Slumber

Title: House of Heretics (3/4)
Pairing: Draco/Astoria, mentions of Cormac/Astoria, Viktor/Pansy, also hints at various Slytherin ships
Word Count: <38,000, 9877 for this section
Rating/Warnings: R, mentions of infidelity and crime
Betas: acidpop25 kept an eye out for flow and phrasing, and grrarrg0908 battled my italics valiantly and came out triumphant. Any mistakes are due to my post-beta meddling.
Summary: Seven years have passed since Voldemort's defeat and Draco Malfoy is making do with the lot he's been given--distrusted by the most of the ministry, shunned by the House that he betrayed. When a ministry official goes missing, Draco is given the chance to help restore the Malfoys' place in society. But is Astoria standing in his way or is she just what he needs to be exonerated?
Author's notes: For Slytherins, the loves of my life. Narcissa probably wouldn't be here if not for Helen McCrory's performance in Deathly Hallows. The characters are JKR's, but Foxglove Bakery is Caroline's. Hope you enjoy reading! Written for het_bigbang. On the HBB site here and AO3 here.

( iii. cunning just like him )

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Title: House of Heretics (1/4)
Pairing: Draco/Astoria, mentions of Cormac/Astoria, Viktor/Pansy, also hints at various Slytherin ships
Word Count: <38,000, 9150 for this section
Rating/Warnings: R, mentions of infidelity and crime
Betas: acidpop25 kept an eye out for flow and phrasing, and grrarrg0908 battled my italics valiantly and came out triumphant. Any mistakes are due to my post-beta meddling.
Summary: Seven years have passed since Voldemort's defeat and Draco Malfoy is making do with the lot he's been given--distrusted by the most of the ministry, shunned by the House that he betrayed. When a ministry official goes missing, Draco is given the chance to help restore the Malfoys' place in society. But is Astoria standing in his way or is she just what he needs to be exonerated?
Author's notes: For Slytherins, the loves of my life. Narcissa probably wouldn't be here if not for Helen McCrory's performance in Deathly Hallows. The characters are JKR's, but Foxglove Bakery is Caroline's. Hope you enjoy reading! Written for het_bigbang. On the HBB site here and AO3 here.


( i. he left us quite downhearted )

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I totally flaked out of doing all of the womenlovefest days, and I wish I could say real life was to blame, but in reality, I ran out of things to say about Sansa that wouldn't be repetitive. I've read so little. :( Also, this is the last week of het_bigbang and I've been editing on and off since getting the fic back from my lovely lovely betas.

I will be so happy come noon this Sunday, because that's essentially my buzzer going "Time's up! Pencils up! Submit what you have, please and thanks."

Because no matter how much I spend editing, I'm always going to find new things to fix. I probably waffled on the same thing five different times or something, IDEK. Blergh. Seriously. Editing is like the Doctor going to war with the Daleks-- you think it's the last time you face them, but you turn around and there they are again, challenging you in their new form.

I have battled italics, adverbs (still a few strays, but brain's too fried to figure out how best to reword those), prepositions, tenses (though I'm this close to admitting defeat), redundancies and repetitive wording, and today, it's "managed to" and other variations of prolonging sentences -- beware, "the fact that", for you are next. Or something. Yet I know, the next time I look, there will be something new to change, some stray word to pluck out and replace.

So glad there is a deadline for this.

I crossed the 25K mark on my het_bigbang on July 10. I nearly broke 30K a week later, and then... I stopped. For about five weeks. Then I rearranged things (SOBBING I LOVE SCRIVENER), cut out-- oh, what's 10K words?-- and started writing again towards the end of August. In the interest of not getting ahead of myself, I will just post numbers and leave the commentary for another day, preferably when I have finished the whole damned thing. :|

September 4:
33867 / 25000 words. 135% done! +10126

( I've apparently been working on this for 11 weeks so far )

In other writing news, hogwarts_houses (which I signed up for) has started posting, and will post throughout September. It's house-focused, and so far there have been some great pieces for it. I'm talking extreme minor characters (the Hufflepuff one is about a part-vampire once featured on JKR's site) and even an OC/OC one for Slytherin that was about Draco's grandfather's brother.

I also signed up for smutty_claus and I have an outstanding prompt for interhouse_fest that I still have to sort out plot-wise but can't wait to start writing. Smutty Claus assignments get sent out September 21ish, so I'm hoping to knock both out by October.

And then it's No-Write November for me, thankyouverymuch. Whew.

Random Writing Babble

I was reading an old application for a game -- think June 2008, almost exactly three years ago -- and realized that a phrase I used to describe my character's appearance back then is almost exactly the phrasing I used to describe a character in a fic I wrote this year. Granted, I was thinking of the same man while I was writing both, but the semi-self-plagiarization probably means I'm a little too used to using the same turns of phrases or something.

Blergh.

Read a couple of posts recently about POV and epithets too, things I'm not normally aware of when I write, and yep. I've been very recently guilty of them.

Double and triple blergh.

Glompfest Beta?

Due to alaana_fair's not-so-subtle pimping, PLUS the availability of an awesome prompt that I just couldn't say no to, I signed up for Glompfest. Which is funny, because I actually checked, and I have a total of two Harry/Draco fics in my archives, ahahaha. Also, don't look, because I'm not proud of either of them.

Anyway. Almost a third of the way through, and I was wondering if anyone on the flist would like to beta? It will probably be under 5,000 words. I hope.

Het Big Bang Tips and Beta?

I signed up for het_bigbang with a Slytherin-based plot in mind. It's 25k minimum, due September 20th or something close to that date, and I'm not allowing myself to start it until Glompfest gets done. I know 25K is peanuts to some of you (and you have my eternal admiration), but I've never written anything over 10,000 words. So. I need some help? Possibly a beta who will help point out plot holes, iron out loopholes and what-have-you, and then proofread along the way, if someone has the time. And if you've participated in a big bang before...

What generally works best in terms of outlining/planning so you know you'll reach 25K? How do you determine whether or not you have enough of a plot to make the minimum, but not too much that it goes way over? (I don't want to be unable to finish it, since deadlines seem to be my only motivation for writing things.)

General words of wisdom? Advice? Writing habits that really help and writing habits that really don't?

Thanks. ♥