My 2010 ficwriting round up
I wrote nine fics (11 if you include sub-drabble snippets and 12 if you count We just haven’t written you yet, which isn’t fanfiction exactly, but a piece about the possibility of fanfiction). Unsurprisingly, they were nearly all PG rated vignettes...
I started off the year by abusing a meme where you write a list of characters’ names and then try to answer questions like ‘What would happen if 3 and 7 were trying to steal something 9 owned?’ because I wanted to kick-start my writing again. The longest result was this untitled piece which features Push’s Cassie and Sky High’s Zach. Looking back at it, it feels like more of an introduction - what happened after Cassie met the gang? How did she settle at Sky High? (I didn't know at the time, so I didn't write it.)
It’s also typical that that fic featured a character from Push (I wrote two other Push ficlets) and Sky High - I don’t feel that I’m done with either fandoms yet. All the other fics I wrote in 2010 were in different fandoms, two in which I’d written before. The big divide is between the fics that existed in draft form before 2010 but I was motivated to polish, type and post last year and the fics that were conceived, written and posted in a fizz of enthusiasm.
Filling in the Outline (Push) was a respectable length for me - over 800 words - and was set shortly after the film. I got the idea of Nick having superior drawing skills to Cassie and that became a hook for a vignette about their relationship. It’s no more shippy than the film, but is focused on their relationship and the same could be said of O Tannenbaum (Push)
which is set a few years later, although I'm neutral on whether they're in the sam 'verse. Both ficlets stick to Nick’s POV. This came very quickly - it was first inspired by a cuddling meme and it was the start of December, time to think about Christmassy things and the idea of Cassie feeling discombobulated and out of time resonated with me. It also falls into that gen with a shippy slant category - I may be writing Nick and Cassie fic, but in my head, it’s pre Nick/Cassie, like how I see the film.
Early (Sky High) is uncharacteristic Will/Layla fluff. The uncharacteristic bit isn't the fluff or the het, but the pairing. I put up a disclaimer on my journals, but not when I posted it to comms and archives, and I felt I had to respond to the nice feedback that I got from Will/Layla 'shippers that ‘I’m not really a Will/Layla shipper.’ I am pretty OTP about Layla/Warren, but I don’t hate Will and Will/Layla is canon. Although the romance of him flying over to see her at the break of dawn and seeing her in the early light of day appealed to me, I’m pretty pointed about how Will didn’t see her like that before (that is, in canon). This ficlet had quite a long gestation, possibly because I was freaking out about it being a Will/Layla piece and not sure of how I handled it. 2011 should include Warren/Layla fic.
Don’t Look Back (ER) was a Neela/Ray vignette set after canon. I’d had the idea and written a draft immediately after the show had finished. I don’t remember what inspired me to go back and polish it this year, but this started a ‘run’ of doing the same with other ficlets, such as Old-fashioned Waltz (Harry Potter), which is a post canon Neville-Ginny ficlet, with a bit of Neville/Ginny pining and The Year of Bare Walls (Dawson's Creek), a Joey-centric ficlet that I drafted when season 3 was being repeated (that must be years ago!) It’s more about Joey as I would like to see her (I was always really disappointed in Joey-on-the-show’s attitude towards Bessie) than Joey as she was in canon.
The Best of My Love (Veronica Mars) was one of a couple of fics that I wrote for promptathons. I love promptathons as a reader - they can be goldmines for fic, it’s fun to prompt for stuff that you’d like to see, but can’t write yourself. And I've found they're much easier to contemplate contributing to than a full-blown ficathon. The prompts that made me think ‘Ooh, I can do that’ were ways for me to tell stories that I’d always wanted to tell, if I’m honest. I’ve almost exclusively read VM fic featuring Logan and Mac interacting if not together, and the idea of Mac having a baby in the context of their relationship had long been brewing in my mind.
Comprehension (Mansfield Park) was the longest fic that I wrote (or finished writing) in 2010, and the only one that passed the thousand word mark. Fanny/Harry is one of my earliest uncanonical ‘ships, and while I hadn’t quite composed this story in my head, have obsessed over the ‘what if’ possibilities every time I’ve read the novel, so once I saw the prompt and the discussion about the pairing that ensued in the Doomed Ships Ficathon, the story came very quickly, like The Best of My Love and We just haven’t written you yet. And as it was for a promptathon any reluctance I had to write Austen fic was got over.
I got my AO3 account this year (yay!) but I haven’t posted all my stories there or on Dreamwidth. Both are slogs in progress.
More wittering about my writing can be found here (I generally post something about the process shortly after posting fic).
This was cross-posted from my Dreamwidth, but I haven't sorted out the text that says as much yet. Hmm.
I started off the year by abusing a meme where you write a list of characters’ names and then try to answer questions like ‘What would happen if 3 and 7 were trying to steal something 9 owned?’ because I wanted to kick-start my writing again. The longest result was this untitled piece which features Push’s Cassie and Sky High’s Zach. Looking back at it, it feels like more of an introduction - what happened after Cassie met the gang? How did she settle at Sky High? (I didn't know at the time, so I didn't write it.)
It’s also typical that that fic featured a character from Push (I wrote two other Push ficlets) and Sky High - I don’t feel that I’m done with either fandoms yet. All the other fics I wrote in 2010 were in different fandoms, two in which I’d written before. The big divide is between the fics that existed in draft form before 2010 but I was motivated to polish, type and post last year and the fics that were conceived, written and posted in a fizz of enthusiasm.
Filling in the Outline (Push) was a respectable length for me - over 800 words - and was set shortly after the film. I got the idea of Nick having superior drawing skills to Cassie and that became a hook for a vignette about their relationship. It’s no more shippy than the film, but is focused on their relationship and the same could be said of O Tannenbaum (Push)
which is set a few years later, although I'm neutral on whether they're in the sam 'verse. Both ficlets stick to Nick’s POV. This came very quickly - it was first inspired by a cuddling meme and it was the start of December, time to think about Christmassy things and the idea of Cassie feeling discombobulated and out of time resonated with me. It also falls into that gen with a shippy slant category - I may be writing Nick and Cassie fic, but in my head, it’s pre Nick/Cassie, like how I see the film.
Early (Sky High) is uncharacteristic Will/Layla fluff. The uncharacteristic bit isn't the fluff or the het, but the pairing. I put up a disclaimer on my journals, but not when I posted it to comms and archives, and I felt I had to respond to the nice feedback that I got from Will/Layla 'shippers that ‘I’m not really a Will/Layla shipper.’ I am pretty OTP about Layla/Warren, but I don’t hate Will and Will/Layla is canon. Although the romance of him flying over to see her at the break of dawn and seeing her in the early light of day appealed to me, I’m pretty pointed about how Will didn’t see her like that before (that is, in canon). This ficlet had quite a long gestation, possibly because I was freaking out about it being a Will/Layla piece and not sure of how I handled it. 2011 should include Warren/Layla fic.
Don’t Look Back (ER) was a Neela/Ray vignette set after canon. I’d had the idea and written a draft immediately after the show had finished. I don’t remember what inspired me to go back and polish it this year, but this started a ‘run’ of doing the same with other ficlets, such as Old-fashioned Waltz (Harry Potter), which is a post canon Neville-Ginny ficlet, with a bit of Neville/Ginny pining and The Year of Bare Walls (Dawson's Creek), a Joey-centric ficlet that I drafted when season 3 was being repeated (that must be years ago!) It’s more about Joey as I would like to see her (I was always really disappointed in Joey-on-the-show’s attitude towards Bessie) than Joey as she was in canon.
The Best of My Love (Veronica Mars) was one of a couple of fics that I wrote for promptathons. I love promptathons as a reader - they can be goldmines for fic, it’s fun to prompt for stuff that you’d like to see, but can’t write yourself. And I've found they're much easier to contemplate contributing to than a full-blown ficathon. The prompts that made me think ‘Ooh, I can do that’ were ways for me to tell stories that I’d always wanted to tell, if I’m honest. I’ve almost exclusively read VM fic featuring Logan and Mac interacting if not together, and the idea of Mac having a baby in the context of their relationship had long been brewing in my mind.
Comprehension (Mansfield Park) was the longest fic that I wrote (or finished writing) in 2010, and the only one that passed the thousand word mark. Fanny/Harry is one of my earliest uncanonical ‘ships, and while I hadn’t quite composed this story in my head, have obsessed over the ‘what if’ possibilities every time I’ve read the novel, so once I saw the prompt and the discussion about the pairing that ensued in the Doomed Ships Ficathon, the story came very quickly, like The Best of My Love and We just haven’t written you yet. And as it was for a promptathon any reluctance I had to write Austen fic was got over.
I got my AO3 account this year (yay!) but I haven’t posted all my stories there or on Dreamwidth. Both are slogs in progress.
More wittering about my writing can be found here (I generally post something about the process shortly after posting fic).
This was cross-posted from my Dreamwidth, but I haven't sorted out the text that says as much yet. Hmm.