New Fic - Wild is the Wind

[truck_driving_magic_mama]

• Title - Wild is th Wind
• Author name – Melissa (Truck_driving_magic_mama)
• Rating - PG-13 now, juicier later.
• Disclaimer - This is totally AU.
• Feedback- I'd love some, good or bad - this is written as I go, so I'd love so constructive critisism, for better or worse.
• Summary- Willow and Tara love each other. However, so many things, life things, complicate the situation. the story jumps from one time to another, but it will be consistent in its progression.
• Notes- 1) This haven't been beta'ed.. I'm looking for a trustworthy beta, so if anyone cares to jump on board, I'd love that.
2) this fic (although I admit I might change it) is called after Nina Simone's song Wild is the wind. There's also Cat Power's version!... check it out!




#1

December 14th 2009

Tara rubbed her temples and closed her eyes for a moment. Her head ached from lack of sleep. It was an early Saturday morning, and she was alone in the apartment. Mike and Jake went to New York for the holidays, and Tara hoped to fly to her mother's house in a few days, depending on the work needed to be done. She shifted in her chair a bit, and stared down at the desk, looking at the clock. It was 6:20. Another sleepless night, she thought. I never could sleep in without her. She slept about 4 hours, with breaks, as she woke up in the middle of the night, confused by Willow's absence. She came to her senses quickly and cringed. Stupid brain. She forced herself back to sleep only to wake up again covered with sweat a couple of hours later.
.
Now, after lying in bed for a little bit and then making herself coffee, she was sitting at her desk, trying to ease herself into the work expecting her. Her hands enveloping the brown mug she and mike bought a couple of years ago in Ikea. It's still like my place, she thought. In little things. Jake's things were apparent around the place, but she could also see many things left by mike from the time they had shared this place as roomies. It still feels familiar, she thought. It was one of her only comforts – sharing this place with her best friend again, especially when she needed her most. And Mike and Jake are amazing to her, they are so considerate. They always make her feel welcome and comfortable, even though she's staying at their place for a little while now, and they are always more than attentive to her moods and needs. She thought of last weekend, when she had an especially hard time, and Mike cancelled her plans to vege with her in front of the TV to watch movies and eat pizza.

She sighed and looked at her desk again. She had a lot of work to do by tonight's meeting with Anya. She promised her to look over all her latest stuff again before she gives them to Anya to read. She knew she had a lot of work before her, for the both of them, before this was finished. Why did I agree doing that again? She wondered. Oh yeah, that's right, I'm a poet, I'm suppose to wish for things like these to happen. Besides, it'd be a good distraction from... Sigh. Never mind. She thought about the conversation she had with Anya the other day.

"Tara, I know you feel like crap. But you have to publish these things, now. It's your best writing."
"thanks Anya"
"Tara, These are good. The best I've read of you. You should really have your heart broken more often"
"Anya!"
"Well, it's true! You have to publish these, now."
"Anya, I can't print those now."
"Why not?"
"Because…"
"Yeah?
"Because." Tara sighed.
"Wrong answer. We're printing this Tara, by the end of next month I want this edited."
"Anya, we can't print those. We just can't. I-it will hurt h-her"
"So?"
"Anya, I know you don't care, but I do."
"Tara, quit this bullshit, listen to me. This is your job. It's your art, it's your writing. It's your career. Didn't you once tell me you came to this world to write? That it's your calling? What happened to that? And most important, it's money" Anya finished, as though with that one word, it was a done deal.
"Well it can wait."
"No it can't! We have to do this now, since you're popular again lately. Everyone in gaysville heard about the breakup and you and her are hot stuff right now. I mean, look at Willow, she's playing that new line and it's packed every night. We can't loose a momentum like this."
"Anya, I don't know about this" Tara sighed again.
"You're being stupid."
"Anya." Tara said in her worn out voice.
"Well it's true. People come and go. You are not with Willow anymore. And even if you were- this is your success. Do you want to be remembered as a great, ground-breaking lesbian writer and poet, or do you want to die as Willow's ex-girlfriend? This is what you always wanted. You didn't publish a book in 4 years. I don't know why I'm even having this conversation! There are tones of poets willing to give me orgasms to get published."
"Okay okay Anya, you're right. I'm sorry."
"Are you giving me orgasms?"
"What? No!"
"Just checking. Meet you tomorrow night? I got meetings till then."
"Sure. You want to come here? Take outs?"
"You're at your old place, right? Mike's? Aren't we interrupting them having sex?"
"They're in New York. I'm sure they're having sex there."
"Oh okay, good for them. See ya tomorrow, nine-ish"
"Bye Anya".

Now Tara rethought this situation. She knew that for the next couple of months, they're going to work around the clock with this. But she also started to get excited. She was finally working on a book again, after so long. She was clearly not going home this year for Christmas. She wasn't even in her own home now. She thought of the apartmen 7 streets away. Stop it.
She started going over the pages and opened her laptop, searching for the files. and we're off.

[taralicious]

Didn't you once tell me you came to this world to write? That it's your calling?

I know exactly how Tara feels here as over the past four years that I've been working on my novel it has become the place that I prefer to spend all of my free time in as it has helped me come to terms with two broken hearts.
Not that I have two hearts because I'm not a Time Lord but two separate occasions where a woman was involved and neither of them ended well.
Intrigued to see what Tara's baggage is since she and Willow have to get before it ends.

[Alcy]

Hiya Mel.

See, you did give it a go and write something! It's takes a lot to get to the point where you can post the first chapter but once it's up there you're away.

This is a great start and an intriguing premise. There are so many unanswered questions right from the start. Of course the main one is what happened between Willow and Tara to bring them to this point? You know how much I love a good angsty story so I'm really looking forward to reading more of yours.

There are a few errors in terms of tense and perspective but overall it's a pretty good effort. I really hope you keep the creativity flowing. There's no better therapy than writing. Not that I really use my writing to get over break-ups...that's what exercise is for...but I do use it to express myself in ways I otherwise can't.

Take care, buddy,

Alcy

[abarda]

Nice start. I think it's gonna be a nice story...

[AmberGoddess]

Wondering where you're going with this... Usually people don't start with them already broken up. Good beginning, though. Keep going!

[jasmydae]

Some quick notes:

Another sleepless night, she thought. I never could sleep in without her.

Decide early in your writing whether or not you're going to get inside the character's head and show readers throughts in first person. Then stay consistent with how you convey these thoughts. If you switch into first person for thoughts, offset the lines from the surrounding text, for example by using italics. When you run one sentence into the next with no indicator that the point of view has shifted, your readers will temporarily be thrown off.

There's a phantom dot between paragraphs one and two.

Now, after lying in bed for a little bit and then making herself coffee, she was sitting at her desk, trying to ease herself into the work expecting her. Her hands enveloping the brown mug she and mike bought a couple of years ago in Ikea.

Watch your tenses. Once you set a scene, a sentence, or a thought in a tense, stay consistent:

After lying in bed for a bit, she got up to make coffee, then sat at her desk. She tried to ease into the work that was waiting for her. Her hands enveloped the brown mug she and Mike had bought from Ikea a few years ago.

In little things. Jake's things were apparent around the place, but she could also see many things left by mike from the time they had shared this place as roomies.

While reading this, I thought, "What sorts of things?" Also, Mike should be capitalized.

and Mike cancelled her plans

I didn't realize Mike was a girl (yes?) until this line. Until this point I was confused and kept going back and rereading sentences several times. A clearer declaration of characters in paragraph one might help this.

Mistakes start to pop up in your writing when you begin the dialog between Tara and Anya. Some common mistakes:

* Missing capitalization.

* Missing punctuation at the end of character speech.

* Improper punctuation at the end of character speech. Check out the Scoobies Teach Grammar thread on the Beta Board, especially the chapters on punctuation in character speech and attribution of speech.

She thought of the apartmen 7 streets away.

Apartment misspelled. Run the posts through a quick spell-check to catch stuff like that.

I recommend spelling the number word out ("seven" instead of "7"), but not in all cases. This page has some good tips for when to write out numbers, and when to use numerals.

[love_2003]

Interesting beginning so far. Looking forward to reading Willow's side of the story.

[DaddyCatALSO]

Yes, I'm curious myself. It wasn't clear if "Jake and Mike" are women who were dropped from the cast of Sisters (I'll explain if needed *grin) or two gay men or some combiantion in between there.
And, although this one is, I guess, intentional, what does Willow do? (Or is she a fashion designer and I'm just not hip enough to pick that up from what you wrote already?)