End-of-Year Writing Meme
I can't believe I forgot to post this yesterday! But here we go, a day late. (This is taken, mixed and adapted from a variety of memes and people, btw.)
Total number of completed stories in 2014: 18
I also kept track of my writing in a spreadsheet this year for the first time, thanks to
inkingitout and the fabulous
kate, so have some word count statistics:
Total word count (posted): 56,015
Total word count (written): 89,692
Highest monthly word count (posted): 22,261 (December)
Highest monthly word count (written): 33,969 (December)
Most words written in a day: 7,812 (22nd December)
Fewest (non-zero) words written in a day: 6 (1st June)
Fandoms written in:
Coldfire (1), Doctor Who/Torchwood (13), Grimm (1), Legend of the Seeker (2), Once Upon a Time in Wonderland (1)
Fandoms I wouldn't have expected to write this year:
There are two, Once Upon a Time in Wonderland and Grimm.
I started watching Once Upon a Time in Wonderland in 2013, but it didn't exactly convince me at the start. It seemed to be all surface, entertaining enough to keep watching but without much substance to it, and in particular the villains seemed like cardboard cutouts - like cheap knock-off versions of the complex sometime-villains the original Once Upon a Time excels at. Fast forward a few months, and by the time the finale aired in April I'd completely fallen in love with the Red Queen, Anastasia, and her relationship with Will Scarlet. She was given so much complexity and depth in the second half of the season, and they charmed me completely. I'm happy I got the chance to write a story about their relationship for rarecharacters.
Grimm, of course, was my true surprise discovery of the year. frogspace had mentioned it before, but the hilaribad German and the premise, which made it sound like a dozen other monster-hunting shows, had always put me off. But when I finally did watch this year, I burned through three entire seasons (66 episodes) in five days, and I've been ridiculously in love with this show, its worldbuilding and its characters ever since, in particular Nick and Renard. It's been a while since I loved a show's main character so unreservedly all on his own; I think the last instance may have been John Sheppard.
Anyway - on closer inspection, much of the German still turned out to be hilaribad sometimes, but in many places the show is trying hard to integrate a variety of languages with surprising success, and while there are Grimms (creature hunters) and Wesen (supernatural beings), the whole point is that this isn't your ordinary monster-hunting show - Grimm's monsters aren't bad because they're not human; they're just bad because some people are. In other words, they're criminals, and tend to get arrested rather than killed. And the Grimm is a police detective more than anything else, and approaches them like that. There is also Renard, Nick's captain and a royal bastard (in every sense of the word), who provides an entrance into the worldbuilding of Grimm on another level entirely, one full of complicated political alliances and negotiations and a weight of history that feels very real. Of course it doesn't hurt that Renard is scheming and ruthless and morally ambiguous, protector and ally and (at least early-on) antagonist, sometimes everything at the same time - but never an outright enemy.
This is the best part of it all: over time, Grimm grew into an ensemble show where everyone is almost stunningly reasonable. People talk to each other! They hardly ever keep stupid secrets, and when they do it's called out. The show never falls into the false dichotomy of "trust me completely or not at all" - in particular, Nick and Renard, for all that they have good reason to distrust each other at times, always manage to set their differences aside and work together when it matters. (And when it doesn't matter as much, too - daily police work continues, after all.) It's everything I ever wanted out of this kind of show, and never got.
Of course the fandom fandom barely exists, but I managed to drag some friends into it kicking and screaming, and we've been having such fabulous discussions. It's been truly amazing, and reminded me a lot about the days of Coldfire, when a handful of us made that fandom one of the best I've ever been in, for a surprisingly long time. Here's hoping we can keep that up in the new year!
Perhaps all in all it's more surprising that I only wrote the one story (focusing on Nick and Renard, naturally) for yuletide, but I definitely want to write more!
Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you'd predicted?
Less than I thought at the start of the year; far more than I came to think by about the middle of the year. (Things turned busy and stressful and exhausting, and after a great start I almost entirely stopped writing for a long time.)
But even so, I still wrote more than twice what I wrote last year, so I'll count that as a definite success.
What's your own favorite story of the year?
I'll have to vote for either Vessel (Coldfire, Damien & Gerald) or Knife's Edge (Doctor Who, Ten/Jack).
They're not very much alike on the surface, these two stories - "Vessel" is subtexty gen which mainly deals with a mental connection between Damien and Gerald, and the way they're planning to use that connection to defeat their enemy, and very little happens outside of Damien's head. "Knife's Edge" has explicit sex and violence, and as close as you can get to snuff with Jack Harkness - it actually starts with the Doctor killing Jack for the thrill of it. (I promise it makes sense in context!) But beneath these very different surfaces, they're rather more similar than they appear: they're both very self-indulgent in their premise, possibly the most self-indulgent things I've ever written, but at the same time I think I managed to make each work as a story outside of the id-appeal it holds for me. I'm quite proud of that. :)
Did you take any writing risks this year?
See above re: self-indulgent things. It's not that stories never start with purely iddy premise for me, but usually I tone it down rather more and build up more of a surrounding context, in order to preserve both the id appeal and my suspension of disbelief. But with the two stories mentioned above, for the first time I really focused in on the id-appeal and still managed to make it work as a story. Both for me and for others, apparently, which, double yay!
Do you have any fanfic or profic goals for the New Year?
Write more. Write more consistently. Don't cut it so close to deadlines. Ask for help sooner if I can't make things work out on my own.
All right, there are more detailed goals: a bunch of WIPs I really want to finish; a few challenges and fests I want to write for, and of course I want to write more Grimm fic because that show has eaten my brain. But I don't want to pin it down too much this year; I'd really like to have a year without failing to reach my goals, for once.
Oh! I also want to try this daily writing thing again for as long as I can sustain it. I only managed two months last year, so if I do better than that I'll already have won. *g*
My best story of this year:
I'm repeating myself, aren't I? Vessel and Knife's Edge again.
My most popular story of this year:
Most popular by AO3 hit count: Cold Poison (Doctor Who, Ten/Jack)
Most popular by AO3 kudos: What Doesn't Kill Us (Grimm, Nick & Renard)
Most popular by AO3 bookmarks: Borrowed Time (Doctor Who, Ten/Jack)
Most popular by comments (AO3, LJ, Teaspoon): Knife's Edge (Doctor Who, Ten/Jack)
Story of mine most under-appreciated by the universe, in my opinion:
All of them? *g*
Seriously, though - while What Doesn't Kill Us, my Grimm Yuletide fic for 2014, got really lovely comments and my recipient seems to have loved it, part of me thought this might be the year I might finally end up getting recced at least once. You know, having written in a large-for-Yuletide fandom for once. But of course no dice. (It's not as if that hasn't happened to me before; back in 2012 when I wrote that Fandom AU for Yuletide I also thought that one might be the one. I wish I could stop wanting that - clearly I'm just never going to write the kind of thing people want to rec, and it would be much better for my nerves if I could get that into my head ...)
There's also Unbreak Me (Legend of the Seeker, Cara & Kahlan). It's a fix-it fic that came years too late, but I just know that if I'd posted it back then the fandom would have been all over it. By 2014, the fandom was basically dead, and no one cared any more. Story of my life. *sighs*
Most fun story to write:
the eyes are new, the look is old - this one's a Doctor/Jack fic where the Doctor regenerates into a woman, and the entire story just fell out of my head nearly fully formed. I wrote it all down in an afternoon, and I wish all my writing could go as smoothly as that! I love it when the writing just flows.
Sexiest story/story with the single sexiest moment:
I'll have to say Knife's Edge again. Sorry! (Heed the warnings. But damn if that fic doesn't do it for me, in all kinds of ways I didn't even expect.)
Hardest story to write:
My Yuletide fic, hands down, for a whole bunch of reasons that, for once, aren't just about me cutting it too close to the deadline and then panicking. I made so many false starts with this one, it's not even funny. I know I have a record of all the words I wrote for it, but I don't even want to check just how many I wrote and then discarded. On top of that, even when I finally ended up on the right track, for the longest time, my draft ended up with all the opposite problems from the ones I usually have. (Okay, not all of them. White Room Syndrome was definitely in evidence.) I'm usually far stronger at emotional plots than at action plots, and this was the first time I wrote something where the external action all worked just fine, but the emotional arcs were seriously lacking. I managed to fix that eventually, but it's not a problem I'm used to, so it was surprisingly difficult. (Thank you again to sholio for her advice at that stage!)
In the end, What Doesn't Kill Us turned out pretty well, even if I do say so myself! Thanks mostly to prettyarbitrary, my fabulous beta, who was amazingly helpful throughout, gave me the key to the story on a plate, and even went above and beyond at the very last minute, so I could get in some final edits minutes before the archive went live. Phew!
Stories I haven't yet written, but intend to:
I've got a whole bunch of those on the list! Some Doctor Who/Torchwood ones that I've been meaning to write or finish for ages, and there's a Grimm epic that's been building itself in the back of my brain. I really hope to tackle these in 2015.
Did you take any writing risks this year?
See above re: idfic and self-indulgence.
Also, with the Yuletide fic, I did a lot of revising and rewriting very late in the game, and I ended up writing about 20,000 words in three days. (A lot of them were scrapped, but I still wrote them!) I learned two very important things from that:
a) I can do this if I absolutely have to!
b) I never, ever want to have to again. *g*
I'd like to thank the academy...
People who have been particularly wonderful, helpful, and brilliant: fluffyllama, wojelah, sholio and prettyarbitrary. Thank you so much, all of you! I don't know what I'd do without you.
Total number of completed stories in 2014: 18
I also kept track of my writing in a spreadsheet this year for the first time, thanks to
inkingitout and the fabulous
kate, so have some word count statistics:
Total word count (posted): 56,015
Total word count (written): 89,692
Highest monthly word count (posted): 22,261 (December)
Highest monthly word count (written): 33,969 (December)
Most words written in a day: 7,812 (22nd December)
Fewest (non-zero) words written in a day: 6 (1st June)
Fandoms written in:
Coldfire (1), Doctor Who/Torchwood (13), Grimm (1), Legend of the Seeker (2), Once Upon a Time in Wonderland (1)
Fandoms I wouldn't have expected to write this year:
There are two, Once Upon a Time in Wonderland and Grimm.
I started watching Once Upon a Time in Wonderland in 2013, but it didn't exactly convince me at the start. It seemed to be all surface, entertaining enough to keep watching but without much substance to it, and in particular the villains seemed like cardboard cutouts - like cheap knock-off versions of the complex sometime-villains the original Once Upon a Time excels at. Fast forward a few months, and by the time the finale aired in April I'd completely fallen in love with the Red Queen, Anastasia, and her relationship with Will Scarlet. She was given so much complexity and depth in the second half of the season, and they charmed me completely. I'm happy I got the chance to write a story about their relationship for rarecharacters.
Grimm, of course, was my true surprise discovery of the year. frogspace had mentioned it before, but the hilaribad German and the premise, which made it sound like a dozen other monster-hunting shows, had always put me off. But when I finally did watch this year, I burned through three entire seasons (66 episodes) in five days, and I've been ridiculously in love with this show, its worldbuilding and its characters ever since, in particular Nick and Renard. It's been a while since I loved a show's main character so unreservedly all on his own; I think the last instance may have been John Sheppard.
Anyway - on closer inspection, much of the German still turned out to be hilaribad sometimes, but in many places the show is trying hard to integrate a variety of languages with surprising success, and while there are Grimms (creature hunters) and Wesen (supernatural beings), the whole point is that this isn't your ordinary monster-hunting show - Grimm's monsters aren't bad because they're not human; they're just bad because some people are. In other words, they're criminals, and tend to get arrested rather than killed. And the Grimm is a police detective more than anything else, and approaches them like that. There is also Renard, Nick's captain and a royal bastard (in every sense of the word), who provides an entrance into the worldbuilding of Grimm on another level entirely, one full of complicated political alliances and negotiations and a weight of history that feels very real. Of course it doesn't hurt that Renard is scheming and ruthless and morally ambiguous, protector and ally and (at least early-on) antagonist, sometimes everything at the same time - but never an outright enemy.
This is the best part of it all: over time, Grimm grew into an ensemble show where everyone is almost stunningly reasonable. People talk to each other! They hardly ever keep stupid secrets, and when they do it's called out. The show never falls into the false dichotomy of "trust me completely or not at all" - in particular, Nick and Renard, for all that they have good reason to distrust each other at times, always manage to set their differences aside and work together when it matters. (And when it doesn't matter as much, too - daily police work continues, after all.) It's everything I ever wanted out of this kind of show, and never got.
Of course the fandom fandom barely exists, but I managed to drag some friends into it kicking and screaming, and we've been having such fabulous discussions. It's been truly amazing, and reminded me a lot about the days of Coldfire, when a handful of us made that fandom one of the best I've ever been in, for a surprisingly long time. Here's hoping we can keep that up in the new year!
Perhaps all in all it's more surprising that I only wrote the one story (focusing on Nick and Renard, naturally) for yuletide, but I definitely want to write more!
Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you'd predicted?
Less than I thought at the start of the year; far more than I came to think by about the middle of the year. (Things turned busy and stressful and exhausting, and after a great start I almost entirely stopped writing for a long time.)
But even so, I still wrote more than twice what I wrote last year, so I'll count that as a definite success.
What's your own favorite story of the year?
I'll have to vote for either Vessel (Coldfire, Damien & Gerald) or Knife's Edge (Doctor Who, Ten/Jack).
They're not very much alike on the surface, these two stories - "Vessel" is subtexty gen which mainly deals with a mental connection between Damien and Gerald, and the way they're planning to use that connection to defeat their enemy, and very little happens outside of Damien's head. "Knife's Edge" has explicit sex and violence, and as close as you can get to snuff with Jack Harkness - it actually starts with the Doctor killing Jack for the thrill of it. (I promise it makes sense in context!) But beneath these very different surfaces, they're rather more similar than they appear: they're both very self-indulgent in their premise, possibly the most self-indulgent things I've ever written, but at the same time I think I managed to make each work as a story outside of the id-appeal it holds for me. I'm quite proud of that. :)
Did you take any writing risks this year?
See above re: self-indulgent things. It's not that stories never start with purely iddy premise for me, but usually I tone it down rather more and build up more of a surrounding context, in order to preserve both the id appeal and my suspension of disbelief. But with the two stories mentioned above, for the first time I really focused in on the id-appeal and still managed to make it work as a story. Both for me and for others, apparently, which, double yay!
Do you have any fanfic or profic goals for the New Year?
Write more. Write more consistently. Don't cut it so close to deadlines. Ask for help sooner if I can't make things work out on my own.
All right, there are more detailed goals: a bunch of WIPs I really want to finish; a few challenges and fests I want to write for, and of course I want to write more Grimm fic because that show has eaten my brain. But I don't want to pin it down too much this year; I'd really like to have a year without failing to reach my goals, for once.
Oh! I also want to try this daily writing thing again for as long as I can sustain it. I only managed two months last year, so if I do better than that I'll already have won. *g*
My best story of this year:
I'm repeating myself, aren't I? Vessel and Knife's Edge again.
My most popular story of this year:
Most popular by AO3 hit count: Cold Poison (Doctor Who, Ten/Jack)
Most popular by AO3 kudos: What Doesn't Kill Us (Grimm, Nick & Renard)
Most popular by AO3 bookmarks: Borrowed Time (Doctor Who, Ten/Jack)
Most popular by comments (AO3, LJ, Teaspoon): Knife's Edge (Doctor Who, Ten/Jack)
Story of mine most under-appreciated by the universe, in my opinion:
All of them? *g*
Seriously, though - while What Doesn't Kill Us, my Grimm Yuletide fic for 2014, got really lovely comments and my recipient seems to have loved it, part of me thought this might be the year I might finally end up getting recced at least once. You know, having written in a large-for-Yuletide fandom for once. But of course no dice. (It's not as if that hasn't happened to me before; back in 2012 when I wrote that Fandom AU for Yuletide I also thought that one might be the one. I wish I could stop wanting that - clearly I'm just never going to write the kind of thing people want to rec, and it would be much better for my nerves if I could get that into my head ...)
There's also Unbreak Me (Legend of the Seeker, Cara & Kahlan). It's a fix-it fic that came years too late, but I just know that if I'd posted it back then the fandom would have been all over it. By 2014, the fandom was basically dead, and no one cared any more. Story of my life. *sighs*
Most fun story to write:
the eyes are new, the look is old - this one's a Doctor/Jack fic where the Doctor regenerates into a woman, and the entire story just fell out of my head nearly fully formed. I wrote it all down in an afternoon, and I wish all my writing could go as smoothly as that! I love it when the writing just flows.
Sexiest story/story with the single sexiest moment:
I'll have to say Knife's Edge again. Sorry! (Heed the warnings. But damn if that fic doesn't do it for me, in all kinds of ways I didn't even expect.)
Hardest story to write:
My Yuletide fic, hands down, for a whole bunch of reasons that, for once, aren't just about me cutting it too close to the deadline and then panicking. I made so many false starts with this one, it's not even funny. I know I have a record of all the words I wrote for it, but I don't even want to check just how many I wrote and then discarded. On top of that, even when I finally ended up on the right track, for the longest time, my draft ended up with all the opposite problems from the ones I usually have. (Okay, not all of them. White Room Syndrome was definitely in evidence.) I'm usually far stronger at emotional plots than at action plots, and this was the first time I wrote something where the external action all worked just fine, but the emotional arcs were seriously lacking. I managed to fix that eventually, but it's not a problem I'm used to, so it was surprisingly difficult. (Thank you again to sholio for her advice at that stage!)
In the end, What Doesn't Kill Us turned out pretty well, even if I do say so myself! Thanks mostly to prettyarbitrary, my fabulous beta, who was amazingly helpful throughout, gave me the key to the story on a plate, and even went above and beyond at the very last minute, so I could get in some final edits minutes before the archive went live. Phew!
Stories I haven't yet written, but intend to:
I've got a whole bunch of those on the list! Some Doctor Who/Torchwood ones that I've been meaning to write or finish for ages, and there's a Grimm epic that's been building itself in the back of my brain. I really hope to tackle these in 2015.
Did you take any writing risks this year?
See above re: idfic and self-indulgence.
Also, with the Yuletide fic, I did a lot of revising and rewriting very late in the game, and I ended up writing about 20,000 words in three days. (A lot of them were scrapped, but I still wrote them!) I learned two very important things from that:
a) I can do this if I absolutely have to!
b) I never, ever want to have to again. *g*
I'd like to thank the academy...
People who have been particularly wonderful, helpful, and brilliant: fluffyllama, wojelah, sholio and prettyarbitrary. Thank you so much, all of you! I don't know what I'd do without you.