end of year writing meme!
Happy New Year, Internet! I hope 2013 is as awesome as the 13 in the second half of the year implies it will be!
Here, have a writing meme!
(Also, surprise, the yuletide fic I wrote [which was actually a treat] was this Arthur Christmas fic for littledust. It was totally secret!)
X-Men: First Class
welcoming back from the ocean
Compromise
Looks Better on You
Claustrophobic Prudence
mutants in atlantis part one
random daycare - picture
random daycare - cranky breakfast
tumblr fic
fic meme
the nights are dark but then they pass
caution
valentine's fic
all the pleasure and the certainty
anywhere but here
only three books tonight
i don't want to wake up on my own anymore
writing chat
Everything About It Is a Love Song
IPS xover, Part 2
Terminal Ballistics
random daycare - scars
push on into the mystery
we're on our way
could i have been blinder?
the life that is not lived by chance
random daycare - a million
The Dollar Spot
the words you chose, the way you write
spousal obligations
Fic meme
to bring the light into your room
anniversary ficlet
beat the heat college au
heatstroke
writing chat
college au porn
orphans of forgetting
the ones that can swallow you whole
sudden rainfall
you're my only home
handle with care
you are everyone
hearts and bones
leave all worries behind you
peaceful coexistance is so mainstream
we were the only ones there
put pen to paper
domestic tranquility
weave our days together like waves
old retired dudes anniversary
the magic of the fading day
search you out
places i never meant to be
the mystery which binds me still
seven minutes in hell
Various XMFC Ficlets 2
the recklessness of water
Thousands of Words
Work/Life Balance
Mistletoe, Latkes, and Long-term Revenge Strategies
irreconcilable differences (make for surprisingly good bedfellows)
rent this little nest and get a bit of rest
Adopted Dad Logan On: Famous Cats in History
Words and Pictures
Total: 63
Arthur Christmas
I'll Soon Be There With Snow
Total: 1
Total story count: 64
Total Fandom count: (not including crossovers, the plus being any ficlets in fandoms other than those listed above) 2+
Total word count: 226,420
Overall Thoughts:
X-Men: First Class continued to happen this year. Whereas last year I at least dabbled in other fandoms, this year belonged firmly to XMFC. The only totally non-XMFC fic I wrote was my Yuletide Madness contribution.
I wrote fewer words than last year, despite writing more fic overall, which doesn't really seem to make sense in my head. The only thing I can figure is that the placement of this year's XMFC big bang threw everything off, what with it going up in January and robbing me of about ~60k I would have otherwise had for this year. Reminder, everyone on the internet, if I ever decide to do another big bang that straddles the holidays and runs over the major holiday exchanges, beat me with a tire iron.
Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you'd predicted?
Slightly less, I think? Keep in mind, this is only posted stuff. I wrote a lot that's not been posted, too. But I would say that I had expected to write at least 250k. I'm a little disappointed that I only just hit 226k. Probably a mixture of depression, a busy social calendar, being really, really busy at work for a while, and not spending half the year unemployed :P Plus, the aforementioned big bang placement.
What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted in January?
I think I stayed pretty consistent? I wish I had written more Alex/Darwin, but I don't think any of my stories were surprising. Uh, I wrote about Logan in that crack present for Renata?
What's your own favorite story of the year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you happiest?
Everything About It Is a Love Song. I like most of the fic I post-I'm my own biggest fan, sometimes XD But that one really stuck with me and remains one of my favorite things I've written, period. It might not be the best, but I love it.
Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?
Not...really? It was more deadline related risks than actual writing risks. There were a lot of things I was still hammering out at the last minute, but that was more a time issue than anything else. Story wise, again, I stayed pretty consistent.
My best story of this year:
Hm...I WANT to say it's the old retired dudes fic, but I think I'm conflating "best" and "favorite" and "most popular" into one.
My most popular story of this year:
According to AO3, it was the old retired dudes fic again.
Story of mine most under-appreciated by the universe, in my opinion:
I feel like it's irreconcilable differences (make for surprisingly good bedfellows), but looking at the stats, it's not all that overlooked. I think it just feels that way because Work/Life Balance did so unexpectedly well. In actuality, the most under-appreciated story is almost definitely Handle With Care. That's not unexpected, given that it's basically a Moira gen story with background Charles/Erik. I love Moira, though, and that story sets up a lot of my headcanon about her in the movie, so.
Most fun story to write:
Hm. The SGA fusion was fun because I love love love the world of SGA and will never get bored of playing there. Working out what jobs each character has in a fusion is always cool and the great thing about Stargate AUs in general is the SGC and Atlantis are so large that it's easy to write the characters in the world without getting rid of the characters from that canon. So instead of replacing John Sheppard with Erik, I get to have Erik in a world where John Sheppard exists? Which is fun. Anyway, that was cool and I hope to finish that one day. Hopefully. I have a few thousand additional words written already.
Orphans of Forgetting was...not fun, I'd say, but interesting. It's not a story I would have written if it wasn't for the art, so the whole process was a bit different than usual.
Mistletoe, Latkes, and Long-term Revenge Strategies was straight-up Hanukkah spite-fic and it was a blast. I wrote it in one day and I think it's a cute, funny little holiday romp, if not the most intellectually stimulating fic ever written.
Story with the single sexiest moment:
Seven Minutes in Hell or random college AU porn. Which are both from the college AU, interestingly. I like those versions of the characters and I love their relationship. Seven Minutes in Hell has a lot of kinks I love in it, but there's a really intense amount of affection and atmosphere in the random porn, so.
Story with the single sweetest moment:
I'm quite partial to Erik reading to Charles and Raven in "Only three books tonight". Also, basically all of you're my only home.
Most "Holy crap, that's wrong, even for you" story:
Nothing really. I write predominantly fluff, plot, or character stories, so...
Story that shifted my own perceptions of the characters:
I feel like I'm ~*constantly learning about the characters as I write*~, but that's a cop-out answer. I would say that I spent a lot of time thinking about Erik's motivations while writing Everything About it Is A Love Song and Orphans of Forgetting , both because of the subject matter of those stories (older Erik looking back on his life and his decisions and analyzing them with the benefit of age and hindsight), and because of the emails I was sending to pearl_o at the time discussing Erik and Charles' disparate interpretations of what happened on the beach. I wrote a lot of stories about Brotherhood!Erik this year, and it requires a different sort of mindset. By the time we see Erik in the original X-Men movies, he's devoid of hesitation and compassion and a lot of the things that XMFC!Erik hasn't yet lost. There's still hope, there, and because of the rushed ending of the movie, the character isn't quite at the turning point yet. It gives the wiggle room needed to sway Erik to stay with Charles, keeping those sorts of AUs believable. But, regardless of what apologists will try and insist, Erik is not a good dude. By the time we see him in the first X-Men movie, he has zero compunctions about killing mutants or humans to achieve his goal. He's a terrorist. Yes, terrible things happened to him in his youth and that's awful, but it doesn't forgive him, you know, MURDERING VERY MANY PEOPLE AND WANTING TO CONTROL THE LIVES OF EVERYONE ON THE PLANET*.
The point being that an Erik who is at the point he's at in the first movies (or a similar one if, like me, you look at the XMFC timeline as alternate to the original movieverse) needs to be handled differently than XMFC!Erik. XMFC!Erik has killed a bunch of Nazis and Nazi-sympathizers. Old!Erik has killed innocent and not-so-innocent humans and probably mutants both. He's done terrible, disturbing things for his cause. You need to write him a bit differently and write his relationship with Charles a bit differently. A Charles who loves old!Erik doesn't love him because of all he is, he loves him in spite of it, for better or worse.
In addition to the weight of those actions, writing him as older in the types of stories that I write also requires a certain amount of self-scrutiny. He needs to be able to look back on those things, recognize and accept they were wrong, or at least that they had consequences, and make the choice to change his life, for any number of reasons.
It's a lot of balls to keep in the air, is what I'm saying, especially for someone who tries to write, you know, fluffy happy stories where everyone loves each other. So, in summary, I'm not sure those stories shifted my perceptions of the characters, but I had to shift how I normally write Erik based on circumstance.
* I may be projecting a little from comics canon. Does movieverse Magneto want to rule the world explicitly? I tend to pull out the little speech from God Loves, Man Kills whenever someone is like, "But Erik doesn't want to ~*hurt anyone*~ he just wants ~*mutants to be free*~! He's not a bad guy, it's CHARLES who's evil and a dick for being cruel to Erik!"
Hardest story to write:
the nights are dark but then they pass was hard entirely because of the fight. I started writing it almost six months before I finished it, partially because I was working on the big bang and other projects, but also because writing arguments is HARD. I wanted to make it clear that Charles and Erik in daycare verse DO argue, and frequently, and I wanted to show that the issues that crop up when Raven is adopted aren't new, but rather something Charles has been struggling with from the start. But writing arguments is super difficult and writing arguments where people argue like actual adults is REALLY difficult. As much as I get annoyed with the "misunderstanding" trope, I understand why it's so popular-it's an easy way to write an argument. There's no real fallout or consequences because, in the end, oh, it was just a misunderstanding the whole time! Otherwise, you have to write all that anger and tension with the knowledge that this is how the characters really are-Charles really is that controlling, and even though Erik knows it and it angers him, he has to deal with it because he loves Charles. Erik really is that much of an asshole and even though Charles knows it and it upsets him, he also has to deal with it, etc. There's no neat little bow to put on it at the end-you just need to write the characters in a way that makes it clear that they recognize those faults, but their affection for each other wins out. It's like life, in that you don't necessarily get a cut and dry ending.
Anyway, the point is, it was really difficult at times, but I'm super happy with how it turned out. It's one of my favorite daycare stories.
Another one that was a problem was Work/Life Balance. That was the first secret_mutant pinch hit I picked up. I talked a lot about the issues I had with it in my Secret Mutant reveal post, but basically I really struggled with the fact that the second 5000 words of the story is just Charles talking. I was afraid that it wouldn't be interesting or engaging or that it would read like I was writing a summary of a longer story, which I hate. I had so much backstory for the verse that just kept pouring out into Charles' meandering story, but which really wasn't necessary to the story I was telling. In the end, I edited a few thousand words out of it and the actual writing of the last bits of it was like pulling teeth.
Biggest Disappointment:
I can't say I was disappointed in any particular story. I mean, there are always minor regrets, but nothing huge. Compromise is probably the closest. I just thought it was a boring story, a re-tread of stuff I'd done before and better, rushed and a little shallow. But even that's not a big deal. My biggest disappointment, I guess, is that I didn't get MORE written.
Biggest Surprise:
Nothing too surprising? I guess the closest thing I have to surprise is the mystery which binds me still getting finished. It had been a throw-away ficlet I did last year and then this Halloween I thought, "I really want to post a Halloween story." I dusted it off and finished it...very quickly. But aside from that, nothing shocking. Maybe that I wrote a non-XMFC fic. (I'll Soon Be There With Snow, which is Arthur Christmas yuletide fic for littledust.)
Most Unintentionally Telling Story:
Hm. I don't know that any of them were unintentionally telling. I feel like Words and Pictures was the biggest flashing neon signature of any of them, but I knew that going in. I knew that pearl_o would immediately know it was me and that there was a lot of me that was going to bleed through. Originally, Moira doesn't tell Erik about the books, rather, he goes to the bookstore and the children's department worker suggests them. That would have been blatant self-insertion, and Moira telling him worked better, so I veered away from it XD
Plans for the next year:
First and foremost is the big bang, which posts in January. I need to, uh, finish it. And, Kaitlyn, please remember NOT TO DO ANY LONG FORM CHALLENGES OVER SECRET MUTANT/YULETIDE/THE HOLIDAYS NEXT YEAR. I want to finish some of my WsiP, maybe write some more Alex/Darwin, work on ~*the magical AU*~ with littledust, and just finish more. One of my New Year's resolutions last year was to finish at least 75% of what I start, but that, you know, didn't even come close to happening. Hopefully this year? It's just hard to find time, sometimes, but that's a lame excuse. I need to MAKE TIME.
Aside from that, maybe just comment more? I know how much comments mean to people and I try to comment semi-frequently, but I'd like to up it to balance out all the people in the universe who bitch about not getting comments and then admit they only leave Kudos. BE THE CHANGE YOU WANT TO SEE ON THE AO3. Or something.
Here, have a writing meme!
(Also, surprise, the yuletide fic I wrote [which was actually a treat] was this Arthur Christmas fic for littledust. It was totally secret!)
X-Men: First Class
welcoming back from the ocean
Compromise
Looks Better on You
Claustrophobic Prudence
mutants in atlantis part one
random daycare - picture
random daycare - cranky breakfast
tumblr fic
fic meme
the nights are dark but then they pass
caution
valentine's fic
all the pleasure and the certainty
anywhere but here
only three books tonight
i don't want to wake up on my own anymore
writing chat
Everything About It Is a Love Song
IPS xover, Part 2
Terminal Ballistics
random daycare - scars
push on into the mystery
we're on our way
could i have been blinder?
the life that is not lived by chance
random daycare - a million
The Dollar Spot
the words you chose, the way you write
spousal obligations
Fic meme
to bring the light into your room
anniversary ficlet
beat the heat college au
heatstroke
writing chat
college au porn
orphans of forgetting
the ones that can swallow you whole
sudden rainfall
you're my only home
handle with care
you are everyone
hearts and bones
leave all worries behind you
peaceful coexistance is so mainstream
we were the only ones there
put pen to paper
domestic tranquility
weave our days together like waves
old retired dudes anniversary
the magic of the fading day
search you out
places i never meant to be
the mystery which binds me still
seven minutes in hell
Various XMFC Ficlets 2
the recklessness of water
Thousands of Words
Work/Life Balance
Mistletoe, Latkes, and Long-term Revenge Strategies
irreconcilable differences (make for surprisingly good bedfellows)
rent this little nest and get a bit of rest
Adopted Dad Logan On: Famous Cats in History
Words and Pictures
Total: 63
Arthur Christmas
I'll Soon Be There With Snow
Total: 1
Total story count: 64
Total Fandom count: (not including crossovers, the plus being any ficlets in fandoms other than those listed above) 2+
Total word count: 226,420
Overall Thoughts:
X-Men: First Class continued to happen this year. Whereas last year I at least dabbled in other fandoms, this year belonged firmly to XMFC. The only totally non-XMFC fic I wrote was my Yuletide Madness contribution.
I wrote fewer words than last year, despite writing more fic overall, which doesn't really seem to make sense in my head. The only thing I can figure is that the placement of this year's XMFC big bang threw everything off, what with it going up in January and robbing me of about ~60k I would have otherwise had for this year. Reminder, everyone on the internet, if I ever decide to do another big bang that straddles the holidays and runs over the major holiday exchanges, beat me with a tire iron.
Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you'd predicted?
Slightly less, I think? Keep in mind, this is only posted stuff. I wrote a lot that's not been posted, too. But I would say that I had expected to write at least 250k. I'm a little disappointed that I only just hit 226k. Probably a mixture of depression, a busy social calendar, being really, really busy at work for a while, and not spending half the year unemployed :P Plus, the aforementioned big bang placement.
What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted in January?
I think I stayed pretty consistent? I wish I had written more Alex/Darwin, but I don't think any of my stories were surprising. Uh, I wrote about Logan in that crack present for Renata?
What's your own favorite story of the year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you happiest?
Everything About It Is a Love Song. I like most of the fic I post-I'm my own biggest fan, sometimes XD But that one really stuck with me and remains one of my favorite things I've written, period. It might not be the best, but I love it.
Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?
Not...really? It was more deadline related risks than actual writing risks. There were a lot of things I was still hammering out at the last minute, but that was more a time issue than anything else. Story wise, again, I stayed pretty consistent.
My best story of this year:
Hm...I WANT to say it's the old retired dudes fic, but I think I'm conflating "best" and "favorite" and "most popular" into one.
My most popular story of this year:
According to AO3, it was the old retired dudes fic again.
Story of mine most under-appreciated by the universe, in my opinion:
I feel like it's irreconcilable differences (make for surprisingly good bedfellows), but looking at the stats, it's not all that overlooked. I think it just feels that way because Work/Life Balance did so unexpectedly well. In actuality, the most under-appreciated story is almost definitely Handle With Care. That's not unexpected, given that it's basically a Moira gen story with background Charles/Erik. I love Moira, though, and that story sets up a lot of my headcanon about her in the movie, so.
Most fun story to write:
Hm. The SGA fusion was fun because I love love love the world of SGA and will never get bored of playing there. Working out what jobs each character has in a fusion is always cool and the great thing about Stargate AUs in general is the SGC and Atlantis are so large that it's easy to write the characters in the world without getting rid of the characters from that canon. So instead of replacing John Sheppard with Erik, I get to have Erik in a world where John Sheppard exists? Which is fun. Anyway, that was cool and I hope to finish that one day. Hopefully. I have a few thousand additional words written already.
Orphans of Forgetting was...not fun, I'd say, but interesting. It's not a story I would have written if it wasn't for the art, so the whole process was a bit different than usual.
Mistletoe, Latkes, and Long-term Revenge Strategies was straight-up Hanukkah spite-fic and it was a blast. I wrote it in one day and I think it's a cute, funny little holiday romp, if not the most intellectually stimulating fic ever written.
Story with the single sexiest moment:
Seven Minutes in Hell or random college AU porn. Which are both from the college AU, interestingly. I like those versions of the characters and I love their relationship. Seven Minutes in Hell has a lot of kinks I love in it, but there's a really intense amount of affection and atmosphere in the random porn, so.
Story with the single sweetest moment:
I'm quite partial to Erik reading to Charles and Raven in "Only three books tonight". Also, basically all of you're my only home.
Most "Holy crap, that's wrong, even for you" story:
Nothing really. I write predominantly fluff, plot, or character stories, so...
Story that shifted my own perceptions of the characters:
I feel like I'm ~*constantly learning about the characters as I write*~, but that's a cop-out answer. I would say that I spent a lot of time thinking about Erik's motivations while writing Everything About it Is A Love Song and Orphans of Forgetting , both because of the subject matter of those stories (older Erik looking back on his life and his decisions and analyzing them with the benefit of age and hindsight), and because of the emails I was sending to pearl_o at the time discussing Erik and Charles' disparate interpretations of what happened on the beach. I wrote a lot of stories about Brotherhood!Erik this year, and it requires a different sort of mindset. By the time we see Erik in the original X-Men movies, he's devoid of hesitation and compassion and a lot of the things that XMFC!Erik hasn't yet lost. There's still hope, there, and because of the rushed ending of the movie, the character isn't quite at the turning point yet. It gives the wiggle room needed to sway Erik to stay with Charles, keeping those sorts of AUs believable. But, regardless of what apologists will try and insist, Erik is not a good dude. By the time we see him in the first X-Men movie, he has zero compunctions about killing mutants or humans to achieve his goal. He's a terrorist. Yes, terrible things happened to him in his youth and that's awful, but it doesn't forgive him, you know, MURDERING VERY MANY PEOPLE AND WANTING TO CONTROL THE LIVES OF EVERYONE ON THE PLANET*.
The point being that an Erik who is at the point he's at in the first movies (or a similar one if, like me, you look at the XMFC timeline as alternate to the original movieverse) needs to be handled differently than XMFC!Erik. XMFC!Erik has killed a bunch of Nazis and Nazi-sympathizers. Old!Erik has killed innocent and not-so-innocent humans and probably mutants both. He's done terrible, disturbing things for his cause. You need to write him a bit differently and write his relationship with Charles a bit differently. A Charles who loves old!Erik doesn't love him because of all he is, he loves him in spite of it, for better or worse.
In addition to the weight of those actions, writing him as older in the types of stories that I write also requires a certain amount of self-scrutiny. He needs to be able to look back on those things, recognize and accept they were wrong, or at least that they had consequences, and make the choice to change his life, for any number of reasons.
It's a lot of balls to keep in the air, is what I'm saying, especially for someone who tries to write, you know, fluffy happy stories where everyone loves each other. So, in summary, I'm not sure those stories shifted my perceptions of the characters, but I had to shift how I normally write Erik based on circumstance.
* I may be projecting a little from comics canon. Does movieverse Magneto want to rule the world explicitly? I tend to pull out the little speech from God Loves, Man Kills whenever someone is like, "But Erik doesn't want to ~*hurt anyone*~ he just wants ~*mutants to be free*~! He's not a bad guy, it's CHARLES who's evil and a dick for being cruel to Erik!"
Hardest story to write:
the nights are dark but then they pass was hard entirely because of the fight. I started writing it almost six months before I finished it, partially because I was working on the big bang and other projects, but also because writing arguments is HARD. I wanted to make it clear that Charles and Erik in daycare verse DO argue, and frequently, and I wanted to show that the issues that crop up when Raven is adopted aren't new, but rather something Charles has been struggling with from the start. But writing arguments is super difficult and writing arguments where people argue like actual adults is REALLY difficult. As much as I get annoyed with the "misunderstanding" trope, I understand why it's so popular-it's an easy way to write an argument. There's no real fallout or consequences because, in the end, oh, it was just a misunderstanding the whole time! Otherwise, you have to write all that anger and tension with the knowledge that this is how the characters really are-Charles really is that controlling, and even though Erik knows it and it angers him, he has to deal with it because he loves Charles. Erik really is that much of an asshole and even though Charles knows it and it upsets him, he also has to deal with it, etc. There's no neat little bow to put on it at the end-you just need to write the characters in a way that makes it clear that they recognize those faults, but their affection for each other wins out. It's like life, in that you don't necessarily get a cut and dry ending.
Anyway, the point is, it was really difficult at times, but I'm super happy with how it turned out. It's one of my favorite daycare stories.
Another one that was a problem was Work/Life Balance. That was the first secret_mutant pinch hit I picked up. I talked a lot about the issues I had with it in my Secret Mutant reveal post, but basically I really struggled with the fact that the second 5000 words of the story is just Charles talking. I was afraid that it wouldn't be interesting or engaging or that it would read like I was writing a summary of a longer story, which I hate. I had so much backstory for the verse that just kept pouring out into Charles' meandering story, but which really wasn't necessary to the story I was telling. In the end, I edited a few thousand words out of it and the actual writing of the last bits of it was like pulling teeth.
Biggest Disappointment:
I can't say I was disappointed in any particular story. I mean, there are always minor regrets, but nothing huge. Compromise is probably the closest. I just thought it was a boring story, a re-tread of stuff I'd done before and better, rushed and a little shallow. But even that's not a big deal. My biggest disappointment, I guess, is that I didn't get MORE written.
Biggest Surprise:
Nothing too surprising? I guess the closest thing I have to surprise is the mystery which binds me still getting finished. It had been a throw-away ficlet I did last year and then this Halloween I thought, "I really want to post a Halloween story." I dusted it off and finished it...very quickly. But aside from that, nothing shocking. Maybe that I wrote a non-XMFC fic. (I'll Soon Be There With Snow, which is Arthur Christmas yuletide fic for littledust.)
Most Unintentionally Telling Story:
Hm. I don't know that any of them were unintentionally telling. I feel like Words and Pictures was the biggest flashing neon signature of any of them, but I knew that going in. I knew that pearl_o would immediately know it was me and that there was a lot of me that was going to bleed through. Originally, Moira doesn't tell Erik about the books, rather, he goes to the bookstore and the children's department worker suggests them. That would have been blatant self-insertion, and Moira telling him worked better, so I veered away from it XD
Plans for the next year:
First and foremost is the big bang, which posts in January. I need to, uh, finish it. And, Kaitlyn, please remember NOT TO DO ANY LONG FORM CHALLENGES OVER SECRET MUTANT/YULETIDE/THE HOLIDAYS NEXT YEAR. I want to finish some of my WsiP, maybe write some more Alex/Darwin, work on ~*the magical AU*~ with littledust, and just finish more. One of my New Year's resolutions last year was to finish at least 75% of what I start, but that, you know, didn't even come close to happening. Hopefully this year? It's just hard to find time, sometimes, but that's a lame excuse. I need to MAKE TIME.
Aside from that, maybe just comment more? I know how much comments mean to people and I try to comment semi-frequently, but I'd like to up it to balance out all the people in the universe who bitch about not getting comments and then admit they only leave Kudos. BE THE CHANGE YOU WANT TO SEE ON THE AO3. Or something.