going anywhere. I could tell I wasn't in the story.

Because I felt I could tackle Jenny better at this point, and maybe it would work best to have her start out the chapter, I swapped the scenes. Then I worked again with Jenny, starting where I'd left off. I had to acknowledge the monotony of just riding in a buckboard for hours on the way to town. That was part of the problem. Nothing was going to happen. The other part of the problem was that no one was talking.

So I had her look at Jimmy who was riding beside the buckboard and I thought about what she might see in him. So I had to think how he would feel and what that would look like on him. And then he started talking. Small talk, to pass the time, but it worked. It ended up bringing out some significant dialogue. I got into the story, into the writing, and I think I can write this chapter now.

Today, I'm going to try tackling Buck's POV.

Wednesday, June 11, 2003

I love writing, but sometimes it's hard


The swapping chapters thing started out fairly well. I was writing a chapter of each story in about three weeks each. But now....

I think when I finished Chapter 11 of The Journey, I could easily have gone on writing Chapter 12 and ended the story. I even thought about doing so when Chapter 13 of Faith proved so hard (because of one scene I was stuck on until I found myself pacing around a gazebo in the park near my house). But I didn't. I stuck it out. I wrote Faith 13.

Now it's The Journey's turn and well...I'm not there anymore. I'm trying to be there. In fact, I just reread over chapters 10 and 11. And I found a bunch of typos in chapter 11. And with ff.net not quite up to par yet, I can't upload a fresh copy.... But anywho.... I've written four paragraphs and they just don't seem to flow with the story. And I'm getting sleepy.

Such cruel irony! I want to write and yet I can't.

And my imagination really wants me to continue with Faith, chapter 14. I know just how it will start! But my TYR readers have been waiting quite a while for the end of this story. And I'm so close to the end. One chapter and it is done! Then I won't have to worry anymore about trying to have my imagination keep up with the chapter swapping. One more chapter and it's all Faith from there.

And I guess I'm stalling by sitting here writing in a blog....

Tuesday, June 10, 2003

I am new to this whole blogging thing, but I know it's become quite popular. So I thought I might try it out. I know many people have read my stories and I thought maybe they might like to know my thoughts, processes, insprirations, troubles, etc. They might just want to know what's taking me so long to post the next story! Or if I'm still writing at all!

So here I am.

Introduction



I'm Gabrielle Lawson, author of fanfiction. I'm mostly known for my Star Trek: Deep Space Nine fanfiction. I've written nine or ten stories in that fandom, some short and some very, very long. Two of them have won Best DS9 (General) Story in the alt.startrek.creative annual awards: If It's Not One Thing.... in 1996; Oswiecim in 1998; and Faith, Part I: Hope won Best MIS Combined (for crossovers among Star Trek series) in 2000. All of my Trek stories can be found on Fanfiction.net in my author's profile but also on my own site: The Edge of the Frontier.

I have also written two Angel stories. The first is a tiny vignette where Angel tells Harry of Doyle's death, called Just a Messenger. The other is an epic we-have-to-save-the-world-and-oh-we-need-Doyle-alive-to-do-that crossover with the Scooby Gang of BTVS. That is Close to Home...So Far Away. These can also be found at Fanfiction.net (or ff.net, for short) or my own site (which also includes an archive of other people's good Doyle fiction): This Side of the Nether.

And lately, I've tried dipping my toes in The Young Riders fanfiction. It is based on one of my favorite shows over a decade ago. The show featured a group of young Pony Express riders, one of whom was a half-breed Kiowa. He was a tragic character if ever there was one, and I do love a tragic character. As far as fanfiction goes, it's a new fandom. Not very many stories by not very many writers. This story is The Journey and it is only on ff.net, under my author profile (linked above).

I'm also a writer of Lord of the Rings fanfiction, sort of. I use a penname there and though I don't keep it a secret, I do keep it separate. So Ainaechoiriel is the one who writes those stories. She calls me her Mortal Alter Ego (or MAE, for short). She has a website (nothing fancy yet) called The Land of Myth and Memory and her own profile on ff.net. (Sorry no link at this time. Ff.net is down.)

So, now you know me. Let's get to what this blog is meant for:

On Writing or "why I haven't posted the next chapter/story yet!"



A friend of mine met Armin Shimmerman at a convention and told him she had a friend who writes DS9 fic. She told him my name and he asked if I'm still writing. He hadn't heard anything from me in awhile! I was flabbergasted when she told me! I had given Armin a copy of Oswiecim at least a year or two before. Could this mean he'd actually read it? He knew me by name!

And he also seemed to know that I was slow in finishing my stories. Sigh. Yes, I admit it. I am. Especially since the MegaStress. I'll explain that in another post sometime.

Let me just assure you that yes, I am writing. My TYR readers are wondering when the next chapter is coming and my Trek readers, if they haven't given up on my already, are wondering where the final part of the Faith trilogy is.

Well, I had writer's block for a long time. I put the TYR away to try to write Faith, but I couldn't get anywhere. I knew what Bashir was doing, but not the rest of the DS9 people. I only figured them out a couple of months ago. In the end, I decided to swap chapters. I'd post a chapter of The Journey (I'm experimenting with a WIP--something else I'll get into later) and then I'll work on a chapter of Faith, Part III and so on.

I just finished the third chapter of Faith III. I was hoping the third part would be five chapters like the other two, but I think it's going to be longer. I'd have to cover four days' worth of events in only two chapters. And chapter three was one of those and it only covered one day. So I'm thinking Faith III will be six chapters long.

So now that chapter 3 (or chapter 13 in the whole of Faith) is done and awaiting beta comments, I'm going to start on the last chapter of The Journey. After it's finished, I can concentrate on Faith, though there is another TYR short story that needs an ending and a title.

Well, that's it for now. I hope you found it somewhat interesting. I plan to post here my thoughts and inspirations, some insights in how I write, the problems I have writing, and so forth. I'll try not to spoil anything for the stories I haven't posted though. It will be a difficult balance: being more detailed while also staying vague.