2011 writing round up and word count, and general fandom activities stuff
It's that time of year again, so here's my round up of my writing in 2011.
To put it bluntly, it's not big and it's not impressive (ooh er!). I knew I hadn't had a great year for writing, but my total words of fic posted this year is a paltry 48,675, which is *massively* down on last year's 115,860. That total is spread over 25 separate fics, and 17 drabbles (which was a nice surpise, as I didn't think I'd written many drabbles at all this year). I have to admit to being disappointed - even though I knew I hadn't done so well this year, I thought I'd at least get 50 or 60,000.
Nevertheless, looking at the positives, as well as the fic total, I can also add 4315 words of Dinosaur and Era of the Month posts on Denial (four posts in total this year). I've been enjoying the Dino and Era of the months, because they've allowed me to wallow in research and books and stuff, which was always my favourite thing about writing essays at university. I also dabbled in a new fandom for the first time since Primeval grabbed me and wouldn't let go in early 2007. 2011 saw my first attempt at Doctor Who fic, with The Last Centurion, because Rory and River are completely awesome and were probably my favourite things about DW series 6.
Also, this year I've been keeping a spreadsheet of my daily word count (admitedly only since May, so it's not actually a full and accurate count for the year), and what I have noticed is that the total of words I've *written* far exceeds the total of words I've *posted* as finished fics. The biggests discrepancy here is the Mini Bang fic, that I've been writing on and off all year, and is now standing at 21,551 words, and still not finished. Fingers crossed I can finally put that one to bed this year.
Anyway, the fic that I am most proud of in 2011 was undoubtedly The Dying of the Light. It was one of those fics that just *worked*, and the finished fic was almost exactly what I'd imagined in my head when I started, which is always nice. And I made lots of people wail loudly, which is a bonus! The fic that I most *enjoyed* writing was probably A Pirate's Life For Me, because it had pirates and swordfighting and exploding sea monsters and action adventure and semi-naked Becker, and it was completely bonkers, and how can that *not* be fun! It was also my longest single fic of the year, at 6540 words.
In other fandom activities, I've taken an extended break from doing the Monday picture on andrewleepotts because I wasn't finding time to do the screencapping and stuff every week. Ironically, I then (slightly by accident) ended up pretty much taking over the running of mansfieldfans and started doing a weeky Thursday picture there instead. I'm still not entirely sure how this happened, but never mind, I'm having fun, and I still get to enjoy the weekly A-LP pic without having to do any work for it, which is nice.
And finally, it appears that for the last two years running in my yearly writing round up I have said something along the lines of "I'm going to start writing Merlin fic this year", and have thus far spectactularly failed to do so. So this year I won't say it, and we'll see if I get mugged by disgruntled Merlin bunnies later...
Happy New year everyone!
P.S. My RL friends are awesome! I went to a new year party last night and we swapped Christmas presents with everyone that I hadn't seen before Christmas, and one of my presents was a book entitled, "Man, Oh Man - Writing M/M Fiction for Kinks and Cash"!!!!! Which we then spent a large part of the night passing round the room and reading bits out and sporfling quite a lot. And there's an *entire chapter* on writing angst and hurt/comfort!!!! Squeee! I can't wait to read it properly. :-)
To put it bluntly, it's not big and it's not impressive (ooh er!). I knew I hadn't had a great year for writing, but my total words of fic posted this year is a paltry 48,675, which is *massively* down on last year's 115,860. That total is spread over 25 separate fics, and 17 drabbles (which was a nice surpise, as I didn't think I'd written many drabbles at all this year). I have to admit to being disappointed - even though I knew I hadn't done so well this year, I thought I'd at least get 50 or 60,000.
Nevertheless, looking at the positives, as well as the fic total, I can also add 4315 words of Dinosaur and Era of the Month posts on Denial (four posts in total this year). I've been enjoying the Dino and Era of the months, because they've allowed me to wallow in research and books and stuff, which was always my favourite thing about writing essays at university. I also dabbled in a new fandom for the first time since Primeval grabbed me and wouldn't let go in early 2007. 2011 saw my first attempt at Doctor Who fic, with The Last Centurion, because Rory and River are completely awesome and were probably my favourite things about DW series 6.
Also, this year I've been keeping a spreadsheet of my daily word count (admitedly only since May, so it's not actually a full and accurate count for the year), and what I have noticed is that the total of words I've *written* far exceeds the total of words I've *posted* as finished fics. The biggests discrepancy here is the Mini Bang fic, that I've been writing on and off all year, and is now standing at 21,551 words, and still not finished. Fingers crossed I can finally put that one to bed this year.
Anyway, the fic that I am most proud of in 2011 was undoubtedly The Dying of the Light. It was one of those fics that just *worked*, and the finished fic was almost exactly what I'd imagined in my head when I started, which is always nice. And I made lots of people wail loudly, which is a bonus! The fic that I most *enjoyed* writing was probably A Pirate's Life For Me, because it had pirates and swordfighting and exploding sea monsters and action adventure and semi-naked Becker, and it was completely bonkers, and how can that *not* be fun! It was also my longest single fic of the year, at 6540 words.
In other fandom activities, I've taken an extended break from doing the Monday picture on andrewleepotts because I wasn't finding time to do the screencapping and stuff every week. Ironically, I then (slightly by accident) ended up pretty much taking over the running of mansfieldfans and started doing a weeky Thursday picture there instead. I'm still not entirely sure how this happened, but never mind, I'm having fun, and I still get to enjoy the weekly A-LP pic without having to do any work for it, which is nice.
And finally, it appears that for the last two years running in my yearly writing round up I have said something along the lines of "I'm going to start writing Merlin fic this year", and have thus far spectactularly failed to do so. So this year I won't say it, and we'll see if I get mugged by disgruntled Merlin bunnies later...
Happy New year everyone!
P.S. My RL friends are awesome! I went to a new year party last night and we swapped Christmas presents with everyone that I hadn't seen before Christmas, and one of my presents was a book entitled, "Man, Oh Man - Writing M/M Fiction for Kinks and Cash"!!!!! Which we then spent a large part of the night passing round the room and reading bits out and sporfling quite a lot. And there's an *entire chapter* on writing angst and hurt/comfort!!!! Squeee! I can't wait to read it properly. :-)