LNH: Classic LNH Adventures #221: LNH vII #50 Part One

[Jeanne Morningstar]

On 11/7/21 3:23 PM, Arthur Spitzer wrote:

> 
> Way back in May of 2012, Jeanne Morningstar had just won High Concept
> Challenge #29 and decided to make LNH v2 #50 the new challenge -- with
> a due date a month from then.  Here's that post from May 16th, 2012:
>

That's almost ten years ago now. I'm turning to dust...


> And all that sort of killed whatever momentum there was for finishing #50.
> But Drew eventually (maybe with some help from Jean -- can't quite remember)
> did finish the whole thing and edit it into something coherent and posted it
> in 2014.

I bear some of the blame for dragging it out--Drew pushed through when 
no one else wanted (they're good at that) and wrote out the climax, and 
I wanted to write some epilogue scenes which would help sort out various 
plot/character threads I wanted to play with. My ability to write tends 
to run very hot and cold (though that's a pretty common struggle here), 
so I delayed on that a long time. Still, I'm happy in the end with how 
it all turned out.

It was a frustrating experience in a lot of ways, but there were 
definitely things I enjoyed. The most fun part was working with Rob 
Rogers, who besides being a really funny writer was as generous and 
thoughtful a collaborator as that other guy wasn't. He did a remarkable 
job of "yes-anding" everyone's ideas. I had the idea there'd be one 
central character for every active writer, and introduced a new 
character, Painful Pun Person, as mine, but then decided to go with 
bringing Masterplan Lad as well--but Rob threw her in anyway and made 
her a joy to read about. Drew added more layers to the character later, 
and that really turned out to be an example of the LNH's creative 
collaboration at its best. Rob also helped keep the plot on track, as 
seen at the end of this post, bringing back my whole "secret origin" 
conceit after it had fallen off the radar. It was really remarkable how 
he pulled together all those ideas in a way that was not only coherent 
but also funny.

I'll also say that the experience of writing this issue weirdly helped 
me grow a lot as a person. The original #51 was blatantly homophobic, 
and being angry at that knocked over the first domino that got me 
thinking about whether I was queer, and that led to everything I'd been 
and done since. As much as there've been a lot of frustrations along the 
way, I'm really proud of this community and how much everyone in it has 
grown.

Jeanne Morningstar