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cardinalgirl75Four years ago, I was in the middle of a writing frenzy. I was consumed with the writing of Nobody's Angel and in spite of a few Real Life frustrations, I was the happiest I'd been in years. I ate, slept, and breathed that story. I've never really talked about how it came about.
I discovered the LuRe online community in the spring of 2011 almost by accident. Someone whose Live Journal I read frequently recommended "Vegas." I wasn't going to read it--I was still pretty disgusted by how the canon storyline had ended and had walked away before the official ending of the show--but since it was AU, I figured it was worth a try. And just like that, I was sucked back into LuRe. Only it was so much better, because where canon screwed everyone over, the writers made everything the way it should've been! Yes!
A whole world of stories awaited me. I lurked for a couple of months just soaking it all in--the amazing stories of rhiannonhero and alicesprings and bigboobedcanuck, the brilliance of mech_bull's Consult universe, the quick-and-dirty PWP stories, and so, SO many others. I couldn't get enough. And around that time, noah_who was doing their rewatch of the LuRe storyline. Inspired by one of the recaps, I wrote something for the first time in six years. That short story was "Social Networking."
Emboldened by the success in completing something, I wanted to write more. I headed over to lure_prompts to see what I could find. Some of the prompts had already been filled, but then I came across slayerkitty's idea for a guardian angel story. Her original prompt was for Reid to be Luke's guardian angel. He'd watched over Luke all his life and eventually fell in love with him, so he was given nine months to win his love and become human permanently.
Around this time, the announcement was made that there was going to be a BigBang. After I figured out what the heck that was (remember, I was coming from the Jane Austen community where long, drawn-out stories were the norm), I was intrigued. I even signed up to do it, but got panicky and deleted my post. But this is from the post I wrote when I made the final decision to participate:
And so I signed up and began plotting, and the rest is history.
So you're probably wondering why I'm talking about this four years later. Well, today I was looking through the contents of an old flash drive and found a file marked "Guardian Angel story." When I opened it up, I discovered my first ideas for how the story would go. Angus was originally named Armand (I think I'd seen The Birdcage not long before). It was only a couple of days later that I smacked myself in the head and went, "Duh. Of course Reid's immediate supervisor is Angus. Who else?" Reid started out as a full-blown Guardian angel rather than as a novice--but a Guardian who wasn't getting anywhere because of his attitude. He was always going to be Chris's Guardian, but the endgame--how he ended up with Luke--changed several times.
I had planned to include The Thing That Didn't Happen as part of Reid thinking it was the only way to salvage his assignment. His reward for his efforts was to be given the chance to become human, which of course he did just in time to keep them from removing his heart to give to Chris. (I hadn't gotten around to deciding whether or not Chris would live before the storyline changed.)
John Dixon was originally going to be a former Angel of Death (he was one of the ones who retired after dealing with James Stenbeck for all those years) and he was the one I thought would explain the whole backstory of why Reid was chosen for this assignment--a task that eventually fell to God himself.
Luke was going to appear sooner than he did and was going to narrate half the story. That went by the wayside very quickly because as I started writing, I knew that this was Reid's journey, and thus Reid's story alone.
*cough* There originally wasn't going to be any sex. Not because I'm prudish, but because I was terrified of writing it. I never had before, and I was afraid of ruining what I hoped would be a great story by including amateurish sex scenes. But again, as I wrote about Reid's journey from a novice detached from human feelings to someone who could love Luke enough to give up heaven for him, I knew that there had to be a more intimate--and thus more physical--connection between him and Luke. I cannot express how much gratitude I have for my incomparable beta, ganeshalemming, for helping me through my fears about writing the sex scenes--along with the rest of the story!
The story wasn't entirely plotted until I'd written almost a quarter of it. I remember riding home after a Cardinals baseball game, frantically tapping away on my iPhone, plotting the story because I knew I was a little stuck and needed something concrete to get me going again. When I did have the storyline mapped out, I wound up losing several thousand words I'd already written because they no longer fit the final vision. (Serves me right for trying to write the ending before I knew for certain what it was going to be.) The good news was, I got to save some of that when I wrote "Heaven Must Be Missing an Angel" later on.
There are no doubt a million more things that I don't remember now that came into play while I wrote the story. There were a ton of frustrations along the way--losing writing time due to real life, the time crunch I found myself in the closer my posting date got (especially since I was actually trying to finish it up before my long-planned birthday trip to Las Vegas), the computer crash which led me to lose the original version of Reid's first time with Luke...but you know what? When I look back at the story, I don't remember most of it. I remember how much fun I had, and how excited I was to be writing. And as I begin a new story for LRO's 2015 BigBang, I hope to be able to recapture that feeling.
I discovered the LuRe online community in the spring of 2011 almost by accident. Someone whose Live Journal I read frequently recommended "Vegas." I wasn't going to read it--I was still pretty disgusted by how the canon storyline had ended and had walked away before the official ending of the show--but since it was AU, I figured it was worth a try. And just like that, I was sucked back into LuRe. Only it was so much better, because where canon screwed everyone over, the writers made everything the way it should've been! Yes!
A whole world of stories awaited me. I lurked for a couple of months just soaking it all in--the amazing stories of rhiannonhero and alicesprings and bigboobedcanuck, the brilliance of mech_bull's Consult universe, the quick-and-dirty PWP stories, and so, SO many others. I couldn't get enough. And around that time, noah_who was doing their rewatch of the LuRe storyline. Inspired by one of the recaps, I wrote something for the first time in six years. That short story was "Social Networking."
Emboldened by the success in completing something, I wanted to write more. I headed over to lure_prompts to see what I could find. Some of the prompts had already been filled, but then I came across slayerkitty's idea for a guardian angel story. Her original prompt was for Reid to be Luke's guardian angel. He'd watched over Luke all his life and eventually fell in love with him, so he was given nine months to win his love and become human permanently.
Around this time, the announcement was made that there was going to be a BigBang. After I figured out what the heck that was (remember, I was coming from the Jane Austen community where long, drawn-out stories were the norm), I was intrigued. I even signed up to do it, but got panicky and deleted my post. But this is from the post I wrote when I made the final decision to participate:
While sitting at work, I kept thinking about the prompt that made me want to write for the first time in nearly six years. And I kept thinking of what my opening scene would be, and where I wanted to go from there. And the next thing I knew, I wished I wasn't at work, because then I could've been writing. That's a feeling I haven't had for a long time.
And so I signed up and began plotting, and the rest is history.
So you're probably wondering why I'm talking about this four years later. Well, today I was looking through the contents of an old flash drive and found a file marked "Guardian Angel story." When I opened it up, I discovered my first ideas for how the story would go. Angus was originally named Armand (I think I'd seen The Birdcage not long before). It was only a couple of days later that I smacked myself in the head and went, "Duh. Of course Reid's immediate supervisor is Angus. Who else?" Reid started out as a full-blown Guardian angel rather than as a novice--but a Guardian who wasn't getting anywhere because of his attitude. He was always going to be Chris's Guardian, but the endgame--how he ended up with Luke--changed several times.
I had planned to include The Thing That Didn't Happen as part of Reid thinking it was the only way to salvage his assignment. His reward for his efforts was to be given the chance to become human, which of course he did just in time to keep them from removing his heart to give to Chris. (I hadn't gotten around to deciding whether or not Chris would live before the storyline changed.)
John Dixon was originally going to be a former Angel of Death (he was one of the ones who retired after dealing with James Stenbeck for all those years) and he was the one I thought would explain the whole backstory of why Reid was chosen for this assignment--a task that eventually fell to God himself.
Luke was going to appear sooner than he did and was going to narrate half the story. That went by the wayside very quickly because as I started writing, I knew that this was Reid's journey, and thus Reid's story alone.
*cough* There originally wasn't going to be any sex. Not because I'm prudish, but because I was terrified of writing it. I never had before, and I was afraid of ruining what I hoped would be a great story by including amateurish sex scenes. But again, as I wrote about Reid's journey from a novice detached from human feelings to someone who could love Luke enough to give up heaven for him, I knew that there had to be a more intimate--and thus more physical--connection between him and Luke. I cannot express how much gratitude I have for my incomparable beta, ganeshalemming, for helping me through my fears about writing the sex scenes--along with the rest of the story!
The story wasn't entirely plotted until I'd written almost a quarter of it. I remember riding home after a Cardinals baseball game, frantically tapping away on my iPhone, plotting the story because I knew I was a little stuck and needed something concrete to get me going again. When I did have the storyline mapped out, I wound up losing several thousand words I'd already written because they no longer fit the final vision. (Serves me right for trying to write the ending before I knew for certain what it was going to be.) The good news was, I got to save some of that when I wrote "Heaven Must Be Missing an Angel" later on.
There are no doubt a million more things that I don't remember now that came into play while I wrote the story. There were a ton of frustrations along the way--losing writing time due to real life, the time crunch I found myself in the closer my posting date got (especially since I was actually trying to finish it up before my long-planned birthday trip to Las Vegas), the computer crash which led me to lose the original version of Reid's first time with Luke...but you know what? When I look back at the story, I don't remember most of it. I remember how much fun I had, and how excited I was to be writing. And as I begin a new story for LRO's 2015 BigBang, I hope to be able to recapture that feeling.
