impulsereader | The cuts say it all (Reply)

It continues to be sunny and beautiful, and just warm enough for everything but walking, which sends me straight into the shower. This unseasonable weather is really shocking, especially after such a mild winter. Chicago gets such short periods of really perfect weather – once in Spring and once in Fall if we’re very very lucky – Summer is almost always too hot and Winter too snowy, though I only care about that when I have to drive in it and I’d rather cuddle under a blanket than lie around wishing I could also take my skin off.

We’ve hit a charmed week or so just recently. I’d expected to be breaking in my new boots for Edinburgh now on chilly, wet days with maybe even a little leftover snow, but when I tried them out this weekend they were much too warm for the weather, though they’re basically lace-up wellies with only a thin lining. I shall have to hope the weather on my trip proves as wet and unpredictable as I have been expecting, with a tendency toward cooler temperatures.

I’d been planning to hold off on posting my Once Upon a Time fic until I’m back, but I feel that it might suffer for having too much new canon hanging over it. Having been born of Skin Deep it is probably best read upon its heels. I’m considering reading through once more – as I have yet to do so without changing things as I go – and then just – posting it – jumping into the deep end, as it were. I also really have to go back to writing other things – see if I can really complete my challenge of – it’s very grand you see – actually finishing something long enough to be a book. So I need to stop playing around with this story and move on.

Much too much information on my writing process.

If you’re a real glutton, you can see the beginning of this tale here.

I wrote a story. It turned out to be a much different story than I expected it to be. It also ended up being shmoopy in the extreme, which I had also not expected. Then, I found myself writing this:
I’m feeling increasingly conflicted regarding this story I’ve written. It is very nearly done; complete but I’m still tweaking wording when I read through it. It was born of Skin Deep and some subsequent reading done in fandom, and it isn’t at all what I imagined.

My main problem is with the character of Rumpelstiltskin/Mr. Gold. I’ve written him, as I think the majority of fandom is doing, as a man. My Mr. Gold is a man who is feeling particularly guilty because of what happened to Belle after he sent her away and then believed the Queen when she delivered the news/rumor of what subsequently happened to her. Personally my thought is that the parallel is - Belle in FTL was being held captive by the Queen, so we get Storybrooke Belle being held captive by the Mayor. Rumpelstitskin swallowed a big fat lie and never even tried to find Belle. Thus; the guilt, almost paralyzing.

But Rumpelstiltskin is a Trickster, and no matter what Belle says or how he acts during the twenty-something minutes of canon we see of their time together in Skin Deep, he isn’t just a man. He has lived centuries and spun deals with countless people. He has seen aspects and layers of life and people that amount to experience which no single man would ever posess. This is all just on top of whatever rides around inside him and gives him his magic.

So I want to go back through and make my Gold reflect all of this, but I don’t think I can make it fit the story I’ve otherwise written, which surprised the hell out of me by being about Belle fixing him so she can have her happily ever after. She can’t fix him if he’s not broken, but a broken Gold is so – wrong. Granted, I think I manage to show that he’s only broken when it comes to her, he’s still his normal self when dealing with the rest of Storybrooke and the curse, but it still feels wrong to me. I don’t want Gold to be a wuss, and I sort of feel that’s how I’m portraying him.

How do you convey, broken but not a wuss? Sigh.

And then I found myself reading this - read it - it is excellent. And then I commented to thank the author for sharing and tell him/her that I liked the story very much. As I did so, I found myself writing myself out of posting my story.

So. What to do? I’ve spent a lot of time writing this, and I’ll be honest, I love it. It tugs at me in just the right way, and I absolutely love it. But the character portrayal is wrong – or at least needs to be balanced differently. I can’t just let people read it as is because I love it, because part of it is just wrong. So I end up abandoning the entire premise I began with – which caused me to start writing - and I start over, giving Mr. Gold some venom. I had to rewrite a good bit of the beginning, but was able to eventually use most of the shmoop I’d written, fitting it in around the venom.

The result is a fic that I don’t love nearly as much as I loved the first one – I saved the first one, thankfully, and it will be for my eyes only as it is, you know, wrong. This new fic has some really good bits, and I think I’ve managed to balance it fairly well, and obviously I hope people will enjoy reading it and tell me so. The entire process was so very strange, but I finally feel emotionally ready to part with the story, so I suppose that’s ultimately what is important. I can hardly live within it forever.