2013 year-end fanfic summary type thing
Four years of putting stories on the internet! Woooooo.
I wrote and posted 102,839 words of fanfic this year. That breaks down into 31 stories (including a zine fic that isn't posted elsewhere yet). This is the second highest wordcount I've ever had (more than 2011 and 2012, less than 2010). Interestingly, my total wordcount for this year roughly equals my Doctor Who wordcount from 2010. This year I only wrote 28,238 words of Who fic, and almost all of it was for challenges or exchanges.
I'll do a proper idfic update soon, but I'd like to point out that my idfic bingo accounted for almost half of my overall wordcount (50,134 words). So I'm counting that a success. This year I wrote a bunch of things that I was the main and maybe sole audience for, and I really enjoyed it. Also this year I kept breaking my computer and then using a lot of paper to frantically scribble fic out longhand, so that is something to remember whenever I feel like I have nothing to say or that writing is a chore.
Here are those questions that I do every year for the requisite omphaloskepsis:
Looking back, did you write more fics than you thought you would this year, less than you thought, or about what you predicted?
Waaay more. I kept getting caught up into writing long fics and it's like... where did I find the time? I am pretty sure that I was buried under work/life/fencing all year, and I still wrote all this stuff. I was sort of assuming that my wordcount this year would be half of previous years.
I remember writing Nonsense All Compact and it felt like I kept going 'one more scene and this will be done, have to make it for the deadline' and it seemed long-ish but it wasn't like I had that much time to spend writing it and then I put it into Word to do some editing and noticed that it was 36 pages long. Which isn't that long in the grand scheme of things, but it was during MIDTERMS. Did all those pages just appear in my sleep? I don't understand how this happened to me.
Where did you publish/archive your stories?
It's getting to be really complicated. DW with crosspost to LJ, first. Then to the AO3. Then a post with links to Tumblr, when I can remember, which is admittedly rarely. I've been really bad about remembering to post DW fic to Teaspoon, I should fix that.
What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted in January?
I was not expecting Welcome to Night Vale to happen to me, but to be fair all of the fic I have produced for it is totally the stuff I've always liked. Hm. Honestly, I can't pick out a story that came out of nowhere on me - the most off-the-wall stuff was written in January, so I'm pretty sure I could have predicted it then.
What’s your favorite story this year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you the happiest.
Ahhh, this is always hard. Probably Hypocrisy Was Our Text because it was a lot of fun to juggle five characters with very different motivations AND write a weird Elizabethan England fusion AND write Silva/Bond AND twist the movie plot around into a happier ending AND write a swordfight where one of the duelers is in a full lady's dress.
Okay, NOW your most popular story.
Looking at the AO3, it's sort of this weird four-way tie. Working Paper is ahead in hits, but Tupperware wins on kudos. And then Ain't Filled with Gentle Things has way more bookmarks than any other fics. And Team the Best Team definitely wins on comments, but I think that's because Yuletide always brings more comments to the yard. All of the others are kinky Night Vale fic.
Thanks, AO3, for all of these new statistics I can obsess over.
Story most under appreciated by the universe?
I felt pretty appreciated this year! Maybe Change of Engagement, but I'm blaming that on the universe's general under-appreciation of By the Sword.
Story that could have been better?
Haha, take your pick. I think Nonsense All Compact could have been better if I had more time to edit it and found someone to beta.
Sexiest story?
The last two years I had ridic stories with a bunch of sex scenes and pairings and this year I do not. Alas for this question being more difficult. Out of the field of fic, I'd single out I Reached Out My Hand as especially sexy, I guess. If people like awkward ridiculous Norrell/Childermass.
Most fun story?
Definitely The Four Worst Things About Being Cursed by a Witch. After Hours bodyswap! Bodyswap is not normally my thing, but moving around four people with very distinct personalities and bodies was a lot of fun. I only got into Cracked again because the AO3 tags needed cleaning up, and then I've been watching and obsessing over After Hours videos for the last couple months, and this story just kind of wrote itself.
Hardest story to write?
Nonsense All Compact was a huge pain because I kept switching tenses while writing (not on purpose) and I couldn't work out whether it wanted to be Brax POV or multiple POV. I didn't know it was going to be past tense until the end of the fic, and I had to swap probably half of it over from present tense during editing. Run Like Sand also gave me fits because I wasn't sure of the POV or the tenses and I had to rework it a lot to stay consistent. I don't know what it is with me and tenses this year. Oh! And Team the Best Team I kept swapping between 'Marcus' and 'Bell' for the main character and then even after I had decided on 'Marcus' I still caught myself typing out 'said Bell before dipping Alfredo and making out with him furiously' or whatever. Very frustrating. A year of grammatical inconsistency.
Easiest story to write?
Tupperware was basically ripped out of me with a lot of frantic writing and very little fuss. It felt like I was transcribing a finished story. And the Cables Break was kind of like that too, actually - something about Night Vale brings that out in me.
Most overdue story?
I am so glad I finally posted I Want a New. I don't think I changed almost anything between when I wrote it last summer (when the Avengers movie actually came out) and when I posted it in March.
Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?
I think doing the idfic bingo was/is really good for me in that I've been learning to write without an audience in mind. I mean, looking at the past annual fic reviews, it's obvious that I started out just writing for prompts, writing for lots of prompts, and I've slowly been working away from that over the years and writing more for myself. But this is definitely the year that I opened up and wrote exactly what I want out of fic and what I enjoy. And that's something I did very consciously and that I'm proud of, haha. Especially since I think I've written some good fic this year and stuff that people have liked, so it's not that writing for myself has resulted in awful unreadable self-indulgence (which is what I was afraid would happen).
Do you have any fanfic goals for the New Year?
Finish my idfic bingo. Keep screwing around with style and tenses and POV. Finish some of those WIPs that are hanging out on my desktop (at least three of which only need a thousand words or so to be done). Try writing a little shorter, haha. I would rather have three finished fics of 3k each than one 9k WIP, but so far that has not been the trend.
Last year my goals were to write more Who and finish some WIPs which... mostly didn't happen. But my other resolution was to keep feeling appreciated and I still do, so yay for that :)
This entry was originally posted at http://neveralarch.dreamwidth.org/74768.html. Comment wherever you want.
I wrote and posted 102,839 words of fanfic this year. That breaks down into 31 stories (including a zine fic that isn't posted elsewhere yet). This is the second highest wordcount I've ever had (more than 2011 and 2012, less than 2010). Interestingly, my total wordcount for this year roughly equals my Doctor Who wordcount from 2010. This year I only wrote 28,238 words of Who fic, and almost all of it was for challenges or exchanges.
I'll do a proper idfic update soon, but I'd like to point out that my idfic bingo accounted for almost half of my overall wordcount (50,134 words). So I'm counting that a success. This year I wrote a bunch of things that I was the main and maybe sole audience for, and I really enjoyed it. Also this year I kept breaking my computer and then using a lot of paper to frantically scribble fic out longhand, so that is something to remember whenever I feel like I have nothing to say or that writing is a chore.
Here are those questions that I do every year for the requisite omphaloskepsis:
Looking back, did you write more fics than you thought you would this year, less than you thought, or about what you predicted?
Waaay more. I kept getting caught up into writing long fics and it's like... where did I find the time? I am pretty sure that I was buried under work/life/fencing all year, and I still wrote all this stuff. I was sort of assuming that my wordcount this year would be half of previous years.
I remember writing Nonsense All Compact and it felt like I kept going 'one more scene and this will be done, have to make it for the deadline' and it seemed long-ish but it wasn't like I had that much time to spend writing it and then I put it into Word to do some editing and noticed that it was 36 pages long. Which isn't that long in the grand scheme of things, but it was during MIDTERMS. Did all those pages just appear in my sleep? I don't understand how this happened to me.
Where did you publish/archive your stories?
It's getting to be really complicated. DW with crosspost to LJ, first. Then to the AO3. Then a post with links to Tumblr, when I can remember, which is admittedly rarely. I've been really bad about remembering to post DW fic to Teaspoon, I should fix that.
What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted in January?
I was not expecting Welcome to Night Vale to happen to me, but to be fair all of the fic I have produced for it is totally the stuff I've always liked. Hm. Honestly, I can't pick out a story that came out of nowhere on me - the most off-the-wall stuff was written in January, so I'm pretty sure I could have predicted it then.
What’s your favorite story this year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you the happiest.
Ahhh, this is always hard. Probably Hypocrisy Was Our Text because it was a lot of fun to juggle five characters with very different motivations AND write a weird Elizabethan England fusion AND write Silva/Bond AND twist the movie plot around into a happier ending AND write a swordfight where one of the duelers is in a full lady's dress.
Okay, NOW your most popular story.
Looking at the AO3, it's sort of this weird four-way tie. Working Paper is ahead in hits, but Tupperware wins on kudos. And then Ain't Filled with Gentle Things has way more bookmarks than any other fics. And Team the Best Team definitely wins on comments, but I think that's because Yuletide always brings more comments to the yard. All of the others are kinky Night Vale fic.
Thanks, AO3, for all of these new statistics I can obsess over.
Story most under appreciated by the universe?
I felt pretty appreciated this year! Maybe Change of Engagement, but I'm blaming that on the universe's general under-appreciation of By the Sword.
Story that could have been better?
Haha, take your pick. I think Nonsense All Compact could have been better if I had more time to edit it and found someone to beta.
Sexiest story?
The last two years I had ridic stories with a bunch of sex scenes and pairings and this year I do not. Alas for this question being more difficult. Out of the field of fic, I'd single out I Reached Out My Hand as especially sexy, I guess. If people like awkward ridiculous Norrell/Childermass.
Most fun story?
Definitely The Four Worst Things About Being Cursed by a Witch. After Hours bodyswap! Bodyswap is not normally my thing, but moving around four people with very distinct personalities and bodies was a lot of fun. I only got into Cracked again because the AO3 tags needed cleaning up, and then I've been watching and obsessing over After Hours videos for the last couple months, and this story just kind of wrote itself.
Hardest story to write?
Nonsense All Compact was a huge pain because I kept switching tenses while writing (not on purpose) and I couldn't work out whether it wanted to be Brax POV or multiple POV. I didn't know it was going to be past tense until the end of the fic, and I had to swap probably half of it over from present tense during editing. Run Like Sand also gave me fits because I wasn't sure of the POV or the tenses and I had to rework it a lot to stay consistent. I don't know what it is with me and tenses this year. Oh! And Team the Best Team I kept swapping between 'Marcus' and 'Bell' for the main character and then even after I had decided on 'Marcus' I still caught myself typing out 'said Bell before dipping Alfredo and making out with him furiously' or whatever. Very frustrating. A year of grammatical inconsistency.
Easiest story to write?
Tupperware was basically ripped out of me with a lot of frantic writing and very little fuss. It felt like I was transcribing a finished story. And the Cables Break was kind of like that too, actually - something about Night Vale brings that out in me.
Most overdue story?
I am so glad I finally posted I Want a New. I don't think I changed almost anything between when I wrote it last summer (when the Avengers movie actually came out) and when I posted it in March.
Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?
I think doing the idfic bingo was/is really good for me in that I've been learning to write without an audience in mind. I mean, looking at the past annual fic reviews, it's obvious that I started out just writing for prompts, writing for lots of prompts, and I've slowly been working away from that over the years and writing more for myself. But this is definitely the year that I opened up and wrote exactly what I want out of fic and what I enjoy. And that's something I did very consciously and that I'm proud of, haha. Especially since I think I've written some good fic this year and stuff that people have liked, so it's not that writing for myself has resulted in awful unreadable self-indulgence (which is what I was afraid would happen).
Do you have any fanfic goals for the New Year?
Finish my idfic bingo. Keep screwing around with style and tenses and POV. Finish some of those WIPs that are hanging out on my desktop (at least three of which only need a thousand words or so to be done). Try writing a little shorter, haha. I would rather have three finished fics of 3k each than one 9k WIP, but so far that has not been the trend.
Last year my goals were to write more Who and finish some WIPs which... mostly didn't happen. But my other resolution was to keep feeling appreciated and I still do, so yay for that :)
This entry was originally posted at http://neveralarch.dreamwidth.org/74768.html. Comment wherever you want.