Sid's Closet

Three and a half years in the making (and eleven days overdue), I present to you my journeystory big bang submission. So much love to my enthusiastic and supportive betas, ivorygates and princessofgeeks. This is such a better story because of their knowledge and hard work. All mistakes are entirely my own. (PM me if you spot one!)

ARTWORK: Please let danceswithgary know how much you enjoy her fabulous artwork!!!

Summary: Grad student Daniel Jackson sticks out his thumb and gets picked up by WWI veteran Jack O'Neill in his 1915 Model T. Between Chicago and Denver, their lives change forever.

~32k words, rated R

Because of the length, the story is posted on DW. I hope to add an AO3 link later as well. And here it is.

I didn't reach my inkingitout goal of 75k words, but I DID WRITE 22K MORE WORDS THAN LAST YEAR.

I actually thought I'd wound up doing worse than last year, because I was sure I was further away from my goal (6.5k words short.) Indeed, I am further from my goal, but I'd forgotten that I'd reset last year's goal down to 50k!

So I'm calling it a win. :-)

I'm not setting any word goal for 2013. I'll finish up my big bang (more on that in a second), finish up my last story for kink_bingo, work on a sekrit project, and hopefully collaborate with princessofgeeks (and whomever else cares to jump in) a bit at some point on the still-needs-a-title NC-17 Jack/Daniel cliffhanger at arboreal_gate.

I have RL stuff that must get done, omg. (After that I have a few old story ideas lurking around, and of course inspiration might strike at some point...)

As to the 1922 AU big bang, which is already at 2.5x the minimum word requirement, I've accepted (with some help from ivorygates) that there is a great deal more still to be said and done with this story. I was prepared for this going in. I signed up for the big bang with the intention of getting started on the story I wanted to tell, getting the basics down, posting a good story, and leaving the option open to continue working on it. There was no other way to get past the terror of embarking on such a major project. (See my 114 drabbles.)

So what I post will be a complete story, with a beginning and an ending. Those who are WIP-phobic can safely read it. The emotions and the character arc will be there. But at some point I plan for there to be a bigger story, with more accurate period details, more color, more adventures, more OCs, etc. I hope you all will enjoy it both times!

Why did it have to take me this long to discover that the type of Model T Jack is driving has no driver's door?

The only answer is to put the top down so he can climb in and out.

Which I guess is okay. I'll have to change things in a couple of few handful of spots, but it's easier than making Daniel get out of the auto to let Jack out every damn time. Or making Jack into a contortionist. And not the fun kind.

*pouts* It's not like anybody except me would've known.

*sighs* I need a drink.

18k and climbing...

*flails*

Tiny snippet:

In the end, Jack caught three fish ("Breakfast!" he crowed), while Daniel leaned against a tree stump and read quietly, bareheaded and barefooted, glancing up from time to time and struck anew each time by the contentment he could read in every line of Jack's body. It wasn't until more than an hour had passed that Daniel realized a passing stranger would more than likely be able to read the same sort of contentment radiating from him. How many perfect moments had they had together already? How many more would he be allowed?

He'd been going through life blind. He wanted these days and nights to never end.

Progress!

1. I have enough words to qualify to submit my rough draft on Friday
2. I have a complete outline of the story
3. I have placed the already written/already begun scenes into that order
4. I have inserted placeholders for scenes not written yet
5. I'm seeing growing intimacy and trust coming from Jack in the progression of the scenes

Next steps:

Start thinking of a title
Finish/sketch-in half-finished scenes
write/start at least one more scene
Flesh out the placeholders
Look for/add to consistency of Daniel's emotional through-line



PLEASE NUDGE ME FIRMLY YET LOVINGLY, OFFER ENCOURAGEMENT, WAVE POM-POMS, ETC.

I'll try to keep this short, because other people's dreams usually aren't all that fascinating:

I dreamed that I'd been at a convention, which had ended, but I was hanging out at the hotel, reading, until I needed to leave for the airport. Some folks from the convention were still there, but there were new people that invited me to sit with them and have some food. I sat down with them and called out to some of the con people how much I'd enjoyed staying up all night playing poker with them. Someone at the table asked if I'd stayed up too late, and I said, "Only because I have to fly out today... *looks at watch and panics*

My watch said 1:05 pm. I pulled out my ticket, and it said 2:30 p.m. Everyone around me started saying, "Oh, you still have time, you can make it, maybe somebody here can give you a ride, blah blah blah."

This is when I woke up. This is not a good way to wake up. I was in panic mode! I decided I needed to 'fix this' before I started my day in earnest. So I rolled over and started thinking about what I should do to get to the airport on time. Some of this was conscious thought, and probably a lot of it took place while I was dozing off.

I went to the hotel concierge! She tells me they have a helicopter on the roof just about to take a VIP to the airport. She calls the roof on the hotel phone, while she's speed dialing my airline on her cell. So the helicopter is being held for me, and she's telling the airline I'm on my way, reading the information off my ticket. Then she hands me her cell to answer questions the airline has, and tells me to take it up to the roof with me and just hand it back to the bellman she's sending with me.

So I talk to the airline while I'm on the elevator, give the bellman the phone, get buckled into the helicopter...and they hand me a glass of champagne! We fly to the airport, and I'm met with a wheelchair and an airport employee who goes racing through the hallways with me clutching my luggage on my lap.

I wake up again, thinking, "That's much better. I'm at the airport, at least. But I won't be confident until I'm actually on board the plane." So I rolled over again, and soon I'm comfortably seated in the first class seat they'd apparently decided to upgrade me to, and the stewardess is handing me a glass of champagne, saying, "I hear you're drinking Noilly Prat today." Success! I can now get out of bed and face the day. :-)

The moral of this story is that I need to pay more attention to the passage of time and not let myself get distracted and miss deadlines. In other words, I need to be writing! I need to finish up my ficathon piece, my final kink bingo story. I need to get back to my big bang. I need to finish those so that I can concentrate on other things in my life that are being neglected.

The other moral of this story is that when your dreams hand you lemons, make champagne.

But the true lesson of this story is that Noilly Prat is a vermouth, not a champagne. *g*