Give me something to write

[chess]

I'm sure there is a ton of work I ought to be doing, but currently none of it is urgent enough to actually motivate me to *do* it. I have a lot of little bits of stories languishing around, but nothing actually on the go. My lectures are starting to be predictable enough that I can draw in them, although not actually write because I get too absorbed and suddenly realise I missed the last bit. Still, I like writing and could do with something to write now I've done about all the narging with Ars Magica characters I can do.

I do weird random short stories, long rambling space opera, and fanfiction of stuff I know and/or can easily get books for reference. However, I don't seem to be able to motivate myself to write without an audience in mind. So you guys should tell me what you want to read, and if I think it's within my talents, I shall write it for you. (As term gets busier it might take a while, but I like to have ongoing projects.)

Also, is anyone interested in beta-ing / generally looking through and telling me where my tremendous continuity bloopers are today for a sprawling novel-length space opera? Some of you have already read the first draft - it's The Sky Goes On And On For You And Me - but I've caught one vast continuity issue since then, and have subsequantly lost track of whether I've changed enough to make my hasty patch over it work...

On a related but different note, does anyone have a good method of taking a vast pile of text (generally Psion Word, so can be modelled as plain text with single line breaks for paragraphs, although some of it has double line breaks) and turning it into HTML? I think that I basically need to write a script to turn newline characters into
tags, but I feel sure someone's done it for me already somewhere, and possibly thought of other things too, like if I get it out in RTF or Word format can I automagically deal with italics and stuff? Word would kind of do it (although it would also add Gunge), but I don't have a Windows install any more and I'm not sure what OpenOffice's variety of Added Gunge is like.

Comments

[edith-the-hutt.livejournal.com]

Write something about an airship that runs on gin and tonic, piloted by a green-haired sea-monster and his pet lobster that sails around the modern world and commits acts of piracy, chivelry and "That was so damn cool"-ness. Maybe stealing the crown jewels and replacing them with a big bag of jelly-babies for a drunken bet or something.

Add a crew of random and insane characters. And the toaster from Red Dwarf.

Enough inspiration for you?

[chess]

http://www.livejournal.com/users/storyness/12567.html

[edith-the-hutt.livejournal.com]

Squee!

Of course now I need to come up with another story idea for my EdNoWriMo. Probably something which involves the phase "gettin' rightously medieval".

[rochvelleth.livejournal.com]

I'd really like to read something original about vampires.

Failing that, how about a sweet historical romance set in Scotland of the 1680s? (NB if you don't write this, I'm fairly likely to someday...)

Or... Invaders/crime fanficfic

Pirate slash? No... Medieval bowmen slash. Or without the slash. I'm not actually a slash junkie.

*evil grin* Oh, also sorry but I'm determined not to beta-read for the next six months or so - too much to do :(

[marble.livejournal.com]

If you only want double newlines into <p>'s, that can be done with a simple sed ( 's/^$/<p>/'), if you want all line lengths etc, just stick a <pre> around it?

[requiem-17-23.livejournal.com]

There's a room, with a chair in it, with someone sitting in the chair. There's a square of light shining on the chair. The person's been in the chair forever.

There's a voice, too. An observer's? Talking to the person in the chair, and listening to them.

Time evolution of above state.

I don't know if it's story-worthy, but it was a random mental image I had.

Re: tell me what you want to read

[douglas-reay.livejournal.com]

I'd love to read something featuring amicogs: http://www.toothycat.net/wiki/wiki.pl?DouglasReay/TheFuture

Basic plot: new girl in town constructs pyramid to win drunken bet.


Douglas

[hatter.livejournal.com]

I'd whack it through something like a quick TextToHTML which will also do the character encoding and a few other odds and ends. There are a stack of similar things on CPAN that do the same sort of thing, with slightly different ideas of what to convert, too.


the hatter

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I would like to read/critique space opera.

[chess]

Which email addy would you like it on?

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Space opera! Squee! jackv at cantab dot net is my current (and hopefully forever) email.