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cahnIn the last several months, as anyone who reads this DW knows, mildred_of_midgard and selenak and I have been part of this quite frankly amazing Frederick the Great fandom, and I sort of assumed that the two people in this fandom who actually knew anything, mildred and selenak, were going to write fics for Yuletide, and I (who know nothing except what they've told me in the last several months) was going to awesomely enjoy reading them. In fact, mildred wrote a Fredersdorf fic for selenak's prompt which I betaed, but then mildred's medical issues got bad enough to interfere with her writing fic (making the beta edits would have involved a substantial amount of rewrite), and she wrote a post lamenting she wasn't going to be able to produce any yuletide fic. Meanwhile, I had two fics that I was pretty sure were from selenak, and I thought it would be a shame for her to write us fic and for her not to get any :(
So then mildred and I had this (very paraphrased) conversation (mildred_of_midgard has her own account here, and she has promised to reproduce the actual conversation in comments to this post):
me: You know, we should really write something for selenak! Now that I've read what you wrote about Fredersdorf, I think I could take a stab at her Fredersdorf prompt, if you edited and otherwise helped me out with historical stuff and also if you don't mind it being way more about music than something you would write.
mildred: YES GOD YESand also oh you sweet summer child thinking you know enough to write this. [Mildred was far FAR nicer than this in real life.] For starters, here are 3500 words [really!] of things I know for a fact you don't know about Fredersdorf.
me: ...I was clearly overoptimistic. But I can work with this. Um, also, all the creativity-generating bits of my brain are already being used for my assignment, so can you also come up with an idea for the fic and also answer all my historical questions?
mildred: Sure! While I'm thinking about this, have 2k more words of historical grounding! Ok, and here are some ideas too. In fact, here's a whole plot for you!
me: Great! *writes 4k words of the plot*
mildred and me, more-or-less in unison: You did all the hard parts!
Then mildred fixed all my extensive historical errors and was fortunately able in between various medical woes to add various parts like the entire Wilhelmine subtheme and the entire last scene, and we deleted some of my words, and then I wrote some more paragraphs about music at her request and edited some of her stuff. I estimate that I probably ended up writing ~4.5k of the final fic, and mildred ended up writing ~ 2k of it (does that sound about right?) Of course that does not count the... I have no idea how much historical consultantcy stuff mildred ended up writing in the end, but I imagine it was significantly upwards of 10k :P And of course she wrote the detailed endnotes :D It also does not count all the words written in comments to the google document where we argued things like that Fredersdorf should be more zen than mildred wanted to write him and less zen than I wanted to write him :)
Although mildred and I mostly agreed on things, I had final veto power (and I did wield it a couple of times), so any remaining problems should be thought of as mine :) I'm very curious, though, as to how evident the collaboration was, and how evident the seams were, as I think mildred and I have very different writing styles, but it went through enough editing passes and discussion that I suspect much of the differences got at least somewhat smoothed out?
Counterpoint for Two Flutes
mildred_of_midgard and selenak and I have been part of this quite frankly amazing Frederick the Great fandom, and I sort of assumed that the two people in this fandom who actually knew anything, mildred and selenak, were going to write fics for Yuletide, and I (who know nothing except what they've told me in the last several months) was going to awesomely enjoy reading them. In fact, mildred wrote a Fredersdorf fic for selenak's prompt which I betaed, but then mildred's medical issues got bad enough to interfere with her writing fic (making the beta edits would have involved a substantial amount of rewrite), and she wrote a post lamenting she wasn't going to be able to produce any yuletide fic. Meanwhile, I had two fics that I was pretty sure were from selenak, and I thought it would be a shame for her to write us fic and for her not to get any :(So then mildred and I had this (very paraphrased) conversation (
mildred_of_midgard has her own account here, and she has promised to reproduce the actual conversation in comments to this post):me: You know, we should really write something for selenak! Now that I've read what you wrote about Fredersdorf, I think I could take a stab at her Fredersdorf prompt, if you edited and otherwise helped me out with historical stuff and also if you don't mind it being way more about music than something you would write.
mildred: YES GOD YES
me: ...I was clearly overoptimistic. But I can work with this. Um, also, all the creativity-generating bits of my brain are already being used for my assignment, so can you also come up with an idea for the fic and also answer all my historical questions?
mildred: Sure! While I'm thinking about this, have 2k more words of historical grounding! Ok, and here are some ideas too. In fact, here's a whole plot for you!
me: Great! *writes 4k words of the plot*
mildred and me, more-or-less in unison: You did all the hard parts!
Then mildred fixed all my extensive historical errors and was fortunately able in between various medical woes to add various parts like the entire Wilhelmine subtheme and the entire last scene, and we deleted some of my words, and then I wrote some more paragraphs about music at her request and edited some of her stuff. I estimate that I probably ended up writing ~4.5k of the final fic, and mildred ended up writing ~ 2k of it (does that sound about right?) Of course that does not count the... I have no idea how much historical consultantcy stuff mildred ended up writing in the end, but I imagine it was significantly upwards of 10k :P And of course she wrote the detailed endnotes :D It also does not count all the words written in comments to the google document where we argued things like that Fredersdorf should be more zen than mildred wanted to write him and less zen than I wanted to write him :)
Although mildred and I mostly agreed on things, I had final veto power (and I did wield it a couple of times), so any remaining problems should be thought of as mine :) I'm very curious, though, as to how evident the collaboration was, and how evident the seams were, as I think mildred and I have very different writing styles, but it went through enough editing passes and discussion that I suspect much of the differences got at least somewhat smoothed out?
Counterpoint for Two Flutes
Collaboration
Date: 2020-01-01 04:10 pm (UTC)Meanwhile, I had two fics that I was pretty sure were from selenak, and I thought it would be a shame for her to write us fic and for her not to get any :(
I know, I really wanted to write her something! And now I know that the confusion over me having a gift/not having a gift was because one of the 2 big ones she wrote was supposed to be for me (probably the Katte lives one?), but then I wasn't signed up so I couldn't have a gift in the Main collection. (And then she went and wrote me a Madness treat, omg.) So I'm extra glad you decided to ask me if we could do the thing I'd secretly been wanting to do. :D
mind it being way more about music than something you would write.
Mind? MIND?!! I had spent the entire month of November telling myself that it would be completely unreasonable of me to ask you to write the hard parts of my fic for me--especially what with you having a family and a job and an actual Yuletide assignment--because I desperately wanted there to be more and better music than I was qualified to write! When I got your email, it was like the universe was looking out for me. "Here," says the universe, "I'll hold your hand."
and also oh you sweet summer child thinking you know enough to write this.
LOLOL, that was *your* reaction to me info-dumping a gazillion words at you; I never thought that! I wouldn't let you write a historical biography of him and market it as nonfiction, but I wouldn't let me do that yet either. :P I always believed you totally had this and you were gonna do great as long as you had a fact-checker, and I was just giving you data so you could pick and choose from, and hopefully get some inspiration. I am a big believer in creative license with historical fiction, anyway.
mildred and me, more-or-less in unison: You did all the hard parts!
Hahaha, look, any time you want info-dumping and plotting, I've got unlimited amounts of that in my brain! Writing scenes that people want to read is the hard part. :P
I estimate that I probably ended up writing ~4.5k of the final fic, and mildred ended up writing ~ 2k of it (does that sound about right?)
Yes, I added up the large chunks I wrote after we posted (of course I did :P), and mine came to about 1.8k, so yours would have been about 4.6k. I imagine the sentences and paragraphs I contributed to your chunks and the ones you contributed to my chunks about even out.
My chunks: Hille cutting their session off, the letter smuggling scene, Fredersdorf fretting over inadvertently implying that Fritz should move on and forget about Katte (lol, this was me making him less zen), and the second half of the last scene, i.e. after the coat.
Oh, about Hille: a tiny amount of creative license was used, in that in late 1730, he was impatient with Fritz and his music and poetry, but seems to have warmed up to him at least a little bit by a year later. I'm not 100% sure he would have come down that hard on him in November 1731, but I still wanted to include it to show what Fritz had to put up with during his stay at Küstrin. And I'm not 100% sure it's wrong, either. (This was way too nitpicky to put into an author's note, even for me. ;) )
I have no idea how much historical consultantcy stuff mildred ended up writing in the end, but I imagine it was significantly upwards of 10k :P
What I'm about to post comes to about 19k, so yeah. :P
It also does not count all the words written in comments to the google document
Yeah, I feel like there were another 5-10k in there, plus later emails that don't really make sense without the working draft as context, so I'm not going to post them.
where we argued things like that Fredersdorf should be more zen than mildred wanted to write him and less zen than I wanted to write him :)
Hahaha, yeah, I still think it's hilarious we could produce like a thousand words of text with no substantial discussion, and had thousands of words of discussion around "his heart pounding." :P
so any remaining problems should be thought of as mine :)
I was planning on saying the opposite on this post! Namely, that you can't possibly be held accountable for any historical errors, seeing as how all your history came from me. So I take full responsibility for those, and my brain weasels are still whispering at me that I missed a huge and obvious one that
I also think it's totally hilarious that you came up with a workaround for making the flute solos available in November 1731 instead of 1732.
she has promised to reproduce the actual conversation in comments to this post)
Yes. Yes, I will. :) Everyone prepare for inbox flooding!
Re: Collaboration
Date: 2020-01-03 06:07 am (UTC)Ha! I didn't mean to take blame for any history errors -- I will happily put all of that on you! :) -- but more any writing oddities :)
And hee, yes, you were far too kind to think something like "you sweet summer child," but that was definitely how I felt about myself, lol.
I also think it's totally hilarious that you came up with a workaround for making the flute solos available in November 1731 instead of 1732.
Lol, I am very protective of my flute solos!
Re: Collaboration
Date: 2020-01-04 07:40 am (UTC)Okay, writing oddities can be yours, history errors can be mine. :D
I do feel that our writing styles are fairly similar, I mean considered within the set of all writing styles I've seen on AO3, but there are definite differences, and I would have done a lot more prose tinkering if I hadn't been considering it primarily your fic, so yes.
Re the flute, when we were writing the fic, I was operating from a biography that said that Fritz started playing around the age of 16, meaning he had only been playing for a couple years before he was locked up, and we know he didn't get much opportunity to practice during those couple years (see also: Katte and Quantz hiding in a closet). I have since encountered a statement in a different biography that he started playing the flute as a small child, but only started getting lessons from Quantz around age 16/17. So he would definitely have been almost a year and a half out of practice when he met Fredersdorf in our fic either way, but how proficient he was before getting locked up, I actually don't know.
everything specifically about flute was basically me googling about it
Still way ahead of me!
Re: Collaboration
Date: 2020-01-06 05:23 am (UTC)Yeah, I feel like I know enough about music that I knew the questions to ask even if I didn't know that much about flute specifically, you know? There's a threshold at which one just doesn't even know what to ask to get useful google answers (see: me and Frederick the Great before the last several months :P :) )