End-of-Year Writing Meme
This is mostly the same meme I did last year and the year before, taken, mixed and adapted from a variety of memes and people.
Total number of posted stories in 2016: 13 (I'll count the new parts for my still-unfinished WIP of Doom as one "fic" for this)
As I've done since 2014, I kept track of my writing in a spreadsheet which I originally got via
inkingitout and then modified for my own purposes, so have some word count statistics:
Total word count (posted): 74,618 (which, surprisingly, is about 3,000 words more than last year)
Total word count (written): 229,679 (about 45k more than last year, wow!)
Highest monthly word count (posted): 25,494 (April) (about half of last year's spectacular October)
Highest monthly word count (written): 48,342 (March) (only ~2k below October 2015)
Most words written in a day: 5,215 (12th March) (about the same amount as last year's highest)
Fewest words written in a day: 3 (5th February, 16th July) (same word count as last year, but I only got that low once in 2015)
Months I actually posted fic: 9 (it was 7 in 2015, and 6 in 2014)
Fandoms written in:
Grimm (6), Doctor Who/Torchwood (3), Original (2), Legend of the Seeker (1), Starfire (1)
Unsurprisingly, Grimm was once again my main fandom.
Fandoms I wouldn't have expected to write this year:
Nothing unexpected this year - they were all established fandoms. I didn't get into any new fandoms at all in 2016.
Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you'd predicted?
In word count, I'm a little bit above what I'd aimed for, but not by any extreme amounts. It's what I wrote, and what I finished (or rather, didn't finish) that's different from what I'd have thought. Basically, I finished none of the things I'd intended to finish, and started none of the things I thought I might start. *headdesk*
After the end of 2015, where I hit a two-month low, I'd hoped to get back into the swing of things quickly. I didn't - I only finally managed to get there in March - and what's more, after that the entire rest of the year was a wild see-saw, writing-wise. Whereas 2015 was low most of the time but had a giant spike from July to October, 2016 kept going up and down:
And some of the down parts were particularly low. August 2016 is the worst writing month I've had since I started Write Every Day - I only wrote 1,556 words total, despite not skipping a single day. It was a month of alibi sentences - only two days even got into triple digits, and five had single-digit word counts.
I suppose given that, I'm surprised I actually ended up with a decent word count for the year!
In 2015, I hit my then-100,000 word target in mid-September; this year I was at 100,000 toward the end of April, and I hit my 2016
inkingitout pledge of 200,000 words in early November.
(Needless to say, I've signed up for a goal of 300,000 words in 2017. I decided to be optimistic, and I hope it works out!)
What's your own favorite story of the year?
If we discount the WIP of Doom (otherwise known as Glass on the Ground, my massive Grimm season 5 AU, which I won't call my favourite again until it's bloody well finished), I'd have to say it's probably an original fic:
Title: The Castle of Spun Bridges
Pairing: Queen/Knight, original femslash
Rating: R
Content tags: Soulmates, Fantasy Politics, Keeping Secrets, Sex With Magic, Interspecies Romance
Summary: Humans had no soulmates; therefore a Human couldn't be anyone's soulmate. That was plainly obvious. - Queen Kalandra doesn't quite know what to do with her Human lover.
I really like how this one came out, particularly the feel of the alien species and their world.
Or if we're looking strictly at fanfic, that's a little more difficult. One candidate is this Grimm fic:
Title: A Draught of Deep Desire
Pairing: Nick Burkhardt/Sean Renard
Rating: NC-17
Content tags: Magic Made Them Do It, Sex Magic, BDSM, Dom/sub, Bondage, Spanking, Face-Fucking, Fingerfucking, Anal Sex, Biting
Summary: He wanted to lose himself in something better than violence, cleaner than anger. Let himself fall. - A Zaubertrank makes them do it.
This was a
smutswap treat and hits a lot of my kinks dead on, but I'm having trouble separating it from the planned sequels, of which only a tiny interlude has been posted so far. As a stand-alone, I may love another Grimm fic just a bit more:
Title: Out of the Water
Pairing: Sean Renard/Juliette Silverton
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Juliette follows Renard when he goes to meet Kenneth. Everything changes. - Diverging from canon during episode 4.16, Heartbreaker.
(Though it's not like I haven't contemplated a sequel to that, too. Grimm does that to me; it always wants to be epic.)
My best story of this year:
Again, if we discount Glass it's probably The Castle of Spun Bridges, or for strictly fanfic, A Draught of Deep Desire or Out of the Water.
But I'm a bad judge of quality for the more recent stories; they're too fresh in my mind to be able to separate the pre-publication anxieties from the story itself.
My most popular story of this year:
Most popular by AO3 hit count: Glass on the Ground (Grimm, Nick/Renard/Juliette), or for single-chapter fics/fics entirely posted this year, A Draught of Deep Desire (Grimm, Nick/Renard)
Most popular by AO3 kudos: same as above
Most popular by AO3 bookmarks: oh shock, same again!
Most popular by AO3 comments: same again ...
Unsurprisingly, it's the WIP and the porn. *g*
Story of mine most under-appreciated by the universe, in my opinion:
All of them? ;) Okay, let's try this again:
Underappreciated because people should love the fandom as I do, dammit: my Yuletide fic (Starfire series):
Title: Farshalah'kiah for the Modern Orion Woman
Rating: PG
Characters: Uaaria'salath-ahn, Zhaarnak'diaano (briefly)
Content tags: Orion Feminism, Women in the Military
Summary: Uaaria and her relationship with Orion concepts of honor. - What does it mean to Uaaria to be a maverick among the Zheeerlikou'valkhannaieee? To be a woman?
Underappreciated because people should love the pairing as I do, dammit: Out of the Water, my Juliette/Renard fic (Grimm) - see above.
Underappreciated because it's R-rated Doctor/Jack, with tentacles, even, dammit, and I expected more of a response: my public_call fic:
Title: The Almost Doctor
Pairing: Ganger!Eleventh Doctor/Jack Harkness
Characters: Ganger!Eleventh Doctor, Jack Harkness, Ganger!Miranda Cleaves
Rating: R
Content Tags: Episode 6.06 - The Almost People, identity issues, tentacle sex
Summary: In the end, whatever he might have told Amy, he was still only almost the Doctor, and the TARDIS wasn't his. - A different ending for The Almost People, where Ganger!Eleven and Ganger!Cleaves don't get dissolved.
Most fun story to write:
I think the closest I came to fun with any of the published stories this year (as opposed to the drawerfic I've been dabbling in recently) was A Draught of Deep Desire because it was a SmutSwap treat, there was no obligation, and I did it purely because I wanted to.
Otherwise, this year, almost everything was a lot more work than it rightfully should have been. I miss the (admittedly rare) times when I could produce stories easily, and the words were just flowing ...
Sexiest story/story with the single sexiest moment:
A Draught of Deep Desire, no competition. That was the point, after all. *g*
Hardest story to write:
Glass on the Ground, seeing as how 85,000 words in, it's still not finished. Or rather, Glass Chapter 10, which is the one I got stuck on in October 2015 and which took me until Mach 2016 to actually work out, and then Glass Chapter 15, which is the one I'm currently stuck on. I know exactly what needs to happen, and most of it is even written, but the first scene just won't come together, and it's been driving me batty. I made some decent progress on it in November, but then I had to stop and focus on other things. Here's hoping I can finally get it all to make sense soon!
Did you take any writing risks this year?
Not really. I didn't have the energy for anything new; even the old familiar things were a struggle most of the time.
Do you have any fanfic or profic goals for the New Year?
Finish at least three Fandom Stocking treats.
Finish my
holly_poly story.
Finish Glass.
Finish the sequel to A Draught of Deep Desire, and maybe write the sequels to that.
Reach my
inkingitout pledge of 300,000 words.
Post fic every month of the year, or failing that, at least more months than in 2016.
I think that's more than enough, right?
Stories I haven't yet written, but intend to:
See above. And of course there's also that Grimm season 4 AU epic I've been mentioning in this meme the last two years! I still want to do that at some point. And I want to find an actual plot for the 22,000 words of Grimm amnesia fic I have lying around, so I can make it into a real story ...
I'd like to thank the academy...
People I couldn't have done without: navaan, seshat_maat, fluffyllama, wojelah, and the entire Write Every Day crowd. Thank you so much, all of you! You're the bestest. ♥ ♥ ♥
Total number of posted stories in 2016: 13 (I'll count the new parts for my still-unfinished WIP of Doom as one "fic" for this)
As I've done since 2014, I kept track of my writing in a spreadsheet which I originally got via
inkingitout and then modified for my own purposes, so have some word count statistics:
Total word count (posted): 74,618 (which, surprisingly, is about 3,000 words more than last year)
Total word count (written): 229,679 (about 45k more than last year, wow!)
Highest monthly word count (posted): 25,494 (April) (about half of last year's spectacular October)
Highest monthly word count (written): 48,342 (March) (only ~2k below October 2015)
Most words written in a day: 5,215 (12th March) (about the same amount as last year's highest)
Fewest words written in a day: 3 (5th February, 16th July) (same word count as last year, but I only got that low once in 2015)
Months I actually posted fic: 9 (it was 7 in 2015, and 6 in 2014)
Fandoms written in:
Grimm (6), Doctor Who/Torchwood (3), Original (2), Legend of the Seeker (1), Starfire (1)
Unsurprisingly, Grimm was once again my main fandom.
Fandoms I wouldn't have expected to write this year:
Nothing unexpected this year - they were all established fandoms. I didn't get into any new fandoms at all in 2016.
Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you'd predicted?
In word count, I'm a little bit above what I'd aimed for, but not by any extreme amounts. It's what I wrote, and what I finished (or rather, didn't finish) that's different from what I'd have thought. Basically, I finished none of the things I'd intended to finish, and started none of the things I thought I might start. *headdesk*
After the end of 2015, where I hit a two-month low, I'd hoped to get back into the swing of things quickly. I didn't - I only finally managed to get there in March - and what's more, after that the entire rest of the year was a wild see-saw, writing-wise. Whereas 2015 was low most of the time but had a giant spike from July to October, 2016 kept going up and down:
And some of the down parts were particularly low. August 2016 is the worst writing month I've had since I started Write Every Day - I only wrote 1,556 words total, despite not skipping a single day. It was a month of alibi sentences - only two days even got into triple digits, and five had single-digit word counts.
I suppose given that, I'm surprised I actually ended up with a decent word count for the year!
In 2015, I hit my then-100,000 word target in mid-September; this year I was at 100,000 toward the end of April, and I hit my 2016
inkingitout pledge of 200,000 words in early November.
(Needless to say, I've signed up for a goal of 300,000 words in 2017. I decided to be optimistic, and I hope it works out!)
What's your own favorite story of the year?
If we discount the WIP of Doom (otherwise known as Glass on the Ground, my massive Grimm season 5 AU, which I won't call my favourite again until it's bloody well finished), I'd have to say it's probably an original fic:
Title: The Castle of Spun Bridges
Pairing: Queen/Knight, original femslash
Rating: R
Content tags: Soulmates, Fantasy Politics, Keeping Secrets, Sex With Magic, Interspecies Romance
Summary: Humans had no soulmates; therefore a Human couldn't be anyone's soulmate. That was plainly obvious. - Queen Kalandra doesn't quite know what to do with her Human lover.
I really like how this one came out, particularly the feel of the alien species and their world.
Or if we're looking strictly at fanfic, that's a little more difficult. One candidate is this Grimm fic:
Title: A Draught of Deep Desire
Pairing: Nick Burkhardt/Sean Renard
Rating: NC-17
Content tags: Magic Made Them Do It, Sex Magic, BDSM, Dom/sub, Bondage, Spanking, Face-Fucking, Fingerfucking, Anal Sex, Biting
Summary: He wanted to lose himself in something better than violence, cleaner than anger. Let himself fall. - A Zaubertrank makes them do it.
This was a
smutswap treat and hits a lot of my kinks dead on, but I'm having trouble separating it from the planned sequels, of which only a tiny interlude has been posted so far. As a stand-alone, I may love another Grimm fic just a bit more:
Title: Out of the Water
Pairing: Sean Renard/Juliette Silverton
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Juliette follows Renard when he goes to meet Kenneth. Everything changes. - Diverging from canon during episode 4.16, Heartbreaker.
(Though it's not like I haven't contemplated a sequel to that, too. Grimm does that to me; it always wants to be epic.)
My best story of this year:
Again, if we discount Glass it's probably The Castle of Spun Bridges, or for strictly fanfic, A Draught of Deep Desire or Out of the Water.
But I'm a bad judge of quality for the more recent stories; they're too fresh in my mind to be able to separate the pre-publication anxieties from the story itself.
My most popular story of this year:
Most popular by AO3 hit count: Glass on the Ground (Grimm, Nick/Renard/Juliette), or for single-chapter fics/fics entirely posted this year, A Draught of Deep Desire (Grimm, Nick/Renard)
Most popular by AO3 kudos: same as above
Most popular by AO3 bookmarks: oh shock, same again!
Most popular by AO3 comments: same again ...
Unsurprisingly, it's the WIP and the porn. *g*
Story of mine most under-appreciated by the universe, in my opinion:
All of them? ;) Okay, let's try this again:
Underappreciated because people should love the fandom as I do, dammit: my Yuletide fic (Starfire series):
Title: Farshalah'kiah for the Modern Orion Woman
Rating: PG
Characters: Uaaria'salath-ahn, Zhaarnak'diaano (briefly)
Content tags: Orion Feminism, Women in the Military
Summary: Uaaria and her relationship with Orion concepts of honor. - What does it mean to Uaaria to be a maverick among the Zheeerlikou'valkhannaieee? To be a woman?
Underappreciated because people should love the pairing as I do, dammit: Out of the Water, my Juliette/Renard fic (Grimm) - see above.
Underappreciated because it's R-rated Doctor/Jack, with tentacles, even, dammit, and I expected more of a response: my public_call fic:
Title: The Almost Doctor
Pairing: Ganger!Eleventh Doctor/Jack Harkness
Characters: Ganger!Eleventh Doctor, Jack Harkness, Ganger!Miranda Cleaves
Rating: R
Content Tags: Episode 6.06 - The Almost People, identity issues, tentacle sex
Summary: In the end, whatever he might have told Amy, he was still only almost the Doctor, and the TARDIS wasn't his. - A different ending for The Almost People, where Ganger!Eleven and Ganger!Cleaves don't get dissolved.
Most fun story to write:
I think the closest I came to fun with any of the published stories this year (as opposed to the drawerfic I've been dabbling in recently) was A Draught of Deep Desire because it was a SmutSwap treat, there was no obligation, and I did it purely because I wanted to.
Otherwise, this year, almost everything was a lot more work than it rightfully should have been. I miss the (admittedly rare) times when I could produce stories easily, and the words were just flowing ...
Sexiest story/story with the single sexiest moment:
A Draught of Deep Desire, no competition. That was the point, after all. *g*
Hardest story to write:
Glass on the Ground, seeing as how 85,000 words in, it's still not finished. Or rather, Glass Chapter 10, which is the one I got stuck on in October 2015 and which took me until Mach 2016 to actually work out, and then Glass Chapter 15, which is the one I'm currently stuck on. I know exactly what needs to happen, and most of it is even written, but the first scene just won't come together, and it's been driving me batty. I made some decent progress on it in November, but then I had to stop and focus on other things. Here's hoping I can finally get it all to make sense soon!
Did you take any writing risks this year?
Not really. I didn't have the energy for anything new; even the old familiar things were a struggle most of the time.
Do you have any fanfic or profic goals for the New Year?
Finish at least three Fandom Stocking treats.
Finish my
holly_poly story.
Finish Glass.
Finish the sequel to A Draught of Deep Desire, and maybe write the sequels to that.
Reach my
inkingitout pledge of 300,000 words.
Post fic every month of the year, or failing that, at least more months than in 2016.
I think that's more than enough, right?
Stories I haven't yet written, but intend to:
See above. And of course there's also that Grimm season 4 AU epic I've been mentioning in this meme the last two years! I still want to do that at some point. And I want to find an actual plot for the 22,000 words of Grimm amnesia fic I have lying around, so I can make it into a real story ...
I'd like to thank the academy...
People I couldn't have done without: navaan, seshat_maat, fluffyllama, wojelah, and the entire Write Every Day crowd. Thank you so much, all of you! You're the bestest. ♥ ♥ ♥