ficlet february: wrap-up!
Gosh, so, I guess I wrote 25 stories in 25 27 days!
I had been toying with the idea of doing a month long writing exercise since last year. I think the initial idea was to outline one continuous story in 25 chapters and write one a day over the course of a month just to see what it's like. In that version, I only posted it on LJ (because no one reads LJ anymore), mostly to see what it's like to have a "live" WiP. There are many, many reasons I don't post WsiP, but there's also something interesting about stories moving organically like that in real time? idk. Anyway, I obvs didn't end up doing that, because by the time I got to 2015, I was kind of struggling to come up with a project to work on at all, let alone something that could be sustained like that. So Ficlet February happened instead.
I made a couple rules for myself:
1) I had to work on something for each of the twenty-five days and it had to be "complete." (ie: a full ficlet, not an excerpt of something larger)
2) It didn't have to be good. It wasn't going on AO3. The point was getting stuff on paper--this was all drafting.
3) If I "didn't want" to write, I had to push through and at least try something.
4) If I was truly stalled to the point of being actually upset, I could quit.
I ended up using the blow-off days when people were visiting--the day cygnaut first arrived and the day my friends Ivy and Scott were in town and I had plans to go see Scott speak and then go out to dinner after the event. I wrote every other day. Some of it is garbage. (One of them I didn't even crosspost to tumblr from LJ because it was that bad.) Some of it has good concepts that could be good stories once they're edited it. Some of it I actually really liked!
Lots of thanks to pearl_o for letting me whine to her/bounce ideas off of her/etc all month. A couple people followed along every day which was exciting and unexpected! So thanks also to mrkinch and kernezelda for actually reading all of that, some of which was not that great!
Okay, all that aside, here are some lists:
Five Favorite
These are my five favorites! I really liked how they came out, even though I only wrote them in a couple hours:
1. day two: "five minutes away" - Charles contemplates his happiness in bed with Erik.
2. day 11: "what are you looking for?" - Kate steals Clint's mug from his apartment. Two months later, Charles serves him out of it at the mansion. (This one might not objectively be good but I LOVE IT.)
3. day 16: "ask questions later" - Charles is having a pretty shitty night until Erik kisses him and asks him to play along.
4. day 19: "lost in a city" - Old Charles and Erik return to their roots. This one is my favorite ♥
5. day 23: "something from a song" - Erik is invited to Storm's college graduation party, and is unsure of what to expect.
Those five are things that I liked pretty much entirely as is! They'll need some minor edits and tweaks, but the structure and ideas are there. The next five are the ones that I love conceptually but which really need to be edited and redrafted to be real fics.
Five Best Concepts
1. day 1: "get some sleep" - Charles wakes up in the middle of the night to discover Erik in the infirmary with a peculiar problem. I REALLY want to turn this into a longer fic, perhaps the one I've been picking at in my head since May, about how Erik comes back to the school full time.
2. day 10: "write about a postcard" - Charles gets a postcard from Trask, who wants to talk. This is another one I've been thinking about since May and could really stand to be expanded into a much larger story.
3. day 17: "six impossible things - Mornings at the school are always unusual, but this one becomes even more unreal with an unexpected arrival. I looooove the concept of this, but it's really, really rushed and the last scene didn't really pack the emotional punch I wanted because of it.
4. day 21: "a late night phone call" - Charles hates himself for allowing Erik to come to him, so he puts a stop to it and then hates himself for that. Another one I've had in my head for a while, but in this form it's...kind of a mess. The characterizations are strange and it's exposition overload at the front and...yeah.
5. day 22: "someone else's mortification" - Kitty thinks the new visiting lecturer is a terrible fit for the department and is glad Charles agrees, even if he's acting strange about it. Another one that's been floating around in my head and just didn't get down on paper the way I wanted. Lots of editing for this one, too.
I won't list the five worst, but...there are definitely some duds in there, and not just the one I didn't crosspost to Tumblr /o\
Overall, this was a really neat thing to play with. I was afraid I might get burnt out, but I haven't really, and the timing worked out well--February has been awful here in Boston, even worse than usual, so this kept me going despite the overwhelming ennui of the month as a whole. I liked playing around with a couple of the ideas I've had for a while--I don't know that I would have put them on paper, otherwise. I wrote just about 31,000 words in twenty-five days, which was a little more than I expected, but a good number overall. It wasn't super stressful, which is def what I needed, and I feel very accomplished sitting on the other side of it.
I decided that March will probably mostly be spent editing some of these for posting on AO3, and we'll see where I go after that!
So....thanks for reading all that, if you did! And, for posterity, here's the completed collection! These all link to LJ--I didn't keep a record of the URLs of the tumblr posts, but all twenty-five should be here!
ficlet february!
Get some sleep
Five minutes away
Faint recognition
Half an hour before sunrise
Useless, but beautiful
Something’s broken
Surprise celebration
There were signs and signals
Rituals
Write about a postcard
What are you looking for?
You remind me of someone
Lasting impression
Long drive
Behind closed doors
Ask questions later
Six impossible things
Day off
Lost in a city
A door key
A late night phone call
Someone else’s mortification
Something from music
Something from a picture
A meeting, a beginning
I had been toying with the idea of doing a month long writing exercise since last year. I think the initial idea was to outline one continuous story in 25 chapters and write one a day over the course of a month just to see what it's like. In that version, I only posted it on LJ (because no one reads LJ anymore), mostly to see what it's like to have a "live" WiP. There are many, many reasons I don't post WsiP, but there's also something interesting about stories moving organically like that in real time? idk. Anyway, I obvs didn't end up doing that, because by the time I got to 2015, I was kind of struggling to come up with a project to work on at all, let alone something that could be sustained like that. So Ficlet February happened instead.
I made a couple rules for myself:
1) I had to work on something for each of the twenty-five days and it had to be "complete." (ie: a full ficlet, not an excerpt of something larger)
2) It didn't have to be good. It wasn't going on AO3. The point was getting stuff on paper--this was all drafting.
3) If I "didn't want" to write, I had to push through and at least try something.
4) If I was truly stalled to the point of being actually upset, I could quit.
I ended up using the blow-off days when people were visiting--the day cygnaut first arrived and the day my friends Ivy and Scott were in town and I had plans to go see Scott speak and then go out to dinner after the event. I wrote every other day. Some of it is garbage. (One of them I didn't even crosspost to tumblr from LJ because it was that bad.) Some of it has good concepts that could be good stories once they're edited it. Some of it I actually really liked!
Lots of thanks to pearl_o for letting me whine to her/bounce ideas off of her/etc all month. A couple people followed along every day which was exciting and unexpected! So thanks also to mrkinch and kernezelda for actually reading all of that, some of which was not that great!
Okay, all that aside, here are some lists:
Five Favorite
These are my five favorites! I really liked how they came out, even though I only wrote them in a couple hours:
1. day two: "five minutes away" - Charles contemplates his happiness in bed with Erik.
2. day 11: "what are you looking for?" - Kate steals Clint's mug from his apartment. Two months later, Charles serves him out of it at the mansion. (This one might not objectively be good but I LOVE IT.)
3. day 16: "ask questions later" - Charles is having a pretty shitty night until Erik kisses him and asks him to play along.
4. day 19: "lost in a city" - Old Charles and Erik return to their roots. This one is my favorite ♥
5. day 23: "something from a song" - Erik is invited to Storm's college graduation party, and is unsure of what to expect.
Those five are things that I liked pretty much entirely as is! They'll need some minor edits and tweaks, but the structure and ideas are there. The next five are the ones that I love conceptually but which really need to be edited and redrafted to be real fics.
Five Best Concepts
1. day 1: "get some sleep" - Charles wakes up in the middle of the night to discover Erik in the infirmary with a peculiar problem. I REALLY want to turn this into a longer fic, perhaps the one I've been picking at in my head since May, about how Erik comes back to the school full time.
2. day 10: "write about a postcard" - Charles gets a postcard from Trask, who wants to talk. This is another one I've been thinking about since May and could really stand to be expanded into a much larger story.
3. day 17: "six impossible things - Mornings at the school are always unusual, but this one becomes even more unreal with an unexpected arrival. I looooove the concept of this, but it's really, really rushed and the last scene didn't really pack the emotional punch I wanted because of it.
4. day 21: "a late night phone call" - Charles hates himself for allowing Erik to come to him, so he puts a stop to it and then hates himself for that. Another one I've had in my head for a while, but in this form it's...kind of a mess. The characterizations are strange and it's exposition overload at the front and...yeah.
5. day 22: "someone else's mortification" - Kitty thinks the new visiting lecturer is a terrible fit for the department and is glad Charles agrees, even if he's acting strange about it. Another one that's been floating around in my head and just didn't get down on paper the way I wanted. Lots of editing for this one, too.
I won't list the five worst, but...there are definitely some duds in there, and not just the one I didn't crosspost to Tumblr /o\
Overall, this was a really neat thing to play with. I was afraid I might get burnt out, but I haven't really, and the timing worked out well--February has been awful here in Boston, even worse than usual, so this kept me going despite the overwhelming ennui of the month as a whole. I liked playing around with a couple of the ideas I've had for a while--I don't know that I would have put them on paper, otherwise. I wrote just about 31,000 words in twenty-five days, which was a little more than I expected, but a good number overall. It wasn't super stressful, which is def what I needed, and I feel very accomplished sitting on the other side of it.
I decided that March will probably mostly be spent editing some of these for posting on AO3, and we'll see where I go after that!
So....thanks for reading all that, if you did! And, for posterity, here's the completed collection! These all link to LJ--I didn't keep a record of the URLs of the tumblr posts, but all twenty-five should be here!
ficlet february!
Get some sleep
Five minutes away
Faint recognition
Half an hour before sunrise
Useless, but beautiful
Something’s broken
Surprise celebration
There were signs and signals
Rituals
Write about a postcard
What are you looking for?
You remind me of someone
Lasting impression
Long drive
Behind closed doors
Ask questions later
Six impossible things
Day off
Lost in a city
A door key
A late night phone call
Someone else’s mortification
Something from music
Something from a picture
A meeting, a beginning