notes on "Those I Can Save"

[bronze_ribbons]

chazpure's sign-up request.

Ribbons' initial reaction to assignment: "Hee! I get to write for Chaz!"

Ribbons' follow-up reaction to assignment: "Kids? I don't write kids. Must think up spy plot!"

Ribbons' brain, being momentarily helpful: "You could frame it within a variation of Ghost and Mrs. Muir where the cottage turns out to be 'haunted' by Lupin..."

Ribbons' brain, back to its bad subversive self: "You could go with prompt #1 and make one of the kids the villain." (That would be this conversation. The book was Deadly Doses, which ended up not being relevant to this fic at all. Though I'm glad I've now consulted it -- the layout's poor, but the contents may well be useful in the future...)

Ribbons scribbles and wibbles for a month. 5,982 words in, I finally conclude I've been stuck on a problem scene all week because the fic starts in the wrong place, I've had the wrong villain in mind, and what I've written so far is not only disjointed but boring. Once I admit to myself I have to start over, that's when my brain finally, finally clues me in on who really rescued Snape and why. I am simultaneously delighted and very, very annoyed. (I also privately mourn losing Helia Sinistra's snide chatter, but Pince and Hooch more than make up for it.)

Here's how the story originally opened:

"Aren't we therrrrrrrre yet?" Caroline Mortensen whined.



For the seventeenth time since they'd set out for the village of Bannocks-on-Tartan, Severus Snape rolled his eyes. He had managed thus far to restrain himself from snapping, "Obviously not," primarily because the older children in their entourage were prompt to say it for him.



He had also repeatedly reminded himself that Caroline was barely seven years old. Over the years, he had contended with thousands of students twice her age who had displayed far less fortitude when faced with ill fortune: in April, the child had barely escaped the killers who had slain both her parents and all her siblings by unwittingly transforming herself into a hazel sapling, and she had spent much of the year sequestered in Poppy Pomfrey's tiny Islington pied-a-terre with three other Slytherin orphans and a convalescent former spy.



Severus's recovery had been painfully slow. He hadn't expected to live through the War, and his body had strenuously objected to its retrieval from the brink of death. During his first two months in Poppy's custody, he had averaged twenty hours of sleep a day. During the third month, it had taken his mind an inordinate number of rereadings to make sense of the papers Poppy had handed to him – the ones which assigned him the guardianship of the four children nursing him back to health under Poppy's gruff supervision.



Mortified at needing help -- especially from children -- even for basic ablutions, Severus had pushed himself far too quickly, and he had suffered a relapse at the start of the fourth month, triggering a barrage of exasperated lectures from Poppy. During the fifth month, Hogwarts had reopened its doors; as a result, Severus had scarcely seen Poppy, who had resumed her duties there, but Helia Sinistra had secretly stopped by the flat with an antique wand and fresh hearsay about Harry Potter's efforts to clear Severus's name.



The anniversary of Lily Evans Potter's death had fallen midway through the sixth month. By then, Severus had regained much of his strength and most of his wit, and he had begun to consider how and where to raise the children. They could not impose on Poppy forever: even with its magically expanded closets, the flat was too small, and while Severus had never cared for sports himself, he was conscious that growing children needed far more exercise than they had managed while in Islington. While they had not yet attracted overt attention from the Ministry, Severus was certain that their existence was already known to its officials. Helia had informed him, however, that the Ministry's resources were spread more thinly than ever, and that, his notoriety notwithstanding, Severus's existence was simply not as much of a threat to the public good (or the Ministry's reputation) as the mermen-spawned floods in Dorset, the disappearing cows in Cheshire, or the episodes of dragon-sparked arson plaguing the groves of Humberside.



On the night of 31 October, after the children had gone to sleep, Severus had sat in Poppy's second-favourite armchair, contemplating the heavy pouch of Galleons and Bank of England notes in his lap. It had been delivered by an owl he hadn't recognised...

Throughout all this, I had decided that I wasn't going to worry about how recognizable I might be, because it was going to take all my existing brain cells to write (1) something plotty enough for Chaz (2) that didn't suck (3) in time! That said, there was a major facepalm moment when I belatedly realized I'd written yet another fic incorporating apples and Levicorpus and Lupin with yet another "R" alias ... and, over the course of the fest-season, I noticed several phrases I'd used that are now on the verge of becoming ship clichés (such as Lupin looking like a man about to be executed...). There was one typo that gave me pain every time it showed up in a quote, and I have a heap of notes on the side-issues and shinies that will have to go into some other story some other day, because there wasn't time or room to fit them into this one.

All of that said, I love this fic anyway. Perhaps saying so is neither modest nor wise, but I do: I've seen some other writers hating on their own stories, and while there's a part of me that understands (I forget who it was that claimed, "Poems are never finished - they are merely abandoned"), there's another part of me that has little patience for it: if something is so flawed you can't bear to reread it, why should anyone else bother with it in the first place? (I recently read about a romance novelist -- Sandra Brown, I think? -- whose first editor told her, "If you want the world's attention, you better have something to say.") The disparity between what I see/hear within my own mind and my actual skills continually frustrates the living hell out of me, but I invest enough effort and thought in my work that, if I release it into the wild, I've concluded that it's worth reading (even if it's just to make someone laugh or to riff on a challenge), no matter what eludes my ability to depict and/or fix. (And, speaking of fixing, I just tweaked and tightened the archived story in about two dozen spots. Nothing major - just little repetitions and clunkers that made me itch when I reread it...)

So, yeah, this fic makes me happy. I like that I was able to figure out I was way off-track before I inflicted it on aunty_marion. I amused myself sneaking in references to odogoddess, Trek, Heinlein, and Chaz's ginormous Reversathon stories. Sometimes my sense of humor is a little too arcane, so I was unspeakably relieved when multiple readers confirmed that the line about the cows was indeed funny. *g* I rejoiced in the comments and recs the story received (that people feel so moved will never, ever get old), and while I have no plans to write a sequel, I'm thrilled that Steelcoeur Park was plausible enough for folks to want to revisit it.

And now I'm off to meet a friend for coffee, and then it's back to working on my next story. So many bunnies, so little time...

Comments

[mnemosyne_1.insanejournal.com]

No, really, the cow bit was probably my favorite part of the whole fic - it was absolutely hilarious!

I like reading your mental process though. Mine was more a panicky feeling... that I couldn't possibly write a good enough fic for Lore!!

[bronze_ribbons.insanejournal.com]

There's a record of me hyperventilating (http://community.livejournal.com/dearsanta/18679.html?thread=119543#t119543) when I was assigned lore during dearsanta 2005 (my first fest season), so I totally hear you on the panic.

Also, thank you so much for the rec! I went all bouncety when I saw my fic (with cow!) on your list. :-D :-D :-D