hop!
Happy new year! I wish you all health, courage, strength, and happiness.
To mark the date I decided to do a fic stats roundup, and I have a few years to catch up on. So:
In 2014 I wrote 12 short fics for a total of 11,765 words, by the AO3 word counts. That was double the previous year's totals. The fics were spread across four different fandoms, one of them new to me. One was gen and the rest were m/m, although two had background m/f. Four were written to prompts, including one long overdue promised ficlet, and one was a completion of a long-planned WIP, which was very satisfying. I also decided to give up on one ficlet I had once said I'd write. That didn't feel good at all, but I had been out of contact with the person I'd promised it to for quite a while, and neither of us had been in that fandom any more for a while even before that, so I hope it didn't matter much to her, if she even remembered or noticed that I defaulted.
In 2015 I wrote five ficlets for a total of 1,175 words. That was significantly less than the previous year. They were all in the same fandom, which was not new, and they were all gen. I didn't plan that, but at some point I noticed the pattern and decided to keep it that way for the rest of the year. None of them were gifts and none were exactly WIPs, although the last three were ones I had had the idea for several months earlier and finally managed to write near the end of the year. One was in German, which is something I hadn't done for years. That was fun.
In 2016 I wrote 13 fics for a total of 18,958 words. That was more than twice as many pieces as the previous year and more than ten times as many words, as I managed to write eight fics longer than 1,000 words, and two of those were longer than 2,000 words. Those totals were also more than the 2014 totals, though closer to the same general range. The fics were all still in the same fandom, which is funny to me because my experience in this fandom has been pretty disjointed and asocial, but somehow none of that has shaken its hold on my imagination. Twelve of the fics were m/m and one was m/f. I am perversely proud that in a fandom that often clamors for kink, I managed to squick some readers with a little vanilla het.
I'm chalking the increase in production up to two main things. One was that since I felt so disconnected from other people in the fandom, I decided I might as well go ahead and write whatever I felt like, however unpopular. Indeed at one point I was almost spite-writing niche pairings I was interested in in an attempt to show that the big popular ones were not the only game in town. On the other hand, I do still yearn for more connection, so I signed up for a fic exchange, which I hadn't done in nearly seven years. It was a mixed experience - that fic was also the longest I've written in seven years, because I really wanted to give my recip a full-fledged story, and I did my best to address the prompt and the listed likes; but it was like pulling teeth to get the fic to come together, and even so I'm afraid in the end I did not really scratch the recip's itch. Still, that was my most popular fic of the year by both hits and kudos, so I suppose it wasn't a wasted effort.
My writing goals for 2017 are tackling three or four bunnies I have in mind (not to say WIPs since only one of them has anything written down, though I have several bits of dialogue I've gone over in my head a lot), joining that fic exchange again and seeing if I can't produce a better gift, and writing more women characters. And as always: write more. Write better. Write.
To mark the date I decided to do a fic stats roundup, and I have a few years to catch up on. So:
In 2014 I wrote 12 short fics for a total of 11,765 words, by the AO3 word counts. That was double the previous year's totals. The fics were spread across four different fandoms, one of them new to me. One was gen and the rest were m/m, although two had background m/f. Four were written to prompts, including one long overdue promised ficlet, and one was a completion of a long-planned WIP, which was very satisfying. I also decided to give up on one ficlet I had once said I'd write. That didn't feel good at all, but I had been out of contact with the person I'd promised it to for quite a while, and neither of us had been in that fandom any more for a while even before that, so I hope it didn't matter much to her, if she even remembered or noticed that I defaulted.
In 2015 I wrote five ficlets for a total of 1,175 words. That was significantly less than the previous year. They were all in the same fandom, which was not new, and they were all gen. I didn't plan that, but at some point I noticed the pattern and decided to keep it that way for the rest of the year. None of them were gifts and none were exactly WIPs, although the last three were ones I had had the idea for several months earlier and finally managed to write near the end of the year. One was in German, which is something I hadn't done for years. That was fun.
In 2016 I wrote 13 fics for a total of 18,958 words. That was more than twice as many pieces as the previous year and more than ten times as many words, as I managed to write eight fics longer than 1,000 words, and two of those were longer than 2,000 words. Those totals were also more than the 2014 totals, though closer to the same general range. The fics were all still in the same fandom, which is funny to me because my experience in this fandom has been pretty disjointed and asocial, but somehow none of that has shaken its hold on my imagination. Twelve of the fics were m/m and one was m/f. I am perversely proud that in a fandom that often clamors for kink, I managed to squick some readers with a little vanilla het.
I'm chalking the increase in production up to two main things. One was that since I felt so disconnected from other people in the fandom, I decided I might as well go ahead and write whatever I felt like, however unpopular. Indeed at one point I was almost spite-writing niche pairings I was interested in in an attempt to show that the big popular ones were not the only game in town. On the other hand, I do still yearn for more connection, so I signed up for a fic exchange, which I hadn't done in nearly seven years. It was a mixed experience - that fic was also the longest I've written in seven years, because I really wanted to give my recip a full-fledged story, and I did my best to address the prompt and the listed likes; but it was like pulling teeth to get the fic to come together, and even so I'm afraid in the end I did not really scratch the recip's itch. Still, that was my most popular fic of the year by both hits and kudos, so I suppose it wasn't a wasted effort.
My writing goals for 2017 are tackling three or four bunnies I have in mind (not to say WIPs since only one of them has anything written down, though I have several bits of dialogue I've gone over in my head a lot), joining that fic exchange again and seeing if I can't produce a better gift, and writing more women characters. And as always: write more. Write better. Write.