Fic in 2020!
Fic (and other works) I posted in 2020:
JANUARY
• It Feels Like Hope (Fleabag; Yuletide treat)
FEBRUARY - APRIL
[LIVIN’ THE DISSERTATION LIFE]
MAY
• an excerpt from Blood Relatives by language_escapes (Mary Russell (Laurie R. King) x Dracula Series (Fred Saberhagen) crossover; for Holmestice) [PODFIC]
• This Meeting of Like Minds (Mary Russell (Laurie R. King) x Lord Peter Wimsey (Dorothy L. Sayers) crossover; for Holmestice) [FANART]
JUNE
[WORK? LIFE? BURNOUT? ??]
JULY-AUGUST
• three flash fiction pieces (original fiction; for Flash Fiction Month)
SEPTEMBER
[?? WORK? I definitely remember there was a lot of work]
OCTOBER
• Like Leaves and Kings (Harry Potter; for hp_halloween)
• An Unexpected Hemiparasite (Torchwood; for torchwood_fest)
NOVEMBER
• A Study in Scheming (BBC Sherlock; for Holmestice)
• Stormy Petrels by rachelindeed (ACD Holmes; for Holmestice) [PODFIC]
DECEMBER
• Braiding, Weaving, Reflecting (Graceling Realm series (Kristin Cashore); for Yuletide)
Writing-related things I did in 2020:
• SUBMITTED MY DISSERTATION (a.k.a. master’s thesis, depending which country’s terminology I’m remembering to use at any given moment). Yes, I finally finished my master’s degree, a year and a half later than planned, after an unbelievable number of crises and setbacks… Just in time to graduate into the pandemic/recession, in a field now facing cataclysmic budget cuts as a result. But, well, you can’t have everything! I’m fortunate to have a part-time job that I love, though it has nothing to do with my master’s, and I know I’m very lucky.
• Continued a weekly writing meet-up with a local friend - which survived the shift from in-person to on-Zoom. This has become an important and protected routine for me: even if I don’t find time to write the rest of the week, I know I have those hours set aside on Saturday morning for writing. (During the first part of the year, I mainly used this writing time for my dissertation, and that was really helpful too.)
• Tried new-to-me fanwork forms (podfic, fanart): This came about by accident, because I’d signed up for Holmestice in a spirit of hope, then finished my dissertation and realized I was way too burned out on writing to contemplate the prospect of doing even more of it. For the fest I’d already signed up for. But this happy accident nudged me to finally try out podfic, and I even pulled off a sort of hybrid art/narrative thing as well.
• Then eased back into writing by doing a modified Flash Fiction Month in July, which in my case only meant completing four pieces of original flash fiction. Very satisfying, though!
• Continued the easing-back-in by participating in Write Every Day in August and September.
• Completely forgot about the very existence of NaNoWriMo until partway into November, so, didn’t do anything for NaNoWriMo this year (it’s been a weird year) (obviously).
• Decided to dive properly back into things by signing up for fests, including some new-to-me fests (HP Halloween, Torchwood Fest, Remus Lupin Fest) and some old(ish) favorites (Holmestice, Yuletide). That was indeed a good idea, because it turns out the only fics I managed to post this year were ones I wrote for fests.
• Wrote in new fandoms! (Fleabag, Mary Russell series, Graceling Realm series)
• Wrote in a fandom I hadn’t written for quite a while (BBC Sherlock! I’d last written a Sherlock fic about 3 years ago, but my brief heyday in the fandom was even a bit further back than that, mainly in 2015.)
• Attended our cool local writing festival (now on Zoom!)
• Read lots of books, y’know, the usual.
• Started writing up my master’s research for publication in an academic journal; I don’t plan to be an academic in the life-long sense, so this is probably the only time I’ll do the academic publishing thing, so it’s VERY EXCITING.
Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you'd predicted?
More? Less? I don’t even know anymore! More, given that I had to put creative writing on hold for the first half of the year, in order to deal with my other obligations. Less, given that I thought I would dive back into writing once my thesis was done, and instead I struggled to get motivated again.
Looking back, was your fandom involvement (modding, cheerleading, fest participation, etc.) more, less, or about what you'd predicted?
More? Less? ;-) More, because I’m glad I managed as much as I did. Less, because I expected to get excited and write tons of Yuletide treats…and instead I only barely managed to write my own Yuletide assignment, that’s all.
What's your favorite story of the year?
Hm! That’s hard, because there’s not very much to choose from, this year. (Have I mentioned it was a weird year…?) I actually quite liked a couple of the original fiction pieces I wrote during Flash Fiction Month. (The post-apocalyptic one and the one about Patsy Cline’s death… Sheesh, it really was quite a year, wasn’t it?)
What's your favorite fandom fest/project of the year?
Probably Holmestice… but in a weirdly mixed way where the writing/creating itself was a struggle and a stress, though usually it’s a joy. And yet I can’t not sign up for Holmestice, because I love the community there so much!
Least favorite fandom project?
No least favorites, never any least favorites. :-) The one I did have a hard time with (but because of me, not because of it) was the Remus Lupin Fest - I love that there’s a fest specifically for Remus! And I really, really love that it appears to be a successfully and respectfully pan-shipping fest. Of course there’s lots of Remus/Sirius, but there’s also Remus/Tonks, and Remus gen, and various rarepairs, both slash and het. It can be really hard to find a fandom space where people are open to both R/S and R/T (not to mention that even rarer beast, genfic!). It made me SO happy to see a fest where people were leaving prompts for all of it, and nobody was being homophobic about slash or misogynistic about het, or any of that! So I was determined to finally remember about this fest at the right time to get involved. I watched the prompts come in with delight (and left some prompts, too), and in usual fashion kept detailed notes about all the prompts I might be interested in. (And there were some great prompts!) But when it came time for claiming, I was still in that state of being burned out and not sure if I would be able to get motivated to write. And I am absurdly cautious about not signing up for things unless I’m already sure I’ll be able to fulfill my obligations. So I didn’t claim any of the prompts at the start, figuring that if someone else was more definitely excited about any given prompt, then the right thing was to let them take it. And then of course eventually all the prompts I was most interested in were taken! So in the end, I didn’t claim anything. Oh well. Weird year. Maybe next year?
Unfortunately, Yuletide was the same. I made note of so many prompts and letters I was interested in, in so many different fandoms. But I was having a hard time figuring out what to do with my own actual assignment, so I made myself do that first, and that took all of my time, and I didn’t get to write any treats. And then like a day before the deadline, I finally had time to sit down and read about the various mini-challenges within Yuletide (now that I finally understand where to find info about that!) and saw there’s a “Yuletide Madness Drabble Invitational” challenge… Drabbles! Of course! That would have been the perfect way to get to do at least a small something with a bunch of those prompts. Oh well. Next year!
Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?
I taught myself to podfic! Which involved learning the (very, very rudimentary) basics of sound recording and editing. Which has never been my strong suit. (Ironic, given my years as a theater techie, then a bunch more years involved in music venues and music festivals...) Oh, and I learned a (tiny) bit more about image editing as well, in making a couple of fanart/graphic type things. That was fun and satisfying, to learn some new skills. And the sound editing stuff has already proved useful for my singing group, and the image editing stuff has come in handy for my work. Win win win! ;-)
Do you have any fanfic or profic goals for the new year?
Oh my god, I don’t even know. At this time each year I often say something along the lines of “just to keep writing at all.” I generally also make vague noises about wanting to get back more to original fiction...eventually…but that I don’t know whether or not the coming year will end up being the year for that… So, some of that, probably?
My best story of the year:
Um. There really isn’t a lot to choose from this year, is there? I’m proud of how “Stormy Petrels” came out (my podfic of rachelindeed’s beautiful story). It’s my first full podfic, after having done a sort of podfic excerpt for language_escapes for the previous round of Holmestice, and I’m proud of the editing on it! I’m also proud of “A Study in Scheming,” my Holmestice BBC Sherlock offering. I’m pretty happy with “It Feels Like Hope” (my one Fleabag fic - it’s one of those stories that was not at all good, and then an excellent beta stepped in, and I worked hard, and it became good!) “An Unexpected Hemiparasite” is a small, slight thing, but I think it works well for what it is. After struggling with so many of my other works this year, it was nice to see that apparently I can still shake aw-the-team-love-each-other-so-much-look-at-this-cozy-banter-y-moment-between-them Torchwood fic out of my sleeve with almost no effort at all. :-)
Most fun story:
I do think “A Study in Scheming” is pretty fun. It’s got banter, action, budding romance, Women Being Awesome, and canon fix-it galore, all in about 4,000 words. ;-) And of course “An Unexpected Hemiparasite” is fun - like I said, it turns out I can write aw-look-how-the-Torchwood-team-love-each-other for days.
But if it’s about how much fun *I* had making the thing, then definitely the two podfics (“Blood Relatives” and “Stormy Petrels”) and the one sort-of-art work (“This Meeting of Like Minds”). It was so satisfying to learn and (sort of?) (beginning to?) master something new.
Most sexy story:
As usual, I fail at this! Maybe “It Feels Like Hope,” because it has, like, a mention of a very sexy kiss from canon? Good lord.
Story with the single sexiest moment:
Same as above!
“Holy crap, that's wrong, even for you” story:
Uh… I am still and always not this kind of writer. This question always makes me sort of wish that I were!
Story that shifted my own perceptions of the characters:
Oooh, I always love this question! Definitely “A Study in Scheming” (BBC Sherlock, Irene/Mary, Irene POV). I never particularly connected with the BBC version of Irene Adler. (Like so many other characters and plotlines and etc. in the expanded Moffatverse, she’s a potentially interesting character turned into a sexist stereotype by a sexist showrunner, ugggggh.) But the Irene/Mary prompt was SO intriguing! And it forced me to dig in and excavate what I do find interesting about BBC Irene, the parts I can connect with, the ways I could get excited to write about and root for her. I always appreciate being pushed to re-examine like that. And I ended up having a lot of fun writing about Irene. :-)
Also, “It Feels Like Hope” (Fleabag, Fleabag/Priest…but from God’s POV) because it made me dig into the Priest’s backstory and try to understand him enough to give a balanced view of both them.
Hardest story to write:
Ugh, all of them? I don’t usually struggle, but I struggled this year. Like I said above, I pretty much only sign up for fests if I’m sure in advance that I can write the thing. But even so, this year it was hard work to make myself write the things. Hardest of all was the summer round of Holmestice, where I’d just come off the intense final push of revising and submitting my thesis. I was fighting SO HARD against having to write a fic, that I ended up creating not one but two non-fic works! (Podfic & artwork.)
But I also struggled writing for Yuletide (I ended up matching on someone for the Graceling Realm series, which are books I love but had never written for or even thought about writing for. It was the thing in my sign-up that I was least sure about, and then of course I ended up matching on that!) Even winter Holmestice was a bit of a struggle, because I felt like I “ought” to write for the rare Holmesian ‘verse I matched on, but I just didn’t have any inspiration. Even the BBC Sherlock fic I ended up writing, I wasn’t sure how I was going to tackle it. But once I finally made myself sit down and write, it ended up being fun!
Pretty much the only thing that came easily this year was my Torchwood fic. As usual, I was paranoid about signing up for fests if I wasn’t 100% sure I’d be able to carry through on the promise, so I sat down and wrote that fic before sign-ups even opened! (And then it turned out to be easy, because as noted above, apparently I have a Torchwood pattern that’s easy to fall back into.) Also the podfic for rachelindeed. Once I picked a fic I felt I’d be able to tackle, the process was easy and fun. (Even including re-recording the entire thing to get a better sound mix!)
Biggest surprise:
Hm. You know what, I think the biggest surprise - or at least the most joyful one - was how easy it turned out to be to step back into original fiction. (And original flash fiction, no less, which I had no experience with.) Come to think of it, I also jump easily back into original fiction whenever I’m participating in a writing workshop or something. So maybe it really is just a matter of discipline, to say to myself: Look, you always say you want to return to writing original fiction, so, just sit down and do it! (In addition to fic, don’t worry, I’m not rejecting fic.) I’ve actually signed up for a whole run of writing workshops in January-February-March, so there will be opportunities. :-)
List of WIPs:
Ha ha ha, and this is where each year I say that I’ve made some progress on my “Remus and Tonks are both bisexual and fall for each other to their own surprise” fic, but that I don’t know if I’ll ever get as far as completing it. Which is true once again this year. Looking back, I see that:
- at the end of 2018 I wrote, “I’ve finally written Tonks all the way up to…the point where she first meets Remus”
- and then at the end of 2019 I wrote, “I’ve written them halfway through the OotP year, and nearly up to the point where they first kiss…”
- and now, at the end of 2020 (and largely thanks to the couple of months where I was doing Write Every Day) I can say that not only have I written up to where they realize their feelings for each other (and kiss), but also into the weirdness after that, where they’re surprised and confused by this development, and Remus of course is doing his Remus thing where he thinks it’s not safe to let anyone love him, and they start trying to figure out how to be friends despite their feelings… Which, in a sense, is where their story first gets off the ground! I still have no idea what my plan for this fic is. Am I going to take them just through the end of OotP? Beyond? How much am I planning to retread the ground I already covered in my other massively long Remus/Tonks fic? But I’m beginning to think that maybe someday it will be complete.
Other than that, nothing else that’s properly a WIP. One possible upcoming collaborative project; and a handful of Remus (of course) fic ideas that I’ve got a few notes about but don’t know if I’ll have the oomph to sit down and write. (A small series of Remus’ birthdays over the years; an intriguing headcanon about Remus (not Sirius) being the one to raise Harry as a sort of godfather; maybe even an idea about Teddy, years later, visiting the werewolf pack Remus lived with in “Raise Your Lantern High.”) Oh, and I really want to sign up for Purim Gifts - another fest that I’ve had my eye on forever, and I LOVE the concept of it, and I’ve never managed to make the timing work. Hopefully this year!
Total fics posted:
Depends how you count it…
5 fics
1 artwork-with-a-sort-of-mini-fic-attached
3 original flash fiction pieces
2 podfics
So 11 works in total, I suppose? (In 8 fandoms plus 3 original works!)
Total word count posted:
11,707 words. Yikes, I don’t know if I’ve ever written so little!
To make myself feel better (or more like: to remind myself WHY I didn’t get to do much creative writing this year) I think I’m also going to count my dissertation for this…
Which, if you count all of the COPIOUS (surely you’re not surprised?) notes, figures, appendices, references, bibliography, etc. etc. etc., comes in at about 30,500 words. And that’s AFTER I cut it down by like half, because I did way too much research and had so much great data I wanted to share, but UK thesis requirements are extremely restrictive. Thank goodness for end matter & co. not being part of the official word count!
(And in a further non-creative-writing writing project, I’ve nearly completed the process of converting my massive dissertation into a streamlined <10k article for publication, which you’d better believe was a feat as well. I’m about 400 words-still-needing-to-be-cut from hitting the word limit goal. I can do it!!)
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(Crossposted from this post on Dreamwidth, which is now my primary journal. Comments are fine in either place.)
JANUARY
• It Feels Like Hope (Fleabag; Yuletide treat)
FEBRUARY - APRIL
[LIVIN’ THE DISSERTATION LIFE]
MAY
• an excerpt from Blood Relatives by language_escapes (Mary Russell (Laurie R. King) x Dracula Series (Fred Saberhagen) crossover; for Holmestice) [PODFIC]
• This Meeting of Like Minds (Mary Russell (Laurie R. King) x Lord Peter Wimsey (Dorothy L. Sayers) crossover; for Holmestice) [FANART]
JUNE
[WORK? LIFE? BURNOUT? ??]
JULY-AUGUST
• three flash fiction pieces (original fiction; for Flash Fiction Month)
SEPTEMBER
[?? WORK? I definitely remember there was a lot of work]
OCTOBER
• Like Leaves and Kings (Harry Potter; for hp_halloween)
• An Unexpected Hemiparasite (Torchwood; for torchwood_fest)
NOVEMBER
• A Study in Scheming (BBC Sherlock; for Holmestice)
• Stormy Petrels by rachelindeed (ACD Holmes; for Holmestice) [PODFIC]
DECEMBER
• Braiding, Weaving, Reflecting (Graceling Realm series (Kristin Cashore); for Yuletide)
Writing-related things I did in 2020:
• SUBMITTED MY DISSERTATION (a.k.a. master’s thesis, depending which country’s terminology I’m remembering to use at any given moment). Yes, I finally finished my master’s degree, a year and a half later than planned, after an unbelievable number of crises and setbacks… Just in time to graduate into the pandemic/recession, in a field now facing cataclysmic budget cuts as a result. But, well, you can’t have everything! I’m fortunate to have a part-time job that I love, though it has nothing to do with my master’s, and I know I’m very lucky.
• Continued a weekly writing meet-up with a local friend - which survived the shift from in-person to on-Zoom. This has become an important and protected routine for me: even if I don’t find time to write the rest of the week, I know I have those hours set aside on Saturday morning for writing. (During the first part of the year, I mainly used this writing time for my dissertation, and that was really helpful too.)
• Tried new-to-me fanwork forms (podfic, fanart): This came about by accident, because I’d signed up for Holmestice in a spirit of hope, then finished my dissertation and realized I was way too burned out on writing to contemplate the prospect of doing even more of it. For the fest I’d already signed up for. But this happy accident nudged me to finally try out podfic, and I even pulled off a sort of hybrid art/narrative thing as well.
• Then eased back into writing by doing a modified Flash Fiction Month in July, which in my case only meant completing four pieces of original flash fiction. Very satisfying, though!
• Continued the easing-back-in by participating in Write Every Day in August and September.
• Completely forgot about the very existence of NaNoWriMo until partway into November, so, didn’t do anything for NaNoWriMo this year (it’s been a weird year) (obviously).
• Decided to dive properly back into things by signing up for fests, including some new-to-me fests (HP Halloween, Torchwood Fest, Remus Lupin Fest) and some old(ish) favorites (Holmestice, Yuletide). That was indeed a good idea, because it turns out the only fics I managed to post this year were ones I wrote for fests.
• Wrote in new fandoms! (Fleabag, Mary Russell series, Graceling Realm series)
• Wrote in a fandom I hadn’t written for quite a while (BBC Sherlock! I’d last written a Sherlock fic about 3 years ago, but my brief heyday in the fandom was even a bit further back than that, mainly in 2015.)
• Attended our cool local writing festival (now on Zoom!)
• Read lots of books, y’know, the usual.
• Started writing up my master’s research for publication in an academic journal; I don’t plan to be an academic in the life-long sense, so this is probably the only time I’ll do the academic publishing thing, so it’s VERY EXCITING.
Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you'd predicted?
More? Less? I don’t even know anymore! More, given that I had to put creative writing on hold for the first half of the year, in order to deal with my other obligations. Less, given that I thought I would dive back into writing once my thesis was done, and instead I struggled to get motivated again.
Looking back, was your fandom involvement (modding, cheerleading, fest participation, etc.) more, less, or about what you'd predicted?
More? Less? ;-) More, because I’m glad I managed as much as I did. Less, because I expected to get excited and write tons of Yuletide treats…and instead I only barely managed to write my own Yuletide assignment, that’s all.
What's your favorite story of the year?
Hm! That’s hard, because there’s not very much to choose from, this year. (Have I mentioned it was a weird year…?) I actually quite liked a couple of the original fiction pieces I wrote during Flash Fiction Month. (The post-apocalyptic one and the one about Patsy Cline’s death… Sheesh, it really was quite a year, wasn’t it?)
What's your favorite fandom fest/project of the year?
Probably Holmestice… but in a weirdly mixed way where the writing/creating itself was a struggle and a stress, though usually it’s a joy. And yet I can’t not sign up for Holmestice, because I love the community there so much!
Least favorite fandom project?
No least favorites, never any least favorites. :-) The one I did have a hard time with (but because of me, not because of it) was the Remus Lupin Fest - I love that there’s a fest specifically for Remus! And I really, really love that it appears to be a successfully and respectfully pan-shipping fest. Of course there’s lots of Remus/Sirius, but there’s also Remus/Tonks, and Remus gen, and various rarepairs, both slash and het. It can be really hard to find a fandom space where people are open to both R/S and R/T (not to mention that even rarer beast, genfic!). It made me SO happy to see a fest where people were leaving prompts for all of it, and nobody was being homophobic about slash or misogynistic about het, or any of that! So I was determined to finally remember about this fest at the right time to get involved. I watched the prompts come in with delight (and left some prompts, too), and in usual fashion kept detailed notes about all the prompts I might be interested in. (And there were some great prompts!) But when it came time for claiming, I was still in that state of being burned out and not sure if I would be able to get motivated to write. And I am absurdly cautious about not signing up for things unless I’m already sure I’ll be able to fulfill my obligations. So I didn’t claim any of the prompts at the start, figuring that if someone else was more definitely excited about any given prompt, then the right thing was to let them take it. And then of course eventually all the prompts I was most interested in were taken! So in the end, I didn’t claim anything. Oh well. Weird year. Maybe next year?
Unfortunately, Yuletide was the same. I made note of so many prompts and letters I was interested in, in so many different fandoms. But I was having a hard time figuring out what to do with my own actual assignment, so I made myself do that first, and that took all of my time, and I didn’t get to write any treats. And then like a day before the deadline, I finally had time to sit down and read about the various mini-challenges within Yuletide (now that I finally understand where to find info about that!) and saw there’s a “Yuletide Madness Drabble Invitational” challenge… Drabbles! Of course! That would have been the perfect way to get to do at least a small something with a bunch of those prompts. Oh well. Next year!
Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?
I taught myself to podfic! Which involved learning the (very, very rudimentary) basics of sound recording and editing. Which has never been my strong suit. (Ironic, given my years as a theater techie, then a bunch more years involved in music venues and music festivals...) Oh, and I learned a (tiny) bit more about image editing as well, in making a couple of fanart/graphic type things. That was fun and satisfying, to learn some new skills. And the sound editing stuff has already proved useful for my singing group, and the image editing stuff has come in handy for my work. Win win win! ;-)
Do you have any fanfic or profic goals for the new year?
Oh my god, I don’t even know. At this time each year I often say something along the lines of “just to keep writing at all.” I generally also make vague noises about wanting to get back more to original fiction...eventually…but that I don’t know whether or not the coming year will end up being the year for that… So, some of that, probably?
My best story of the year:
Um. There really isn’t a lot to choose from this year, is there? I’m proud of how “Stormy Petrels” came out (my podfic of rachelindeed’s beautiful story). It’s my first full podfic, after having done a sort of podfic excerpt for language_escapes for the previous round of Holmestice, and I’m proud of the editing on it! I’m also proud of “A Study in Scheming,” my Holmestice BBC Sherlock offering. I’m pretty happy with “It Feels Like Hope” (my one Fleabag fic - it’s one of those stories that was not at all good, and then an excellent beta stepped in, and I worked hard, and it became good!) “An Unexpected Hemiparasite” is a small, slight thing, but I think it works well for what it is. After struggling with so many of my other works this year, it was nice to see that apparently I can still shake aw-the-team-love-each-other-so-much-look-at-this-cozy-banter-y-moment-between-them Torchwood fic out of my sleeve with almost no effort at all. :-)
Most fun story:
I do think “A Study in Scheming” is pretty fun. It’s got banter, action, budding romance, Women Being Awesome, and canon fix-it galore, all in about 4,000 words. ;-) And of course “An Unexpected Hemiparasite” is fun - like I said, it turns out I can write aw-look-how-the-Torchwood-team-love-each-other for days.
But if it’s about how much fun *I* had making the thing, then definitely the two podfics (“Blood Relatives” and “Stormy Petrels”) and the one sort-of-art work (“This Meeting of Like Minds”). It was so satisfying to learn and (sort of?) (beginning to?) master something new.
Most sexy story:
As usual, I fail at this! Maybe “It Feels Like Hope,” because it has, like, a mention of a very sexy kiss from canon? Good lord.
Story with the single sexiest moment:
Same as above!
“Holy crap, that's wrong, even for you” story:
Uh… I am still and always not this kind of writer. This question always makes me sort of wish that I were!
Story that shifted my own perceptions of the characters:
Oooh, I always love this question! Definitely “A Study in Scheming” (BBC Sherlock, Irene/Mary, Irene POV). I never particularly connected with the BBC version of Irene Adler. (Like so many other characters and plotlines and etc. in the expanded Moffatverse, she’s a potentially interesting character turned into a sexist stereotype by a sexist showrunner, ugggggh.) But the Irene/Mary prompt was SO intriguing! And it forced me to dig in and excavate what I do find interesting about BBC Irene, the parts I can connect with, the ways I could get excited to write about and root for her. I always appreciate being pushed to re-examine like that. And I ended up having a lot of fun writing about Irene. :-)
Also, “It Feels Like Hope” (Fleabag, Fleabag/Priest…but from God’s POV) because it made me dig into the Priest’s backstory and try to understand him enough to give a balanced view of both them.
Hardest story to write:
Ugh, all of them? I don’t usually struggle, but I struggled this year. Like I said above, I pretty much only sign up for fests if I’m sure in advance that I can write the thing. But even so, this year it was hard work to make myself write the things. Hardest of all was the summer round of Holmestice, where I’d just come off the intense final push of revising and submitting my thesis. I was fighting SO HARD against having to write a fic, that I ended up creating not one but two non-fic works! (Podfic & artwork.)
But I also struggled writing for Yuletide (I ended up matching on someone for the Graceling Realm series, which are books I love but had never written for or even thought about writing for. It was the thing in my sign-up that I was least sure about, and then of course I ended up matching on that!) Even winter Holmestice was a bit of a struggle, because I felt like I “ought” to write for the rare Holmesian ‘verse I matched on, but I just didn’t have any inspiration. Even the BBC Sherlock fic I ended up writing, I wasn’t sure how I was going to tackle it. But once I finally made myself sit down and write, it ended up being fun!
Pretty much the only thing that came easily this year was my Torchwood fic. As usual, I was paranoid about signing up for fests if I wasn’t 100% sure I’d be able to carry through on the promise, so I sat down and wrote that fic before sign-ups even opened! (And then it turned out to be easy, because as noted above, apparently I have a Torchwood pattern that’s easy to fall back into.) Also the podfic for rachelindeed. Once I picked a fic I felt I’d be able to tackle, the process was easy and fun. (Even including re-recording the entire thing to get a better sound mix!)
Biggest surprise:
Hm. You know what, I think the biggest surprise - or at least the most joyful one - was how easy it turned out to be to step back into original fiction. (And original flash fiction, no less, which I had no experience with.) Come to think of it, I also jump easily back into original fiction whenever I’m participating in a writing workshop or something. So maybe it really is just a matter of discipline, to say to myself: Look, you always say you want to return to writing original fiction, so, just sit down and do it! (In addition to fic, don’t worry, I’m not rejecting fic.) I’ve actually signed up for a whole run of writing workshops in January-February-March, so there will be opportunities. :-)
List of WIPs:
Ha ha ha, and this is where each year I say that I’ve made some progress on my “Remus and Tonks are both bisexual and fall for each other to their own surprise” fic, but that I don’t know if I’ll ever get as far as completing it. Which is true once again this year. Looking back, I see that:
- at the end of 2018 I wrote, “I’ve finally written Tonks all the way up to…the point where she first meets Remus”
- and then at the end of 2019 I wrote, “I’ve written them halfway through the OotP year, and nearly up to the point where they first kiss…”
- and now, at the end of 2020 (and largely thanks to the couple of months where I was doing Write Every Day) I can say that not only have I written up to where they realize their feelings for each other (and kiss), but also into the weirdness after that, where they’re surprised and confused by this development, and Remus of course is doing his Remus thing where he thinks it’s not safe to let anyone love him, and they start trying to figure out how to be friends despite their feelings… Which, in a sense, is where their story first gets off the ground! I still have no idea what my plan for this fic is. Am I going to take them just through the end of OotP? Beyond? How much am I planning to retread the ground I already covered in my other massively long Remus/Tonks fic? But I’m beginning to think that maybe someday it will be complete.
Other than that, nothing else that’s properly a WIP. One possible upcoming collaborative project; and a handful of Remus (of course) fic ideas that I’ve got a few notes about but don’t know if I’ll have the oomph to sit down and write. (A small series of Remus’ birthdays over the years; an intriguing headcanon about Remus (not Sirius) being the one to raise Harry as a sort of godfather; maybe even an idea about Teddy, years later, visiting the werewolf pack Remus lived with in “Raise Your Lantern High.”) Oh, and I really want to sign up for Purim Gifts - another fest that I’ve had my eye on forever, and I LOVE the concept of it, and I’ve never managed to make the timing work. Hopefully this year!
Total fics posted:
Depends how you count it…
5 fics
1 artwork-with-a-sort-of-mini-fic-attached
3 original flash fiction pieces
2 podfics
So 11 works in total, I suppose? (In 8 fandoms plus 3 original works!)
Total word count posted:
11,707 words. Yikes, I don’t know if I’ve ever written so little!
To make myself feel better (or more like: to remind myself WHY I didn’t get to do much creative writing this year) I think I’m also going to count my dissertation for this…
Which, if you count all of the COPIOUS (surely you’re not surprised?) notes, figures, appendices, references, bibliography, etc. etc. etc., comes in at about 30,500 words. And that’s AFTER I cut it down by like half, because I did way too much research and had so much great data I wanted to share, but UK thesis requirements are extremely restrictive. Thank goodness for end matter & co. not being part of the official word count!
(And in a further non-creative-writing writing project, I’ve nearly completed the process of converting my massive dissertation into a streamlined <10k article for publication, which you’d better believe was a feat as well. I’m about 400 words-still-needing-to-be-cut from hitting the word limit goal. I can do it!!)
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(Crossposted from this post on Dreamwidth, which is now my primary journal. Comments are fine in either place.)