by Mayumi-H | Sep 23, 2017 | Short Stories
Logline:
When Artyom escaped from the Metro tunnels under irradiated Moscow, he thought he’d left the war, the mutants, and the horrors of the Metro’s fractured societies behind. But the dead don’t give up so easily.
The story behind the story:
In early 2017, a bundle sale of “Metro 2033: Redux” rekindled my interest in the “Metro 2033” games. I vaguely remembered them being based on a larger story. So I poked around the Internet about it, and I discovered the game was based on not just one book, but three books, all written by Dmitry Glukhovsky. I ordered and devoured all three books in the space of about 5 weeks. Even after I’d finished the books, my imagination was hungry for more. I read a few fanfiction stories, but very few of them followed the books, and none of those stories took the characters where I wanted to see them go. Of course, that meant I had to put my own version to paper.
“Brotherhood of the Dead” came to me in a dream of dark tunnels and monstrous shapes, and a young couple bound to each other yet struggling to connect. I wrote it in a little less than a month, during the early summer of 2017. It’s full of a different imagery and emotion than I’ve used before, as I tried to match Glukhovsky’s original style. Still, it commandeered my brain and my keyboard until I could get the whole thing down.
Here it is, for you to click on. Or not. Very few people read this story when I posted it at Archive Of Our Own and Fanfiction.Net. Fewer still are likely to read it here. But that’s okay. I enjoyed finding my!Artyom’s voice, and doing the research around the Metro stations underneath (modern-day) Moscow, old Russian folk tales, Eurasian geography, and subterranean hydroponics. And, isn’t the joy of it what truly matters?
by Mayumi-H | Jan 2, 2017 | Persona 4 Fan Fiction, Process
Whenever I feel like I haven’t produced anything in a while, I look at what stories I’ve posted. 2016 might not have been my most prolific year, but I did write – and post – a little bit over 66,000 words, across 22 stories. I’m not including the work I did on the rewrite of my sci-fi adventure story, or all of the back story snippets I hashed out when the editing wasn’t working to my liking, or the starts to stories I scrapped or set aside because I went back to editing and rewrites, because those have not been seen by eyes other than mine. They would also be a lot harder to calculate.
Not a great year for output, but not as poor as I’d originally suspected when thinking back on it.
Not every one of these stories is great, but each one represents a personal effort, and my desire to become a better storyteller. If I had to pick a favorite, I know which one I’d choose…but I won’t say because a parent playing favorites is not a good thing. š
For those of you who took time out of your lives to read any of these, and especially to those folks who let me know what they thought, thank you from the depths of my artist’s heart. Hearing that I’ve touched, amused, or entertained someone else with these stories keeps me going day after day.
What was your 2016 year in writing like? Any surprises, challenges, or turnarounds? Here’s looking forward to a strong 2017 in all of our writing goals!
by Mayumi-H | Jun 1, 2015 | Fearless, Finding Mister Wright, Process
My āNo Sex with Ax and Halā 30-day writing challenge is officially finished! Only 1 or 2 people read most of it, but thatās okay. I accomplished what I set out to do, which was to write – and post – a complete vignette/chapter/scene every day for 30 days straight. (It actually ended up being 31 daysā worth of writing, and 32 chapters written, including one epilogue for each of the two mains, because I donāt like to leave too many plot threads hanging.) If, in that process, I also got to add a bit of characterization to my main Borderlands romance bros, all the better.
Not sure what Iām going to write next. Iām rather tired of feeling lonely in fandoms, so Iām thinking maybe I should return to my original fiction, like Fearless or Finding Mister Wright. Or, maybe I’ll finally get cracking on that detective story. At least with my originals, itās alone without being lonely. Regardless, Iāve really enjoyed writing my BL adventurers over the last two years. (Has it really only been two years?!) They taught me a lot. They even found me a few new friends. Iāll always love āem, for that.
Heck, Iāll always love āem, anyway.
by Mayumi-H | Mar 14, 2015 | From Hell (A Love Story), Process, Publishing
As of 10:22pm ET, Thursday, March 12, 2015, I finished the content pass edit of my pseudo-novel, the homoerotic space opera western From Hell: A Love Story.
Closed chapter folders in Scrivener = Finished content edit!
I started my Borderlands story of āHow the Commando Got His Turretā in July 2013. It’s grown and changed quite a bit over the course of the last year-and-a-half, I think – I know – for the better. I took chapters out, I redesigned scenes, I added and deleted and deleted some more. The original version of this story ran about 112,000 words. This edited version? A little over 83,600 words, as Scrivener will tell you:
Over the course of the latest edit, I cut or reworked a tad less than 30,000 words. I’m sure a professional editor would have helped me work the story even tighter, but, since I can’t sell this story, I wanted to keep my costs down as much as possible. Still, I think that’s pretty good, for a first-timer.
Just because I’m so far happy with this content edit does not mean even my truncated version of the self-publishing process is over, though. I still have the interior line edit, the cover (front, spine, and back), the administrative logistics like ISBN details and credits, the dedication, the compile, and the submission process. But, right now, I’m riding too pleasant a wave from finishing that tough rewrite to think about all of that yet to hurdle.
I could spend a long time talking about why I chose to publish this particular story, how all the ups and downs of my life over the last two years pushed me to try and better myself as a writer, but the honest truth is that I just wanted to see if I could do it. I love this story, no doubt, and its flawed Byronic hero is one of the most fun I’ve written yet. But it is fanfiction, and for that reason alone I can’t get too attached to the men and women on its pages, at least not to the extent I might do for a cast of my own true creating.
I’m not finished-finished, yet. But, looking back on the last six months or so of editing this story, I’m glad I did it. It is a better story than it was, even if some people might disagree. I took to heart a lot of commentary I got from that earlier version, too. So, you know, it pays to tell a writer what you think of their story, because you never know how you might change a book. I’m happy with it, though. And, I’m still as in love with these characters and this world as when I’d started, something I’d feared would fade as I picked apart their conflicts and arguments and make-up moments.
Was it a difficult process? You bet. I can’t I don’t want to count how many times I thought about giving up and tossing the whole thing out the window. Because this is a fanfiction story for a niche fandom, and I’m on the edge of that niche. Because anyone who’d be interested in this story in the first place has probably already read the first draft and won’t want to read an edit. Because it’s a story loaded with bloody violence, graphic sex, drug use and abuse, and foul language that sometimes made me, as the writer, pause to consider if I really wanted to go there. But, the one piece of advice I’ve always believed in, and that I’ve always shared with other writers around me, is to finish whatever story they’re writing. Writing “The End” on a story – even if that end is a crap and totally seat-of-the-pants conclusion –Ā is a real accomplishment. Anybody – ANYBODY – can start a story. A writer finishes them. I viewed completing this edit as completing the story for a second time. Because, with all of those changes I’d made, it did feel a lot like a second story. And getting to write “The End” on this one made me feel so good.
Have you ever edited one of your own stories? Did you make a lot of changes? How did those changes make you feel? What would you recommend for others editing their work?
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