Year in review: Fanfiction Writing Meme 2011
Stolen from rosa_acicularis, a fanfic writers' meme.
For the year of 2011...
Fics Completed:
To Wake Up Dreaming
What Doesn't Bear Repeating (Is Most Often Said)
(The Not How it Starts But-) How it Goes On Remix
Wrench in the Works (The Upgraded Remix)
Blinding Ourselves
Looking back, did you write more fics than you thought you would this year, less than you thought, or about what you predicted?
Less. I knew it was going to be a busy year, I think, but I didn't realize how busy. Even when I attempted to keep trying to write it sometimes back fired and I had to default on two ficathons.
Where did you publish/archive your stories?
Here on my lj (you can see everything on a masterlist!), on An Archive Of Our Own (AO3), and also on ff.net.
What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted in January 2011?
Uh...none. I ended up writing only fandoms and pairings I'd written for before.
What’s your favorite story this year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you the happiest.
My two remixes (as you will see when you see the rest of the answers, lol). The process of remixing is fascinating and I think stimulates and pushes one to write at their best. Wrench in the Works I love for the worldbuilding (even though my coding is completely rubbish probably) and Not How It Starts... I love the lyrical quality that was achieved. It has some of the grimmest ideas, which made it hard to write at some points, but it has wonderful relationships too and clan politics and the story I feel I really got a handle on Hinata from, in a lot of ways.
Okay, NOW your most popular story.
(The Not How it Starts But-) How It Goes On Remix. It definitely helped that it was written for a ficathon (The Remix/Redux ficathon, in fact! How did you ever guess!). I think ficathons give stories a bigger audience.
But I also think- not that these are the same things always by any means!- it was my best story of the year. It took complex issues and (from the original story) an unsympathetic view and made it understandable. It also has a certian lyrical quality that not all others will like, but which I personally love.
Story most underappreciated by the universe?
Probably gonna be Wrench in the Works, but- let's be honest- it was always going to have only niche appeal. Its a remix written out of the Remix/Redux period, its gen, its AU and, while lots of characters appear in it, only Hinata makes sense as a character tag for the story. And Hinata is a secondary female character that's only so-so popular in the fanfic part of this fandom.
Makes me sad because I put in a lot for that story and I think its a good story too.
That said, the author of the original story really seemed to like it, so that's something. ;) It was fun to write.
PS Wake Up Dreaming has less hits on AO3 but since the Nemo in Slumberland fandom is nonexistent, I wouldn't say underappericated. Naruto has a big fandom and Wrench in the Works comparatively few hits.
Story that could have been better?
I am actually pretty well pleased with all my stories from this year. I just wish there'd been more.
Sexiest story?
How it Goes On Remix, I guess. There is an exchange in bed, after all...
Can you tell I don't really *do* "sexy?"
Most fun story?
I liked What Doesn't bear Repeating once I got a sense of the story. I enjoyed all the different group interactions, writing Team Ten and Karin and Suigetsu and its the closest I have gotten to understanding and liking Sakura.
Possibly also Wrench in the Works, though it was also a pain to write because it took forever and I couldn't get more than a scene done in a month. But I found the research was interesting and the world-building was fun.
Story with single sweetest moment?
I don't want this to become the How It Goes On parade but.... that is the story where Hinata has a baby plus there's the scene where as newlyweds Neji's hair gets caught in his ANBU mask. I always thought that was sweet, for some reason... Blinding Ourselves, I think Neji's jealous thought that he and Hanabi are always competing for Hinata's attention is kinda cute.
I'm not a sweet person, so much as a bittersweet person, I think.
The story that made you cry?
I think it might be weird if my own stories made me cry, but How It Goes On is definitely the saddest story this year. Its almost exclusively about really, really sad things happening. A lot of people died in that, and a lot of mutilation of bodies too.
Hardest story to write?
Both the remixes. Because I couldn't really get one going, they were both started at the same time and I kept switching back and forth. I knew the plots for both (longer stories I tend to outline the plot, and it allows me to write out of order), but just couldn't get steam. Finally got one (How iI Goes On) and then Wrench in the Works (then unnamed. I think the working title was just Cyberpunk the Upgraded Remix. That or RealRemix2011. lol. Titles defeat me regularly) took me tinkering with it on and off the rest of the year. I was so ready to give up but was too annoyed at the idea of that much writing going nowhere.
Easiest story to write?
Um, when I actually got back to it, Blinding Ourselves was. I wrote it in about two bursts, the first half early this year and the last half late in the year. But both times I looked at writing it, the scenes came pretty easily.
Most overdue story?
Lol, Wrench in the Works! It was originally going to be my Remix/Redux entry and I finally got it complete what? only seven months delayed?
Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?
I chose to write a story that is told backwards to how the scenes happen chronologically, so that the first scene read is the latest scene in the characters lives in How It Goes On. This is something I'd wanted to do for a while now. It was tricky to write later scenes and keep important reveals from happening too soon, but still have the story make sense.
I also wrote an AU with a completely different setting, something I'd never done before, when I wrote Wrench in the Works . It was fun to world-build, and to parallel to the original story background. However, it also took a TON of research and I still felt out of my depth writing cyberpunk. Its a rich well of a genre, and I think, unless you are writing a modern day AU, any AU with a different setting is going to require plenty of research if you're going to do it up write for anything more than a comment!fic or a very short story. In fact, even a modern day AU probably would take research if you gave characters jobs or homes unfamiliar to you...
PS I ALMOST FORGOT. I also learned what cypherpunk was, what an FTF (face to face) meant, and transhumanism is a topic that is in fact discussed in academic articles today.
Do you have any fanfic goals for the New Year?
Write more. Well.... I'd like to write more, though I'm not sure that's going to happen. I want to write a Doctor Who story (or other fandom story besides Naruto), if I do write. I am making a goal too, to complete a fem gen story; summers have been a surprisingly bad time for me to write. I'd like to write my multi-chapter mystery story too, but we shall see...