2009 in fic, part two
QH17 has crossed the 8K word mark, but even if I finish it in the next 36 hours, it's not getting posted, so I think I can safely call it a year production-wise.
January-June
July-December
* Shooting the Moon (Star Trek 2009) My first (and thus far last) Kirk-POV fic.
* Five Ways It Didn't Go (SGA) Sheppard, Weir, McKay, Lorne, and Ford didn't go to Atlantis.
* Four Concepts in Search of a Story (SGA) 'The Gods Must Be Crazy' and three other bits.
* Object in Motion (SGA) Reletti-as-Runner.
* Prodigal files: Sheppard (SGA/SG-1/NCIS) Meanwhile, back in Atlantis...
* Impetus (SGA) Partner fic to Object in Motion.
* Lost in Translation (SGA) Teyla, Sheppard, and culture shock.
* Thaw (SGA) Epilogue to Eat Your Heart Out, Peggy Fleming.
* The Sorcerer's Apprentice (NCIS) DiNozzo's journey from there to here.
* Character/fic meme, part whatever (SGA, Criminal Minds, Spooks, NCIS, The Mentalist)
* Jabberwocky (Spooks/SG-1) Ros Myers' entry into the Stargate Program.
* Serendipity (Criminal Minds/NCIS) Penelope Garcia and Abby Sciuto meet cute.
* Prodigal files: Gibbs (SGA/SG-1/NCIS) Aftermath.
* Qui Habitat: Empty Places (SG-1/SGA) Whatever happened to Carter, Jackson, and Lam.
* Deck the Bulkheads (SGA) Christmas in Atlantis.
* The Handmaiden's Tale (SGA) I may get back to this with a new narrator in 2010, but for right now, it's Carson and Yoni.
* Qui Habitat chapters 13-16 (SG-1/SGA) 37000 words is progress, right?
Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you'd predicted?
Uhh... maybe more, I guess, since I didn't see writing in new fandoms, had very little to say in the one I was writing in, and was sort of suspecting that Qui Habitat was going to end up being my Moby Dick. Which it still might, but I did make forward progress on it, so...
What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted in 2008?
Oh, where do I start? I wrote in a new fandom for the first time in four years. And then I wrote in lots of new fandoms. Out of all of them, the Trekfic was the most where-did-that-come-from? because I had never really had any interest in Star Trek despite ample opportunities to try. I was at least a fan of the other new fandoms I wrote in before the fact.
What's your favorite story of the year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you happiest?
I still mentally split my writing between 'SGA' and 'not-SGA,' so for the former, it's Kalliergo and for the latter it's Shooting the Moon. I tend to judge my own writing by economy of prose, which is maybe hilarious considering my inability to be concise, but I am really proud of how well I developed my concept of the NuTrek-verse in three short stories and nowhere did I think I did it as effectively as Shooting the Moon. Kalliergo is just fun worldbuilding and the marines being quietly wacky and John growing when he's not able to see it in the mirror.
Did you take any writing risks this year?
New fandoms, although most of them were just cop-out drabbles.
Do you have any fanfic or profic goals for the New Year?
Finish Qui Habitat? Probably not this year, but if I can muster a chapter a month, I might make a serious dent in it...
Story Most Underappreciated by the Universe
Narcissus, which is sort of unfair to complain about since it did really well as far as my Rodney stories go. The problem with me and SGA fandom and Rodney McKay is that I don't see him the way most of the rest of fandom sees him (which is why I stopped doing remixes, since they tend to want to 'fix' him in my stories). I think I write him as brilliant (and aware of it), selectively very thoughtful and sensitive, highly ambitious, and a little high strung. Most of fandom thinks I hate the guy since I don't write him as a woobie. I thought I wrote Rodney as very sympathetic in Narcissus. Fandom... did not agree. But it did pretty well, so this is me not complaining.
Most "Holy crap, that's wrong, even for you" story.
Seriously? I don't think I went anywhere close to this all year. I never do, since I don't write anything involving, I don't know, mpreg or torture porn or stories where Lorne is a pencil sharpener. Both my wacky stuff and my brutal stuff come from what I hope is a logical place. My willingness to put characters through the wringer or, on occasion, kill them is as close as I get to shockfic and, by this point, I'm pretty sure everyone who reads my stuff knows that 'AU' means that the gloves are off.
Most fun
Prodigal, since I wrote it as a serial and it was really successful in that format. I got such a kick out of people guessing wrong and chasing red herrings and then, with the big reveal in... Chapter 8, I think, to see jaws drop.
Most disappointing
In the Hall of the Mountain King, which was last year's disappointment, too. I think if I chopped it up and released the first part as a separate story and redid the second part as the basis for a distinct tale, it would be quite fine. (Actually, I should maybe do that...) I am really very happy with most of what's there, which is why I posted it in the first place, and my disappointment is in that I failed to carry it through. And, of course, for letting ileliberte down since it was supposed to be a collaborative project and I flaked on her.
The first two thirds is a solid meditation on John's life and career in Atlantis -- his stewardship of both his team and his command, his successes and failures -- and I like how the worldbuilding and secondary character movement developed. The last part gets bogged down in pacing problems and muddled narrative and I didn't think things through as well as I should have.
Story that shifted my own perceptions of the characters
Generally, it's the character memes, since I have to be thinky in ways I normally am not -- at least not explicitly. I suppose The Sorcerer's Apprentice for making me stop disliking Tony long enough to get the story done. But that may be because he's been such an annoying prat this season.
Story with single sweetest moment
I was on a low-glucose diet this year. But we'll go with Fish Tale, since it's got a high cuteness factor.
Hardest to Write
Object in Motion. For reasons I cannot quite figure out, Reletti is a pain in the ass to write as a POV character despite being the easiest to write from anyone else's POV. And this was a story that would have been really hard to write from anyone's POV. How do you document that kind of fear and horror and pain? I had originally thought to end it much earlier than I did, while Reletti was still lost and fate-unknown, but ileliberte thought it was too brutal to stop where I did and so I continued on.
Easiest story to write.
Uh... I think I wrote Deck the Bulkheads in maybe an hour?
There's supposed to be a question about 'Most Telling' story here and I never think I have one, so I will pass and leave this space open for comments or whatever you folks might want to say about this year's fic. But I will also say thanks, since I am always and forever grateful for the comments I get and the fact that I am essentially writing about people I made up -- with canon characters for decoration -- and you folks are not only all still here anyway, but also actually seem to enjoy it. So thank you for that. The writing process is sometimes more collaborative than you think.
... and for everyone else who doesn't give a poop what I think about my writing, you can go naval-gazing instead.
January-June
July-December
* Shooting the Moon (Star Trek 2009) My first (and thus far last) Kirk-POV fic.
* Five Ways It Didn't Go (SGA) Sheppard, Weir, McKay, Lorne, and Ford didn't go to Atlantis.
* Four Concepts in Search of a Story (SGA) 'The Gods Must Be Crazy' and three other bits.
* Object in Motion (SGA) Reletti-as-Runner.
* Prodigal files: Sheppard (SGA/SG-1/NCIS) Meanwhile, back in Atlantis...
* Impetus (SGA) Partner fic to Object in Motion.
* Lost in Translation (SGA) Teyla, Sheppard, and culture shock.
* Thaw (SGA) Epilogue to Eat Your Heart Out, Peggy Fleming.
* The Sorcerer's Apprentice (NCIS) DiNozzo's journey from there to here.
* Character/fic meme, part whatever (SGA, Criminal Minds, Spooks, NCIS, The Mentalist)
* Jabberwocky (Spooks/SG-1) Ros Myers' entry into the Stargate Program.
* Serendipity (Criminal Minds/NCIS) Penelope Garcia and Abby Sciuto meet cute.
* Prodigal files: Gibbs (SGA/SG-1/NCIS) Aftermath.
* Qui Habitat: Empty Places (SG-1/SGA) Whatever happened to Carter, Jackson, and Lam.
* Deck the Bulkheads (SGA) Christmas in Atlantis.
* The Handmaiden's Tale (SGA) I may get back to this with a new narrator in 2010, but for right now, it's Carson and Yoni.
* Qui Habitat chapters 13-16 (SG-1/SGA) 37000 words is progress, right?
Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you'd predicted?
Uhh... maybe more, I guess, since I didn't see writing in new fandoms, had very little to say in the one I was writing in, and was sort of suspecting that Qui Habitat was going to end up being my Moby Dick. Which it still might, but I did make forward progress on it, so...
What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted in 2008?
Oh, where do I start? I wrote in a new fandom for the first time in four years. And then I wrote in lots of new fandoms. Out of all of them, the Trekfic was the most where-did-that-come-from? because I had never really had any interest in Star Trek despite ample opportunities to try. I was at least a fan of the other new fandoms I wrote in before the fact.
What's your favorite story of the year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you happiest?
I still mentally split my writing between 'SGA' and 'not-SGA,' so for the former, it's Kalliergo and for the latter it's Shooting the Moon. I tend to judge my own writing by economy of prose, which is maybe hilarious considering my inability to be concise, but I am really proud of how well I developed my concept of the NuTrek-verse in three short stories and nowhere did I think I did it as effectively as Shooting the Moon. Kalliergo is just fun worldbuilding and the marines being quietly wacky and John growing when he's not able to see it in the mirror.
Did you take any writing risks this year?
New fandoms, although most of them were just cop-out drabbles.
Do you have any fanfic or profic goals for the New Year?
Finish Qui Habitat? Probably not this year, but if I can muster a chapter a month, I might make a serious dent in it...
Story Most Underappreciated by the Universe
Narcissus, which is sort of unfair to complain about since it did really well as far as my Rodney stories go. The problem with me and SGA fandom and Rodney McKay is that I don't see him the way most of the rest of fandom sees him (which is why I stopped doing remixes, since they tend to want to 'fix' him in my stories). I think I write him as brilliant (and aware of it), selectively very thoughtful and sensitive, highly ambitious, and a little high strung. Most of fandom thinks I hate the guy since I don't write him as a woobie. I thought I wrote Rodney as very sympathetic in Narcissus. Fandom... did not agree. But it did pretty well, so this is me not complaining.
Most "Holy crap, that's wrong, even for you" story.
Seriously? I don't think I went anywhere close to this all year. I never do, since I don't write anything involving, I don't know, mpreg or torture porn or stories where Lorne is a pencil sharpener. Both my wacky stuff and my brutal stuff come from what I hope is a logical place. My willingness to put characters through the wringer or, on occasion, kill them is as close as I get to shockfic and, by this point, I'm pretty sure everyone who reads my stuff knows that 'AU' means that the gloves are off.
Most fun
Prodigal, since I wrote it as a serial and it was really successful in that format. I got such a kick out of people guessing wrong and chasing red herrings and then, with the big reveal in... Chapter 8, I think, to see jaws drop.
Most disappointing
In the Hall of the Mountain King, which was last year's disappointment, too. I think if I chopped it up and released the first part as a separate story and redid the second part as the basis for a distinct tale, it would be quite fine. (Actually, I should maybe do that...) I am really very happy with most of what's there, which is why I posted it in the first place, and my disappointment is in that I failed to carry it through. And, of course, for letting ileliberte down since it was supposed to be a collaborative project and I flaked on her.
The first two thirds is a solid meditation on John's life and career in Atlantis -- his stewardship of both his team and his command, his successes and failures -- and I like how the worldbuilding and secondary character movement developed. The last part gets bogged down in pacing problems and muddled narrative and I didn't think things through as well as I should have.
Story that shifted my own perceptions of the characters
Generally, it's the character memes, since I have to be thinky in ways I normally am not -- at least not explicitly. I suppose The Sorcerer's Apprentice for making me stop disliking Tony long enough to get the story done. But that may be because he's been such an annoying prat this season.
Story with single sweetest moment
I was on a low-glucose diet this year. But we'll go with Fish Tale, since it's got a high cuteness factor.
Hardest to Write
Object in Motion. For reasons I cannot quite figure out, Reletti is a pain in the ass to write as a POV character despite being the easiest to write from anyone else's POV. And this was a story that would have been really hard to write from anyone's POV. How do you document that kind of fear and horror and pain? I had originally thought to end it much earlier than I did, while Reletti was still lost and fate-unknown, but ileliberte thought it was too brutal to stop where I did and so I continued on.
Easiest story to write.
Uh... I think I wrote Deck the Bulkheads in maybe an hour?
There's supposed to be a question about 'Most Telling' story here and I never think I have one, so I will pass and leave this space open for comments or whatever you folks might want to say about this year's fic. But I will also say thanks, since I am always and forever grateful for the comments I get and the fact that I am essentially writing about people I made up -- with canon characters for decoration -- and you folks are not only all still here anyway, but also actually seem to enjoy it. So thank you for that. The writing process is sometimes more collaborative than you think.
... and for everyone else who doesn't give a poop what I think about my writing, you can go naval-gazing instead.
