#tthabl

You know, I had been telling myself for a while “okay, just stick with Eddie’s perspective here, and then you can go on to Stan’s perspective, and then the story will be done.” And then there was a scene that I was really looking forward to towards the middle-end of Indelicate, that I was having the darnedest time writing even though objectively it is very fun, and I asked myself, “Why is it?” And the answer was, Eddie’s very passive in the scene and Richie’s very active, and even though Eddie has a lot going on in his internal narrative, he’s being kind of a closed book to Richie and mostly reacting instead of acting, which is what is making it harder to write.

Now, does that mean I should break my point of view for the whole work just because this one scene is fighting me? I mean, I could, but I’m kind of attached to the idea that Indelicate is Eddie’s story in particular. So how do I walk myself (and Richie and Eddie) through the events of the scene?

I have decided to write it in Richie’s perspective first, and then write it from Eddie’s perspective.

Honestly my consumption of the IT franchise went IT Chapter 1 in 2017, IT book in winter/early spring 2018, massive depression and IT audiobook in summer 2019, IT Chapter 2 in fall 2019, writing TTHAEL one week later in fall 2019. So when I look at it, a lot of my perspective on IT--especially the work I did in the Things That Happen After series--is much more relevant to the book than it is to IT fanfiction, which I only tangentially consumed before I saw the 2019 movie and lost my mind a little bit.

I think that since then, a lot of my characterization has been influenced by other IT fanfiction I’ve read--and since I usually read about the adults, it’s very influenced by other people’s perceptions of IT (2019) and common fandom-accepted traits. But I’m almost proud of how fast I created TTHAEL, because it had very little time to be influenced by anything other than myself in a vacuum. I fear that’s not necessarily the case for my current works, but since I still have the audiobook on my phone--if I really want to do something about that, I can if I choose to.

Ha! I like the radio talk show metaphor.

I don’t know if I have a hierarchy of favorites, but I certainly find Richie and Eddie the easiest right now. Probably because I’ve written them the most--Ben and Bev are a little more serious, Bill’s hard to get a handle on because he canonically violates the rules of “third person limited” by reading other people’s thoughts (damn it, Bill), and I haven’t really tried Mike yet. Stan wants to be written soon, though--he was talking to me at dinner. I’m gonna have to go back through his letter and then think about how I want to structure his sentences, because I feel like it would be appropriate for him to have a certain direct practicality that I’m definitely out of practice with since I’ve been writing almost exclusively Eddie since January.

I think that writing Richie makes me funnier in real life? It definitely made me weird to talk to when I was writing TTHAEL, and I definitely made some jokes that had my Partner like “why would you SAY that?” But also the self-loathing is kind of exhausting, so Richie’s got kind of a flat, cynical, oily texture to his inner narrative, and then it’s sharp when he’s making a joke or verbally lashing  out at someone. I love him, but I don’t think I’ve tried to write an uncomplicatedly happy Richie yet.

Eddie, though--Eddie’s fun to write because he has such depth, and he’s prone to flights of fancy, even though he would deny it out loud. (I’m thinking about book!Eddie reflecting on a baseball player having the glory of the cosmos in the strength of his swing; so I translated that to Richie crouched in a visitor’s chair in a hospital room, looking “positively geographic” like a mountain range.) But film!Eddie makes him sharper and makes him talk fast, which means I feel like I  can have longer run-on sentences. I guess that means that, for me, writing from Eddie’s perspective is enabling--and I do enjoy that.

I have been struggling mightily with Chapter 10--I know where I want to go with it, but I just wasn’t happy with any of the 8 or so drafts I wrote for it. I scrapped the whole thing AGAIN and started over yesterday, and I’m finally feeling the magic instead of going “this road trip is onerous and I want them to kiss,” and cutting some scenes I thought weren’t working, breaking up some others, and adding some more fun ones means I’m currently at (checks doc) 9 pages, 3.8K words. It’s coming soon, I just know that this is the longest break I’ve taken between chapters and I think some of the pressure there to grind out the words (even though I learned in my writing workshops that if you only write when you’re inspired, you don’t do a lot of writing) kind of made it hard for me to enjoy the drafts. Which is not how I usually feel in fandom at all! Everyone has been extremely supportive and friendly and given nice non-commanding feedback and told me to take my time, including you, and I am so grateful for that!

I can recognize now that I did start to burn out in the middle of writing Things That Happen After Beverly Leaves--but then my dog passed away, and I decided to take some time off to grieve, and my brain got to recharge. I can feel some of that burnout happening now--the wick getting close to the bottom, I guess--and while I really want to make it to a certain scene before I take a break (I’m realizing I’m going to have to take a break), and I really want to have something to work on every day while the social distancing is happening to help me with that sense of accomplishment, I also want to keep enjoying writing the  story (number one), and I want the same kind of tone in the whole fic, which I’m worried about losing if I try to slam on the accelerator when there’s not enough gas in the tank, as it were. I’m thinking I’ll maybe get to Chapter 12 (that’s my projection for the scene I’m excited about), take a little rest, work on some other projects, and then come back when I feel ready to dedicate the same energy to the fic.

One of the things that has helped me regain my inspiration to a certain degree is writing little ficlets on Twitter. I started one night when I had to take NyQuil for my constant sneezing and coughing and blowing my nose, and decided to write like a 5+1 about Richie sleeptalking in like 7 or 8 tweets. Then the other day I mentioned I was feeling down and asked for prompts and I started writing little ficlets right there in the twitter thread. I do plan on going back and archiving them to AO3 at some point, but if you’re at all interested between now and then (they’re mostly Richie/Eddie but someone asked for a Bill/Mike that’s been pretty well-received) you can find them at my twitter: (https://twitter.com/IfItHollers/status/1243725597303623680). Also one of the prompts I received has really sparked an idea in my head that I’m thinking I might put into a bigger fic on AO3, so (in addition to Bill Denbrough Writes an Ending) I have other interesting irons in the fire.

LOL thank you so much! In IT Part 2 Bev never went to Kay’s, but in TTHABL Tom assumed she did and went after Kay. Kay, however, literally had no idea what Tom was talking about and just figured that Bev had run, which meant that Tom went through with his threat to cut her with the shard of vase. But Kay avoids a lot of the shame she felt in IT (King) because she physically couldn’t betray Bev. She had never even heard of Derry, Maine.

I don’t want to downplay the lingering effects that violence has on a person, especially gendered violence, but I think a lot of Beverly Leaves is kind of an Exhibit A on my take on that. Kay is deeply disturbed by Tom’s attack on her, and she’s clinging to what she didn’t have in canon: the triumph of having protected Bev. She compensates for the feelings of violation and helplessness by casting herself in the role of protector. I don’t want to accuse Stephen King of writing women badly (cough nipples cough), but I think the time update also changes some of Kay’s approach to feminism and her response to Tom. Book!Kay went to the ER full of shame knowing that Tom was after Bev and that she had no way to warn her he was coming. TTHABL!Kay went to the ER like she was going to war, and waged it until she finally got confirmation that Bev was still alive.

Woohoo!

12) Favorite character to write about this year

Oh man. It’s Richie Tozier. I blame him entirely, but it’s Richie Tozier. Love that nightmare man. Honorable mentions to Eddie and to Bev and Ben, but I have a favorite and half of my goal when I’m writing IT-fic is to try not to show that on the page and be like “I love all my Losers equally.”

21) Most memorable comment/review

Well today I responded to one that said “this fic punched me in the metaphorical dick in the best way,” and that was very memorable.

And then there was the one that went through and analyzed Richie and Eddie’s character dynamic and said “the difference between ‘he ain’t hurting anyone’ and ‘I like to fight,’” which basically summed up the whole friendly-combative dynamic I was going for, which of course I loved.

And then there was the time that @pineapplecrushface ended up in my inbox and I had a starstruck moment.

And the people who pointed out to me back when I was in the process of writing Eddie Lives that I was, in fact, writing a slowburn.

And then the one who correctly identified Bucky Barnes’s cameo in Beverly Leaves and prefaced it with “this is probably not right” but they were absolutely right.

And the person who observed that Richie responds to Eddie’s refusal to calm down even a little bit by pinning him to the floor and said “I see you, Mr. Tozier.”

And the video of the dildo solemnly rolling across a luggage carousel as Mitski’s “Nobody” plays in the background.

And of course, the first comment I got on Things That Happen After Eddie Lives, which was a simple “okay, I need more of this.” Turns out I did too.

I love them all and it’s not fair to leave any of them out. I felt so guilty for giving a fix-it to Eddie but not to Stan that Stan became a very active player in Things That Happened After Eddie Lives, completely to my surprise considering what I intended to write when I started out.