Locus Classicus

My mother always used to say that a poor workman blames his tools. Which now I think of it is a platitude worthy of Bo Kent. But what I've been through to get this up...

I'm staying with friends, and of course I *packed* everything remotely useful like USB cables, so when I want to print something I have to email it from my pc to theirs. Disconnecting one to connect the other... But it's too cold to work out here so I wrote this inside on my work laptop. Which only has wireless and I'm out of range so I thought okay, I'll save it to a disk. That's when I discovered that brand new laptops don't *have* floppy drives. So I walked up to the supermarket to buy a cd so I could copy it onto that and transfer it... Done, done and done.

So without further ado...

Parallel

Lex/Clark, futurefic, mostly R rated. A paean for Denial. "All the ways it could have gone wrong, and one way it didn't."

( chapter ten )

What a week! That's really all I can say.

The highlights so far...

When I merrily downloaded a couple, alright, several, episodes of Smallville without thinking to ask, in fact, what plan mine host the bill payer was on - kids ask your parents first - and the bill came and it was a thousand dollars. And I was all, oh, it's a typo, and they said, no, it's 20c a meg and you downloaded 5000 megs, and... And I had to pretend to be all nonchalant, and oh, yeah, hey, that's sweet, no worries... Because really, even more than the money it was just so incredibly embarrassing, and I felt like the stupidest person in the world, because of course adults who have *lives* and aren't addicted to stupid tv shows never download anything and therefore go for the cheapest connection with the highest excess...

Now in fact, somehow magically, I got away with it after all, because the ISP had forgotten to fix something they were meant to fix, but it doesn't change the fact that I am, in fact, the stupidest person in the world.

This news was confirmed when I was all set to respond to prodding - thank you to all who provided, though I'm afraid again my stupidity trumps your industry - and post new Parallel, and instead of the new chapters, I have a file full of deleted scenes - the bits I cut out. I have *no* idea what happened there. Can I possibly have switched the names on the files??? I never knew I was *that* stupid. This has been a real week of revelations. I'm not sure I'm safe to walk the streets.

Again, this is not quite as bad as it might be, since I have most of the printouts I was proof reading nefariously in class, but as is always the case, I'm now convinced that the last edit must have been the most brilliant thing since sliced bread. Back to the drawing board...

Did I say before Christmas? I meant during Christmas...

And after I called my sisters names and all...

*hangs head in shame*

Seriously. I was *so* close. I sat up till 5am on Christmas Eve, technically Christmas Day I guess, but the chapter just wasn't quite reading the way I wanted it to. And while I didn't want to go back on my word, I didn't want it to be rushed either. So it's very nearly done, and will be in another day or so.

Catch you all soon, and hope you had a great holiday.

I'm shifting this out of the election coverage and into calmer waters, because I'm writing madly, fending off the blues, and there'll be more tonight or tomorrow. Much more. And I don't want to confuse people. Or myself.

Parallel

Lex/Clark, futurefic, mostly R rated. A paean for Denial. "All the ways it could have gone wrong, and one way it didn't."

( chapter seven )

It's strange. Parallel was the very first piece of Smallville fanfic I ever wrote. Or more accurately, *started* to write. Friends, it's been a *long* time. And in part it's just my pedantic perfectionism, and the never ending battle to find the *precise* way to phrase an idea I see vividly in my mind... But partly I think it's the fact that the damn thing has a plot. Not just a "How can Clark convince Lex it's for real?" plot, or even a "How can Jonathan finally see the good in Lex?" plot, but a strange, mysterious journey where I don't know all the answers, and am sometimes as confused as my characters. I wrote all the high points in said plot first, as they came to me in flashes of light, which left me with all the segues and bridges to fill in later. And they aren't as much fun. And have proved infinitely harder.

Every story I've written *since*, I've written in one go, a single afternoon or frenzied late night session. And I've written from beginning to end, not jumping maniacally back and forth. Whatever happens, Parallel will always be a unique experience as far as the actual writing goes. I spent all my afternoon classes today, for example, pen in hand, editing on a hardcopy with half my mind, while answering questions about how casualties were so light in a hoplite battle with the other.

I got a lot done, despite the circumstances, and hope to post *quite a bit* over the next few days. And fear not, I am vowed and determined to finish fairly soon. WIPs should not take forever! In the meantime, though, thank you for putting up with my malingering!

Parallel

Lex/Clark, futurefic, mostly R rated. A paean for Denial. "All the ways it could have gone wrong, and one way it didn't."

( chapter four )

And the next installment, hot off the editing desk, before I cross the Hellespont to Troy and certain doom...

Parallel

( chapter two )

I can no longer deny it. My one true love for Lex and Clark's... one true love... has a rival. I dreamed about them last night!

Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin are my new OTP.

And I'll just take this moment (belatedly) to thank cruisedirector for the icons she made me. Big weevils indeed!

Apropos of nothing in particular, hums innocently I really wanted to be in the navy when I was about seventeen. My distraught mother called in the big guns (my saintly and beloved Latin teacher) to talk me out of it. On such things does the world turn...

Don't despair, Lex, I still love you. I swear I'll get you out of that asylum one of these days... Not the, you know, Asylum one, the other one, the one I put you in and left you in. Sorry about that...