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2008 is over. Thank goodness. It's been a year o' suck for pretty much everyone I know and the world will be a better place to be rid of it. I can only hope that 2009 will be much easier on all of us. It's a small hope, but it's something to cling to on the cold, Michigan winter nights.
True, a few good things happened over the past year, and I certainly had some good experiences, so I'll try to corral my pessimism and just move right on to the good part of the End of Year meme, the fic.
The Rundown:
3 regular Supernatural fics: The Blue, Blue Sky, More Than Just a Pretty Face, and A Family Business
1 crossover: The Coming Storm
6 AUs snippets: Down a Parallel Road Masterlist
1 Batman movieverse: Getting the Job Done
For a total of 11 stories in 3 fandoms.
Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you'd predicted?
I wrote a little bit more than I predicted, I think. Of coure, I don't think I ever really expected that I'd actually finish A Family Business and I definitely never thought I'd start putting my AU crack up on the interwebz, so I guess it really does come out to more in the end. It's rather gratifying to know that, even though I don't write nearly as much as some, I do write more and more every year. Maybe by the time I'm 80 I really will have written my magnum opus.
What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted in January 2oo8?
There's nothing I wrote this year that I couldn't have predicted in January. My interests really haven't changed that much over the year. You know what would be unpredictable? If I ever actually wrote a story whose plot revolved around a central pairing in a romantic fashion. But let's save those very uninteresting isues for another day.
What's your favorite story of the year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you happiest?
*cracks up and blushes* It's totally anything and everything having to do with Down a Parallel Road. It's my happy place, it's where I go when I want to figure out and process Show. It's also where I go when I'm tired of dealing with my real life and want to play with someone else's apocalypses for a change. And, hey, if you think that's ludicrous just be grateful you can't see into my head and see all of the AUs to AUs and AUs based on other people's stories and OTT angsty AUs and all of the other ridiculous crap that's in there. Isn't it kind of scary to know that no matter how crazy people may seem on the internet they're about a billionty times more crazy in the privacy of their own heads? Yeah, it makes you wonder about the future of the world.
A future which can only end in apocalypse, of course. One for which baylorsr and I will be prepared, come what may.
Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?
Did I take any risks? I'm not sure. On the one hand, I didn't write anything that was terribly outside of my normal milieu; it was all gen with a side of crossover or AU, as the inspiration moved me. On the other hand, I did write a multi-part, multi-timeline story that was an absolute beast of a project compared to everything else I've written, up to and including my Ron Weasley duology. While A Family Business wasn't as intensely personal as the Ron stories, it was much more complex and it taught me a lot about plot and story structure and characterization. AFB also taught me the benefits of outlining and it also reinforced the need to improvise and change the outline at a moment's notice.
Most importantly it taught me how to sit down and get something done even if you're sick to death of the story and the words aren't flowing the way you want it to and you'd do anything short of selling your soul if you'd never started the damn thing in the first place. And that selling your soul option is looking a lot more viable than you ever thought it would.
So, yeah, I guess 2008 has taught me a few things about writing after all.
From my past year of writing, what was:
Best story: I don't even know. I'm well and truly aware of all of the flaws in my stories from the past year. I don't think I can qualify or quantify which could be the best, though I think the two that people who aren't me would most likely pick would be AFB or More Than Just a Pretty Face. I don't really want to pick favorites this year, so I don't think I will.
Story Most Underappreciated by the Universe:
A Family Business, absolutely. We've all had the experience where we write a story, something we think is the greatest thing ever, and then have a nervous breakdown because it's not getting the kind of universal acclaim we think it deserves. I had a couple really bad days after I posted the last part where I was blaming myself and fandom and everyone for not giving my story the amount of love and adoration I thought it deserved. I got over myself, of course, and realized that while it was a groundbreaker for me, in terms of SPN fandom it really didn't do anything that other people hadn't done, and done better, before me. I also realized that if I had been an uninterested reader I probably wouldn't have left a comment either, so there you go.
Why yes, I am a sekrit drama queen. *snerk* And AFB might not have gotten the universal acclaim that I selfishly craved but it got the acclaim from all of the people that mattered, namely myself and my fangirls. When it comes down to it, I really did write that story for myself and nobody else, and that's all that matters.
Most fun:
More Than Just a Pretty Face. How could it not be the most fun? I got to revisit my college days and skip around in some of my favorite memories. It was fun to write and it is fun to read and I think it's just fun, fun, fun all around. Also, it reads like a MOTW episode of a Jo spin-off show and we could always use more stories like that in SPN fandom.
Most disappointing:
Getting the Job Done. I still like the concept and want to play around in Nolan's Gotham a little bit more, but the story isn't all that great, as a story. It's okay, but not anything approaching exceptional. It reads like the summary to a much larger story, and maybe that's what it really is. It is what it is and I still kind of like it, but I think I like what it could've been more.
Most sexy:
I don't think anything I've written this year qualifies as sexy. Well, nothing that I've shared with the public at large. There's a flashback to Curtis and possessed!Mandy having sex in Blue, Blue Sky and Jo gets salt down her bra in More Than Just a Pretty Face, but that's about the closest I come, I think. So if anyone feels the urge to sex something I've written up, please feel free to do so. My greatest fandom dream is to have someone either remix a story I've written or write fanfiction with one of my characters in it.
Maybe someday I'll be a big enough BNF for that to happen. *wistful sigh* ;-)
Story With a Single Sexy Moment:
See above where, for another year running, I fail at sex.
Hardest to Write:
A Family Business. Unlike last year, this story was hardest to write simply because it was so much bigger than anything else I'd ever attempted. I had to juggle two timelines and four different POVs and as much as I love getting into a character's head and seeing the world through his/her/its eyes, it's also a lot of work.
But I learned how to write through blocks and force myself to write even when I didn't want to. I learned how to scrap entire sections that I'd spent days writing just because they didn't work anymore. I also got to write fic in the Toronto Necropolis and on a sunny day on a boat on the Ottawa River. Huh, I'm beginning to see a correlation between 'hard' and 'good.' Who'da thunk it.
Most "OMG HEY *I* WROTE THAT! Fanon-Turned-Canon Moment:
The transmitter is finally working because OMG I totally wrote that bit where Dean and a chick had a serious conversation on the hood of a car in Bobby's yard a good year and a half before it happened onscreen. Victory is mine! Of course, my scene was all about missing brothers and Kripke's was all about missing fathers but, still!
I've been Kripked and it feels so right.
Most Unintentionally Telling:
This is a funny question because isn't all fiction, fan or otherwise, unintentionally telling about the author? That's one of the things that always annoyed me about literature classes in college, the way the professors would spend more time trying to understand the author then enjoy the story. But, the longer I spend as a writer the more I realize that everything I write tells more about me than it does about the characters I've created.
For instance: for most of AFB I had no clue what was going to happen to the Dewar girls in the very end. Then I have Angela realizing that she can't leave West Michigan, that she has to give up on her dreams and readjust to her new life. If that's not a metaphor for everything that's happened to me because of fibromyalgia I don't know what is. Truth is stranger than fiction because fiction is truth. We are what we write. Which is, really, kind of awesome, when you think about it.
This year's theme and the story that demonstrates it most:
Apparently this year I've been all about women stepping up and standing on their own two feet. Everything I've written this year has been about female characters and much of it has been about how those characters deal with traumatic events in their lives. Actually, all of it has been. Which is rather apropos, considering how this year has been for me personally. This was the year when my fibromyalgia only got worse and I had to learn how to stand on my own two feet and get things done, no matter how I was feeling, realizing that no one else could do any of it for me. This has also been the year when I've seen the amazing women around me stand up and get things done because if they didn't do it no one else would.
So it's not surprising that in a year like that I've had Jo and Kat stand up and start hunting and I've had the Dewar sisters do the same thing; that I've had Mandy dealing with demonic possession and Barbara Gordon and Missouri Moseley conspiring over how to save the world. Because if they don't do it it won't get done.
Do you have any fanfic or profic goals for the New Year?
Do I have any goals? Oh, baby, do I have goals. Not only is there the crazy crack that baylorsr and I have been playing with but there's also the huge AU that's been simmering in the back of my mind for the better part of a year (hint: it has Henricksen and Bela and might be somehow related to a movie about a city in Morocco during WWII). I really want to write that AU. Also, thanks to stupid Dark Knight and stupid DC cancelling Birds of Prey now I want to write an origin story for Huntress in Nolan's Gotham. Oh, and let's not forget that Jo has more story to tell, as well. Let's just say she hasn't been fiddling while Rome is burning. *wink*
And I have to graduate from Law School, pass the Bar, and find a job. It's going to be one very busy year, I tell you what.
True, a few good things happened over the past year, and I certainly had some good experiences, so I'll try to corral my pessimism and just move right on to the good part of the End of Year meme, the fic.
The Rundown:
3 regular Supernatural fics: The Blue, Blue Sky, More Than Just a Pretty Face, and A Family Business
1 crossover: The Coming Storm
6 AUs snippets: Down a Parallel Road Masterlist
1 Batman movieverse: Getting the Job Done
For a total of 11 stories in 3 fandoms.
Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you'd predicted?
I wrote a little bit more than I predicted, I think. Of coure, I don't think I ever really expected that I'd actually finish A Family Business and I definitely never thought I'd start putting my AU crack up on the interwebz, so I guess it really does come out to more in the end. It's rather gratifying to know that, even though I don't write nearly as much as some, I do write more and more every year. Maybe by the time I'm 80 I really will have written my magnum opus.
What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted in January 2oo8?
There's nothing I wrote this year that I couldn't have predicted in January. My interests really haven't changed that much over the year. You know what would be unpredictable? If I ever actually wrote a story whose plot revolved around a central pairing in a romantic fashion. But let's save those very uninteresting isues for another day.
What's your favorite story of the year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you happiest?
*cracks up and blushes* It's totally anything and everything having to do with Down a Parallel Road. It's my happy place, it's where I go when I want to figure out and process Show. It's also where I go when I'm tired of dealing with my real life and want to play with someone else's apocalypses for a change. And, hey, if you think that's ludicrous just be grateful you can't see into my head and see all of the AUs to AUs and AUs based on other people's stories and OTT angsty AUs and all of the other ridiculous crap that's in there. Isn't it kind of scary to know that no matter how crazy people may seem on the internet they're about a billionty times more crazy in the privacy of their own heads? Yeah, it makes you wonder about the future of the world.
A future which can only end in apocalypse, of course. One for which baylorsr and I will be prepared, come what may.
Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?
Did I take any risks? I'm not sure. On the one hand, I didn't write anything that was terribly outside of my normal milieu; it was all gen with a side of crossover or AU, as the inspiration moved me. On the other hand, I did write a multi-part, multi-timeline story that was an absolute beast of a project compared to everything else I've written, up to and including my Ron Weasley duology. While A Family Business wasn't as intensely personal as the Ron stories, it was much more complex and it taught me a lot about plot and story structure and characterization. AFB also taught me the benefits of outlining and it also reinforced the need to improvise and change the outline at a moment's notice.
Most importantly it taught me how to sit down and get something done even if you're sick to death of the story and the words aren't flowing the way you want it to and you'd do anything short of selling your soul if you'd never started the damn thing in the first place. And that selling your soul option is looking a lot more viable than you ever thought it would.
So, yeah, I guess 2008 has taught me a few things about writing after all.
From my past year of writing, what was:
Best story: I don't even know. I'm well and truly aware of all of the flaws in my stories from the past year. I don't think I can qualify or quantify which could be the best, though I think the two that people who aren't me would most likely pick would be AFB or More Than Just a Pretty Face. I don't really want to pick favorites this year, so I don't think I will.
Story Most Underappreciated by the Universe:
A Family Business, absolutely. We've all had the experience where we write a story, something we think is the greatest thing ever, and then have a nervous breakdown because it's not getting the kind of universal acclaim we think it deserves. I had a couple really bad days after I posted the last part where I was blaming myself and fandom and everyone for not giving my story the amount of love and adoration I thought it deserved. I got over myself, of course, and realized that while it was a groundbreaker for me, in terms of SPN fandom it really didn't do anything that other people hadn't done, and done better, before me. I also realized that if I had been an uninterested reader I probably wouldn't have left a comment either, so there you go.
Why yes, I am a sekrit drama queen. *snerk* And AFB might not have gotten the universal acclaim that I selfishly craved but it got the acclaim from all of the people that mattered, namely myself and my fangirls. When it comes down to it, I really did write that story for myself and nobody else, and that's all that matters.
Most fun:
More Than Just a Pretty Face. How could it not be the most fun? I got to revisit my college days and skip around in some of my favorite memories. It was fun to write and it is fun to read and I think it's just fun, fun, fun all around. Also, it reads like a MOTW episode of a Jo spin-off show and we could always use more stories like that in SPN fandom.
Most disappointing:
Getting the Job Done. I still like the concept and want to play around in Nolan's Gotham a little bit more, but the story isn't all that great, as a story. It's okay, but not anything approaching exceptional. It reads like the summary to a much larger story, and maybe that's what it really is. It is what it is and I still kind of like it, but I think I like what it could've been more.
Most sexy:
I don't think anything I've written this year qualifies as sexy. Well, nothing that I've shared with the public at large. There's a flashback to Curtis and possessed!Mandy having sex in Blue, Blue Sky and Jo gets salt down her bra in More Than Just a Pretty Face, but that's about the closest I come, I think. So if anyone feels the urge to sex something I've written up, please feel free to do so. My greatest fandom dream is to have someone either remix a story I've written or write fanfiction with one of my characters in it.
Maybe someday I'll be a big enough BNF for that to happen. *wistful sigh* ;-)
Story With a Single Sexy Moment:
See above where, for another year running, I fail at sex.
Hardest to Write:
A Family Business. Unlike last year, this story was hardest to write simply because it was so much bigger than anything else I'd ever attempted. I had to juggle two timelines and four different POVs and as much as I love getting into a character's head and seeing the world through his/her/its eyes, it's also a lot of work.
But I learned how to write through blocks and force myself to write even when I didn't want to. I learned how to scrap entire sections that I'd spent days writing just because they didn't work anymore. I also got to write fic in the Toronto Necropolis and on a sunny day on a boat on the Ottawa River. Huh, I'm beginning to see a correlation between 'hard' and 'good.' Who'da thunk it.
Most "OMG HEY *I* WROTE THAT! Fanon-Turned-Canon Moment:
The transmitter is finally working because OMG I totally wrote that bit where Dean and a chick had a serious conversation on the hood of a car in Bobby's yard a good year and a half before it happened onscreen. Victory is mine! Of course, my scene was all about missing brothers and Kripke's was all about missing fathers but, still!
I've been Kripked and it feels so right.
Most Unintentionally Telling:
This is a funny question because isn't all fiction, fan or otherwise, unintentionally telling about the author? That's one of the things that always annoyed me about literature classes in college, the way the professors would spend more time trying to understand the author then enjoy the story. But, the longer I spend as a writer the more I realize that everything I write tells more about me than it does about the characters I've created.
For instance: for most of AFB I had no clue what was going to happen to the Dewar girls in the very end. Then I have Angela realizing that she can't leave West Michigan, that she has to give up on her dreams and readjust to her new life. If that's not a metaphor for everything that's happened to me because of fibromyalgia I don't know what is. Truth is stranger than fiction because fiction is truth. We are what we write. Which is, really, kind of awesome, when you think about it.
This year's theme and the story that demonstrates it most:
Apparently this year I've been all about women stepping up and standing on their own two feet. Everything I've written this year has been about female characters and much of it has been about how those characters deal with traumatic events in their lives. Actually, all of it has been. Which is rather apropos, considering how this year has been for me personally. This was the year when my fibromyalgia only got worse and I had to learn how to stand on my own two feet and get things done, no matter how I was feeling, realizing that no one else could do any of it for me. This has also been the year when I've seen the amazing women around me stand up and get things done because if they didn't do it no one else would.
So it's not surprising that in a year like that I've had Jo and Kat stand up and start hunting and I've had the Dewar sisters do the same thing; that I've had Mandy dealing with demonic possession and Barbara Gordon and Missouri Moseley conspiring over how to save the world. Because if they don't do it it won't get done.
Do you have any fanfic or profic goals for the New Year?
Do I have any goals? Oh, baby, do I have goals. Not only is there the crazy crack that baylorsr and I have been playing with but there's also the huge AU that's been simmering in the back of my mind for the better part of a year (hint: it has Henricksen and Bela and might be somehow related to a movie about a city in Morocco during WWII). I really want to write that AU. Also, thanks to stupid Dark Knight and stupid DC cancelling Birds of Prey now I want to write an origin story for Huntress in Nolan's Gotham. Oh, and let's not forget that Jo has more story to tell, as well. Let's just say she hasn't been fiddling while Rome is burning. *wink*
And I have to graduate from Law School, pass the Bar, and find a job. It's going to be one very busy year, I tell you what.