All the Writing I Did in 2015
I see this meme everywhere, but I have no idea from whence it originated? Let me know if you know! I fiddled with the format a tad...
For once I did enough writing to actually justify a foray. I slaved over these projects, so I really wanted to indulge myself by talking about them, despite that no one asked. Note my cutoff corresponds to the Lunar calendar--but anything I wrote after the 8th of February will go into the 2016 review, if it happens. I didn't write anything until about April, I think. Watch how I don't give a straight answer to anything! May add/alter stuff later.
All this is very long-winded, and often tangential. I choose to believe those are some of my charms.
Statistics:
Word count: 131,124
New stories (all COMPLETE!): 6. Seriously, though? I accomplished one novel, one novella, one novelette, and 3 huge short stories! I also edited an old story that I'm still not ready to call complete yet.
I think I lost about 2 user subscriptions (wouldn't be surprised if they were people who joined on for No. 6!) and gained another 6?
The fics in question:
"Masquerade of Suns" (5.5K. Mushishi, July-Aug)
"To Treasure" (57K. Mimi wo Sumaseba, April-Oct)
"Terrella" (14K. Mononoke Hime, Oct-Nov)
"Canicule at the Threshold" (6.4K. Mononoke Hime, November)
"O Tided Time" (6.6K, The Last Unicorn, December)
"Yon, Thither, and Hither" (35.7K. Castle in the Sky, Nov-Feb)
Overview:
Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you'd predicted?
I think in all my 8-9 years of writing, there was only one other year in which I crossed 100k for creative fiction! U-uh, yeah, it shocks me how much I managed to write. I am certain I could not write more if I were any busier. I also vaguely remember trying to decide to quit writing altogether sometime in 2014? And, haha, look what happened! I was rather spiritually/mentally wounded post-2013, and surrendered like the weakling I was, but I think it's precisely because I denied myself creativity for so long that I completely went berserk in 2015. I am so much stronger now!
What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted in January?
These days I'm extremely steadfast when it comes to pairings and even when I venture into new fandoms, I tend to stick to canon relationships, because I can no longer bear the pain of shipping... haha...
Fandomwise, maybe Mushishi or The Last Unicorn? Mushishi because it's a completely episodic show that has no overarching plot; therefore, it's difficult to figure out how to bring back those isolated characters for a depiction close to the ambiance of canon, and the few recurring characters there are seem at times impenetrable. The Last Unicorn because I decided from early on that pastiches are not really what I'm looking to do, which is why I've avoided book fandoms for so long. Faux-collating text with text denies a lot of freedom? For me at least. I myself find fanfiction of textual source canons difficult to get into, even when they're well written--because often to be well-written one needs a strong voice, and that generally is concurrent with uniqueness, which then sets it apart from what I'm looking for: mimesis of the source canon. I'm just finicky that way. It's like how fanart is way, way more effective at being believable to me when it conforms to the canon style. But I've learned the most important thing is to have fun! The Shuna no Tabi crossover also surprised me.
Genrewise, I was all over the map. I tend to write things I consider a hybrid of genres, or don't fall so neatly into one definition. I can't say I couldn't predict it, since I aim for this!
What's your own favorite story of the year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you happiest?
Oh, boy. You're gonna get the standard "these projects are like my children" response! They are a-all beloved to me. They also all make me happy at the present moment, in different ways; otherwise I wouldn't have posted them. I warmed longest in the nest To Treasure, who keeps all my secrets, so maybe she's it; though Yon, Thither, and Hither is such an awfully sweet, if willful, daughter of whom I feel rather protective; then again I also have a tender spot for Terrella, the garlanded lovechild born from my inveterate lust for a certain couple having a lot of vaguely femdom sex in forests. Also, 2015 was probably the year I explicitly admitted to having a crush on Ashitaka, but part of it was because other people told me they did, too.
Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?
I took all the fucking risks! Writing behemoths for fandoms that were never alive, experimenting with voice & PoV (this year ran the gamut from 1st to 2nd to 3rd person and stories with an omniscient narrator), populating all my adventitious worldbuilding with original characters, &c.
...The risks really were endless; every time there was something I started feeling unsure about, I did the very thing until I was confident writing it. I grew into a writer I can truly call versatile.
The sheer amount of writing, as well as the intensity of the production, were also risks. I know a lot of people regularly produce 100k+ a year, but I thoroughly believe in quality > quantity. I don't mean to say that people who write fast are no good, or that my writing is magically wonderful to everyone because I'm slow as a sloth, or even that it has value to anyone other than myself; what I am saying is that I need to stew to be producing anything at all I'm happy with.
I learned about how single-minded I can be when in my creative mode, how willing I am to sacrifice so much for my work, and that both of those let me excel at finishing, though admittedly I have always been better at that than most. I seem to function marvellously on self-supplied hubris; and my writing can flourish even when I'm the only one who would benefit from and/or witness its completion.
I also learned that broadcasting my writing to a larger audience and/or receiving money for it is something I want embarrassingly desperately; yes, I have always wanted that, and I've always been rather serious about it, but 2015 was the year that I made active ideas and plans for publication.
Assessments (subjective)
My best story:
It's impossible not to give a biased answer, but I'm going to do it anyway: To Treasure for sheer scope and Terrella for all the entendres as well as the fact that I wrote a scene that was 14K without a single section break. I also think Yon, Thither, and Hither is as good as either of them. It's the kind of vintage kidlit highwind adventure blended with domesticity, as well as an unabashed and ironic manifesto on transcendent love, that I love to read!
My most popular story:
I'm now a pretty obscure fannish writer for the most part, probably because in the past few years I've written almost exclusively for microfandoms, and never post text of my stories on Tumblr, though I recently discovered that I managed to get recommended twice on TVTropes for my Mononoke Hime stories? *starry eyes* They racked up a staggering amount of attention in 2015. So what I'm saying is, quite some time needs to pass before his year's yields are appraised for popularity, since the numbers are extremely close at the moment, and I don't really know how to assess them.
Ostensibly, it's O Tided Time, if going by kudos and the one bookmark, but I would ignore the numbers because it's a Yuletide story. Terrella is one kudos behind it, and I'm fairly sure most are embarrassed to tell me how they specifically felt about it. Also, while it's 5 kudos behind O Tided Time, To Treasure is the one with the most and longest bookmarks and comments (and private messages!), and the one that seemed to resonate with people the most.
Story most underappreciated by the universe:
At the moment it's Yon, Thither, and Hither. Yes, only a little over a fortnight has passed since I posted it, but it's the initial hit to kudos ratio that worries me; I've never had anything lower than 10% for the first few dozen hits, though I know a lot of my friends have visited the page several times to read it in chunks/made several aborted attempts to read it due to busyness. I'm very afraid of people not "getting" the story, or turning it down because it's got an omniscient narrator (seems to be discouraged in modern fiction, and disparaged in fandom). Regardless, I still bill it as a super neat story, and hope it'll prove to be a cult classic in the coming years--that's actually happened before!
I would also add To Treasure, because I'm fairly (over)confident that there are quite a few folks who would like or even love this story if only they heard of and read it... It's a big investment, though, so it's also a story I'm wishing on acquiring a happy wider audience in the next few years!
P.S. I'm about to say something in another answer that seems to contradict this one, but it doesn't. I feel O Tided Time is pretty underrated!
Most fun:
I actually don't know! Everything was fun enough to keep me going for so long, I guess? Terrella incurred the least exacerbation: I have a few styles I can produce with relative ease by default, and the pavonine one you see in this fic is one of them. Also, referencing and researching sex scenes can be extra fun, if you know what I mean. 8)
Most disappointing:
Ah, I tend to not post if I feel a story isn't working or not up to scratch? I'm fairly stringent about these things. That said, the relatively lukewarm Yuletide reception of O Tided Time did embarrass me a little bit! I don't hate or even dislike this fic, and am even proud of it (especially the prose therein); the disappointment is more a reflection on external reception, but I do have the vague feeling that I overshot what is sensible. I mean, it is a story of the unicorn having sex with the sea. There's a lot of dream logic going on. Moreover, while I think I pastiched very well, maybe the pastiche was too much of a pastiche, since I took and reworked quite a few sentences from the book itself. I analysed the diction (surprisingly favouring Germanic) & syntax and everything! Yet the result of all this was that my own voice, my own take, is not present enough. Furthermore, I could have also started on this fic waaaay earlier, and thought about it more, and developed it more organically. In the archive it does stick out like a sore thumb. The other The Last Unicorn fics were all very serious, third person affairs, but mine was omniscient and often (intended to be) humorous. But the bottom line is that my jokes didn't always connect and that there was some canon dissonance as a result!
Sexiest:
Terrella. There is FACESITTING, you guys! San on Ashitaka, of course.
Hardest to write:
To Treasure in terms of research (I even had a field trip all the way from Sydney to Cremona!), structure, and size/scope. I was extremely ambitious with the fantasy sequences with Humbert, which ended up being an original novellette in the end, as well as extremely dense. I had to vastly adapt my style for Yon, Thither, and Hither, which was hard, and I was also trying my hand at omniscience for the first time since I learned what it was. I also did an inordinate amount of research for it, and now I am more well-versed in bovine pregnancy, the Himalayas/Eurasian steppes/the Caucasus, and legendary locales than ever before! Coincidentally YHT is the second longest story.
Most unintentionally telling:
To Treasure, hands down. I knew from the start that I would have to expose my heart as a writer in it, because I feel that Shizuku and I have such similar interests and goals and backgrounds? And I won't lie; I put pieces of myself in all the characters. However, a friend read it and noted that there are even more things in it that're telling: the clothes worn, wine drank (I don't drink, but there's a family bottle shop), etc! Those are truly unintentionally telling. But there so many things in it that I'm aware are based off personal experience: the hospitality and bonhomie of Europeans that I received firsthand; reproducing all the places I actually visited; the opera; clocks and curios I actually own/have seen; and a myriad other things I won't bother to list! I'm tempted to say that pretty much everything in that fic is telling about me if you know how it relates to yours truly.
Aspirations
Do you have any fanfic or profic goals for the New Year?
The foremost goal is to not fall for any new fandoms too hard and suddenly desire to write 100K for some new OTP. I should not sign up for any exchanges in 2016, either, since they are extremely stressful and I don't know if I could do it again without breaking down (I love the things I receive, but I can no longer handle the stress of overanalysing the reception of the things I write, knowing that I have a much larger audience than usual). As much as fanfiction is good and fun and beautiful, it's not as if I get enough comments with any regularity or at any volume to know I am consistently needed, and sometimes even welcome, so I might as well be doing it for original fiction from which I might make a bit of cash? I am so thankful for the appreciation I have been shown, though!
The ultimate goal is to sell a story. I just want a bit of treat money and recognition at this point. Hence, I'm going to go on an indefinite fannish hiatus and focus on profic! And actually becoming a profic writer, haha. I've been doing this since I was the tender age of 11! I recently even found a tiny fairy tale I wrote way back in 2006, and I had been creatively writing way before then for classes. At first it was a hobby, but over the years it's come to dominate my life. Even after I began to be seriously serious about writing, I kept telling myself that I wasn't ready to write anything I could sell, not yet, not yet, not yet. 2015 was the year that I decided that I'm ready to try! I know from writing huge and hugely obscure fannish projects now that I could give my all to writing even if none were to like or even read it. More than ever before external voices have been telling me that I can do this, can sell a story, am good enough for profic. Therefore, I am ready for my first rejection, and equally ready for my first publication. Sounds cheesy, but I believe in myself!
I want to become that one young and uprising mysterious alluring Chinese Australian author who writes surreal dreamy fantasies, lyrical bosky novellas, and feel-good romances for feminists, among other things. I want to be responsible for all the astral sparkles and reified dreams!!! I would also like to write some kidlit one day, when I figure out what is wholesome for children that they actually want to read (but for me it's not changed so drastically as I've grown up?). I want such stories to be the literary equivalent of a Ghibli film?
That said, there are a few fanfics projects I want to finish, once I get half of my original stories done:
- I finally figured out the setting for ushiro de/doggy style debut starring San and Ashitaka! Projected length 10K. Must complete this year without passing out.. haHAhaHaaaaaaaaaaaa........
- The Past Lives of Ogino Chihiro (Eight Views of Samsara): fairly self-explanatory. Soulbonds reincarnation fic (canon-compliant as possible, though)! Must be 8K, or 8888 words. Auspicious numbers!
- Finish editing the Eboshicentric Saltation! A kind anon on Tumblr even remembered it from years ago when it was under a different title and asked me for it. Don't let them down, Future Me!
- Fairly optional, but the Mononoke Hime AU wherein Ashitaka is a winsome aspiring singer-songwriter from the countryside with the new single ~YOU'RE BEAUTIFUL~ out now; and San is a treehugging mori-girl orphan with two wolfdogs who while protesting bumps into the handsome busker during a rendition that seems directed right at her...
- More femslash in general! God, it's about time! Especially something for new OTP Undyne/Alphys... THINK of the makeOUTS AND animE TRASH MARATHONS!!!!?!?!
In the event that I cannot publish any stories, I should still complete at least 5 of them! Novelettes and/or short stories, that is. If they're no good now I could always rework them in a few more years? I will later make a post about ideas I've been juggling.
Choice Lines (Beware: SPOILERS):
Ah man, this is the most difficult part. I work hard on all the lines and how they relate to one another, a-and I'm a little doubtful about elevating certain words over others and stripping them of context and relativity. So these will aim to be recapitulative rather than anything else:
Masquerade of Suns
He put his head to the grass. He used to do this all the time, half his life ago, with no roof over his head, but the whole world as his house. He had seldom wondered like so many others what distant lamps shed the light on it, when there was so much effulgence in the world, and the river under the earth, and enough within the self, within sleep, to be blinding.
He fell asleep under the stars, dreaming soft dreams of mauve and maroon and violaceous silks and knotted nimbi of breath and smoke, and of his haunt of a seaside shack, and of a plane of white light too vast to traverse, but he didn’t know it until the next day, when he wasn’t sure whether to be more started by the dream or his sudden waking to the one white sun in a blue sky.
“So,” he said, lighting up a cigarette, “I guess I’m still here.”
To Treasure
The full-time writer, even when on holiday, could not help but on occasion debate the meaning of her life as if it were a narrative, and regret her decisions, wishing there were an option to edit the wrong words, the turn too soon to this chapter or that paragraph, to delete all subplots that did not at all strengthen the story as a whole. In short, the full-time writer was never on holiday, and the fact of the matter did not necessarily make the work any better or more important.
...
Yet she hoarded reminiscences like jewels, perfect mornings and evenings in the sunstones and moonstones of recall, ammolites with illustrious provenances, crystals inside geodes whose shaping was as serendipitous as their meeting, one paragon plucked from each new experience. She would sometimes take them out from the coffer of her mind and turn them over in the light of hindsight and through the screens of nostalgia, for inspiration, or merely the look of them, for consideration to a crown of power that would help her to face the unknown and unyielding future.
The dead and the past could not change, despite the millions of years humanity tried to counter the inevitabilities against which they still could not help but to rage and deny and rebel. So too would the tuft of Seiji's hair remain pure-black, even after she will have witnessed the strands upon his head cede to sometimes-gray and always-white at last.
...
You rained yourself tears of pity and loss, even though you never knew these people who lived in this empty place from aeons ago. You always feel so much so deeply. You were the best at listening, even at the silence between what was done and said, at dropping yourself inside another person and coming back with the right words to impart that empathy to others. So you cried and cried and cried, enveloped inside the history of this great and nameless disaster.
...
“It isn’t so incredible. The same stories repeat themselves over and over. It’s sad, sometimes, listening to people make the exact mistakes over and over. It makes me wonder if things ever improve. I am less a lover of stories than I once was, as I’m rarely surprised anymore, though your visiting was the first time I have been caught unawares in a long time.”
“But I think everyone’s stories are important, are worth listening to,” you asseverated, “even if you think they’re boring, or badly told, or timeworn. Even if the people in them didn’t amount to anything, even if they were untenable, even if-if anything. Don’t they equally deserve to be considered? I wish I had enough time to get to know everyone, or even better, be them for a little while. But I think that’s asking too much. I guess I’m trying to say it’s important to feel for people, to understand them better, to cry and laugh with them, to love them from a heart that I hope one day won’t have a bottom.”
...
“I could read you Mimi wo Sumaseba,” Shizuku wavered, staring hard at the chandelier to hide her colour. “I wouldn’t call it finished but-”
Seiji pulled his fringe back. “You’re never finished,” he murmured, unsurprised, blowing the last stray hairs from his eyes. “Is it supposed to be symbolism for life?”
Terrella
More than this, he began to sense her everywhere. Now the question was: How much of her was wooded, wedded to shadow? The dark of her eyes in the shapes tossed by trees by which he was awed under; and through the night loveliest her darker hair in which he hid long as if to leap from the black to dream; her white battle-cratered skin on the moon; her raindrop feet in step with his footfalls as they together pushed down the roots deep beneath. She nestled into his perception, in eight million associations, in blood and salt and cedars and resins and mud, and tendrils of woodwind waft. Evermore he carried the heartwoods of her memory with him. The forest, revered from afar or below, bowered her; she belonged to it as he belonged to her. Moth to sloe, upturn by worm. He was lost in green black, amber gold: her pageant of lumens and shades.
...
In her eye he reached behind himself, earth and empyrean doubly seen domed in her two bright-black worlds. Both mirrored him in them, and he himself looked as clear and comely as he hoped she looked to herself in his own eyes. His image was so small and yet took up so much space in the circles of her watch. Ah, he thought, so this is infinity. At that moment the sun rose over high distant knolls, and the light increased over them, until there were no reflections, and San’s irises fused into rings of flamed wood. The instant passed. What was death, anyway?
...
Whereas at once she was everything from canopy to understory to soil to roots and the forest entire, Ashitaka was loess, blown here by that unexpectedly merciful calamity, clinging to her solid primordial grounds, carved by all her tools into what was as much a house for himself as a palace for her regalement. Yet when she looked at him he felt as if her gaze met him at a place he didn’t know he reached; and so with her guidance he realised that he had become his own place. She at once faced that which was behind and ahead and within: all of himself refound.
Canicule at the Threshold
San huffed. “It’s been a while since I’ve sung cicada,” she mumbled, “but I’ll try. Let’s see, most of them are blandishing the females. ‘Come to me my sweet willow leaf, oh sap of my veins, great green-wing, all my rich seed is yours. Typical. There are stranger songs, though. One of them’s sulking: ‘I am utterly denuded. Where is my shell? Why must I melt without it?’ Someone cries, ‘Mother, I am afraid to go into that dark place again. I shall miss the sun all too much. I shall miss more the moon.’” Muscles played delicately over San’s face. She wriggled inside Ashitaka, earthworm in the ochre of his heart. “And the owls say, ‘Goodnight, my friends. The maggot of the dawn will be mine.’ The bats have thrown a midnight feast in the meantime. ‘No, you may not eat this fig. You still owe me five caterpillars. Ah, but if you trade me a sweet tale…’ The mosquitoes sing lullabies to the new lives inside them. I’d need to tell you all about their mores for you to understand the lyrics. But they’re too complicated to explain in one summer’s night. Oh, and the moths say nothing at all. They never do.”
O Tided Time
As age had bleared his eyes brine blurred hers while she thought of the folds that had surged up in so many little waves of flesh that continued unto the horizon of his closed, still eyes, the waters of them forever frozen now in what was for her the blink of his life, which she held in her mouth like a kiss, to last as long as it would.
...
As the mermaids sung a lullaby for their sister long lost, the sea bore her back to shore and blanketed her in the balmy ebb of summer, her body layered wave by wave and step by step in the runny, relentless stairwell of memory. In her dream all the sky was over or within her, and nothing was in it but clouds that were bunches of lilac blooms and rosemary bowers dripping saline and scent. Through the nimbi she cantered up turrets of vines; past the back door, where trees sang in tongues and cast shade dense as thundereggs; over and under abutments of thick hair the colour of salt; to the spluttering, stinging, glittering kisses of the white swell, blood-warm and soft as new life, lighting her as though through a prism. At last she could weep at her own impossible doing so. When she woke it was as it was in her dream, the whole world the colour and sound of the inside of a shell, rolled up in the whorl of her sensorium, empty but for the fullness of the knowing of it. Then she understood: she was Haggard in the forest that spring morning; Schmendrick at the stature of his powers; Molly uncovering the legend of herself; Lír utterly lost in the greenwood of her swishing company; and she as she was when she believed she was the essence of beauty just as much as she was she after she knew that it was a lie and what it meant to die. This is all for them, she thought, This ancient novelty, and was herself again.
Yon, Thither, and Hither
They got close. Each locked a hand into an interlacement of fingers. Sheeta put her free palm on Pazu’s stronghold of a shoulder and he set his just shy of her hip. Slow and near and so very warm, they only did the boxstep, forward and athwart and back, but as they moved their feet beglamoured the floor beneath them and soon they were twirling and whirling across the ballrooms of Laputa, under shipshapen chandeliers and over marquetry of turquoise and carnelian and lapis lazuli, Sheeta clean in a pretty dress and sparkling heels and tiara of superlative power and Pazu a sight for sore eyes, spruce and splendid in the panoply forbidden to all but the queen’s favourite. Their entire family, blood and chosen, were there to fare, applaud, and revel; and the music they made mingled with their blood, enriched marrow, ushered magic into their breath.
...
With their backs to the dewed grass they stared up at the denuded night so much more gorgeous for its unveiling, its beauty inspiring the same and more questions thriving like wildflowers within them, meadows and fields of cosmic mysteries, as many as the stars, growing like galaxies they explored with fleets of theories. Even the view from the crow’s nest could not rival in clarity this Gondoan sky, whose true hazeless black accentuated even the feathery resplendence of nebulae, so that they at last understood why people called it the Fort of Gywdion, or the Milky Way, or the River of Heaven.
...
Pazu said, “Oh, you’re a woman after my own heart! Our adventures are far from over, Sheeta. The world is ever so great. There were plenty of places my father wanted to find after Laputa, you see. He’s got all the maps drawn up, and there’re notes and bookmarks we could use. There’s Baltia, whose waves chucks up amber on its shores; and Cockaigne, where it rains cheeses and saveloys and no one ever grows old; and Shambhala, home of the Cintamani; and Argharti underground, Cantre’r Gwaelod of the songs, with the lushest farmland in all the world, and the loveliness of the Peach Blossom Spring, oh, and Ys by the sea, and Atlantis beneath it. They say there’s a turtle that wanders the seas that’s so big and old that people live in the jungle that grows on top of it. Oh, Sheeta, we could see it all! I’ll pick you up come autumn in the orithopter. With Ben helping me and Dola chipping in I think I could finish her up in a jiffy. Before the gala, if I’m lucky.”
Sheeta echoed each placename as she would a spell. Her tongue sounded out the shape of them into taste, summoned each into solid, until she could reach them in her heart and trusted her volant feet to do the same in time. Her next word enchanted their promise into her own spell of creation. “Yes!” she said. “Let’s do our best!”