Anybody out there interested in getting a sneak peek at some of the work writers are doing on their Summer of Stargate stories?

Check out this link Call for Proving Ground readers.

LiveJournal version: Call for Proving Ground readers at LJ.

Spent yesterday and teh day before using my writing time for research.

Revisited this excellent discussion of Daniel's language skills as I decided which languages I wanted Daniel to claim to speak. I have always thought that when Daniel said he "speaks" 23 languages, that would actually exclude all the ancient languages taht he probably only reads and writes, like cuneform and heiroglyphs.

Then yesterday, did my research on heroin use. For one thing, I wanted a realistic idea of how people act when they have taken heroin. That was annoyingly hard to find in my limited time to research yesterday. The written stuff I found was too clinical, and the youtube stuff I found was all documentary type stuff that showed plenty of people putting the needles in their arms, but then cut away to interviews and stuff rather than actually showing the behavior of the people immediately after taking the drug. I wanted something as real as possible, not Hollywood. Anyway, I think I found enough to feel like I can write something not totally ridiculous.

Also, I found support for me wanting Jack to be a "weekend" heroin user. Someone who uses regularly but is not addicted - at least not yet. One small study described here. I had read about this before, when I first started thinking about this story and wanted to know exactly how dangerous and addictive heroin *really* is, vs. my jr. high anti-drug education. I also wanted to find out how bad withdrawl would be. Also did a dicey webcrawler search on "how to use heroin" that took me to a tongue in cheek step-by-step explantation.

Periodically, Husband will say, were you looking at....?! Can't wait for this round of research to start auto-suggesting things in the http line of the browser. :D

Anyway, after several days of blank brain, the story started writing itself again, and I got another 1200 or so words into electrons yesterday and today. Over 8000 now, and I think tomorrow I will turn my attention to the werewolf thing, since I have to decide on that one by Feb 20. The homeless story will definitely be finished by March 30 at this point.

The big quesiton is - what happens with the MPREG.

Due to weird family Friday night behaviors, I wrote about 1200 words after dinner! I never get to write in that time slot. Should put me at my 10k by the end of the month more easily.

Of course, it is handwritten, so I still have to convert it to electrons. That should be about a 30 minute typing test, by itself.

OK, the homeless piece started writing itself yesterday, so that will definitely be SOS Two, though I was quite surprised at the amount of interest there was out there in the MPREG. I think that even if it doesn't make the SOS deadline, it will have to be my next big project. I added 1200 words to the homeless piece this morning, bringing the grand total to about 1300 words of story (my header is about 200 words, so even though my counter says 1500, I know better). So 1/20th of the way to two entries.

The ghost story has been stuck for a week or so. About 17,500 on that one, but those words have been to Beta 1, who has mostly approved them. I am thinking that I need to write either more Teal'c back story or more Teal'c/Sam or possibly both to flesh the story out. I feel pretty happy with the Jack/Daniel component of it that is already written, and while I might be able to write more haunting, I like what is there. Anyway, that one is in good shape, and I think I will come back to it after I really sink my teeth into the homeless piece.