Fic in 2019!
A little bit belated, but here's a round-up/reflection on everything I wrote in 2019:
Fic I posted in 2019:
JANUARY
(Didn’t post anything; I guess I was still recovering from the huge amount I wrote for both Yuletide and Holmestice in November/December? Also, though, in January I was intensely revising the fic that then got posted in February!)
FEBRUARY
• Go to the Limits of Your Longing (Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries)
MARCH
• Wasted My Life Playing Dumb (Call Me By Your Name)
APRIL
• Sea Lion Caves in the Dark (Call Me By Your Name)
MAY
• California (Harry Potter; part of More Than This World Can Contain)
• Will Wonders Ever Cease (Call Me By Your Name)
JUNE
• Heart, and Brain, and All (Torchwood)
JULY
• Old Friends (Harry Potter; part of More Than This World Can Contain)
AUGUST
(Didn’t post anything; barely even had time to start revising the fic I ultimately posted in September!)
SEPTEMBER
• Mammas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Wizards (Harry Potter; part of More Than This World Can Contain)
OCTOBER
• This Thing That Builds Our Dreams Yet Slips Away (Raven Cycle)
• La Ronde Corvi (Raven Cycle)
NOVEMBER
• I Was Once As You Are Now (Harry Potter; part of More Than This World Can Contain)
DECEMBER
• The Loneliest Man of Winter (Harry Potter; for Remus/Sirius Small Gifts)
• Let the Tea Leaves Fall (Harry Potter; for Remus/Sirius Small Gifts)
• Time Is the Enemy, Time Is the Guide (Call Me By Your Name; for Yuletide)
• All That I’ve Known to Be of Love (Call Me By Your Name; for Yuletide)
• River, Sea and Stream (Harry Potter; for Remus/Sirius Small Gifts)
Things I did:
• rejoined my local writers’ group, now that I’m back from Scotland
• went on a very productive writing retreat with my writers’ group
• went to a cool local writing festival; got intrigued by flash fiction
• made & met “mini” NaNoWriMo goals in November
• worked on songwriting again for the first time in a while, and for the first time feel like I’m starting to have a small body of songs I’m happy with; performed at two (small) music festivals
• didn’t sign up for either round of Holmestice, because life was too unpredictable to be able to make commitments, but during the summer round accidentally fell into reading all the fics right in the last few days and participating in the guessing post after all ;-)
• didn’t sign up for Yuletide for the same life reasons, but came back around and wrote some treats, because how could I not?
• got a sudden burst of Harry Potter nostalgia that led me to rediscover the Remus/Sirius Small Gifts fest… didn’t sign up for this either, because I remembered its existence too late for sign-ups, but wrote a pinch-hit and a couple of treats. (This was a new fest for me! I’d betaread for a friend in it, but never participated directly.)
• through some hard life stuff this year, saw clearly how writing is the one thing I want to do whether things are bad or good, and the thing I need to do when things are bad (found myself literally and explicitly processing trauma in the form of fiction); all of that above (setting writing goals in November even though I didn’t really have time, writing for fests even though I didn’t really have time) was very clearly because I needed writing so badly right then
• meanwhile, STILL writing my master’s thesis, goshdarnit, after numerous health setbacks and family crises. IT WILL BE FINISHED IN 2020 OR BUST.
• as always, read and discussed lots of books in my quarterly book posts… though not quite as many as books usual
• in the realm of fannishness: got to go back to the UK for a bit (I miss it!) and traveled some, including an all-day train ride from northeast Scotland to southwest England (because for some reason when I think “I’m going to be in Scotland” apparently I think “then I should go to Cornwall!”); also spent a couple days in Cardiff nerding out about Torchwood and other BBC Cardiff things (fun!); once again managed to wrangle a day in London at the end of the trip in order to see theater, of course
Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you'd predicted?
More! With the way this year has been, I was hoping to even manage an average of one fic per month, i.e., 12; but thanks to a burst of Small Gifts + Yuletide at the end of the year, I posted 16 fics!
Looking back, was your fandom involvement (modding, cheerleading, fest participation, etc.) more, less, or about what you'd predicted?
More than I’d expected, less than I’d like.
What's your favorite story of the year?
Oh, oh, oh, gosh. This is hard because I wrote in a lot of different fandoms this year, so it’s hard to compare directly. I’m very proud of my Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries fic: Go to the Limits of Your Longing - I worked hard and revised hard, but it was worth it.
And I’m quite proud of my set of Call Me By Your Name fics, which began last year as two Yuletide fics but ended up as a series of five, called He Thinks of Elio. People also responded really positively to this year’s CMBYN Yuletide fic, All That I’ve Known to Be of Love.
I’m proud of The Loneliest Man of Winter (Remus/Sirius). And of course I’m fond of my ongoing set of Harry Potter genfic, More Than This World Can Contain.
What's your favorite fandom fest/project of the year?
Oooh, usually it would be Holmestice, but I wasn’t able to participate in either round this year! So: Yuletide - which is also my favorite.
Least favorite fandom project?
Nope, none, never. :-)
Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?
Not really a “risk,” per se, but I continued last year’s expansion into writing in more different fandoms, which has been really fun growth for me. Maybe in particular the two Raven Cycle fics: one of them (This Thing That Builds Our Dreams Yet Slips Away) that depicts a darker relationship than I would usually write, and one (La Ronde Corvi) that looks at each of the main characters’ trauma.
Do you have any fanfic or profic goals for the new year?
Same as last year: just manage to keep writing at all, despite life stuff + trying to finish my thesis. Once I’m done with the thesis (HOPEFULLY IN MAY PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE) I’d love to get back to a little more thinking about original fiction again: learning how to properly write short stories, trying out flash fiction, etc.
My best story of the year:
Hmmm, I never know what I’m meant to base this on: what I think is best? what got the most kudos? comments? But in this case it seems pretty clear that the ones that really got an especially positive response from readers were All That I’ve Known to Be of Love (Call Me By Your Name) and Go to the Limits of Your Longing (Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries). Interestingly, both of those are epistolary fics - something I don’t think I’d ever done before this year!
Most fun story:
Hmm, also a hard one to answer: most fun to write? most fun to read? Maybe I’d say Go to the Limits of Your Longing - it’s two people who really care about each other but have very, very different personalities, who get an unexpected chance to really explore what they mean to each other and what they could be to each other, when they’re suddenly separated by a great distance and have to communicate only by letter. With a lot of passionate longing, and some ardent quoting of Rilke. :-)
Most sexy story:
Yeah, once again that’s gonna be all things Call Me By Your Name! I am not a sexy writer, but in this fandom it’s hard not to be. Sea Lion Caves in the Dark, Will Wonders Ever Cease, and Time Is the Enemy, Time Is the Guide all have fairly sexy scenes. (Though still not sex scenes, quite.)
Maybe also This Thing That Builds Our Dreams Yet Slips Away (Ronan/Kavinsky, Raven Cycle) but in a very different way, a sexy-antagonistic-possibly-evil way.
Story with the single sexiest moment:
Probably Sea Lion Caves in the Dark, where Elio and Oliver are reunited half a year later, and go down to the beach of the wild, wintry sea for a moment alone together before rejoining the whole family.
“Holy crap, that's wrong, even for you” story:
As always, I’m really not this sort of writer…but I am rather proud that this year I wrote Ronan/Kavinsky, which is a dark, problematic, borderline abusive pairing in canon (that luckily the character eventually steps away from in canon) but somehow it intrigued me to get inside Kavinsky’s twisted perspective. Not sure what it says about me that it felt pretty easy to do!
Story that shifted my own perceptions of the characters:
I always love this question. What a great way to reflect on writing! Maybe Go to the Limits of Your Longing - it’s an epistolary fic, told in letters back and forth between two characters, so I really had to get inside both of their perspectives. Jack is a Remus type (seriously, when I started the show that’s all I could think about, how closely his dynamics match Remus’!), so I could write him all the day long. But Phryne is so (so) different from me, so it was a really good challenge to have to wrestle with her perspective.
And of course More Than This World Can Contain has let me get inside the heads of several somewhat smaller Harry Potter characters: Cho, Viktor, Dean and Neville.
Hardest story to write:
Maybe Go to the Limits of Your Longing: I wrote a version, then found a beta and the beta said, eh, it’s fine, but also pointed out some ways I could think about it harder and go a lot deeper into the story. At first I was a little frustrated (I have to revise?) and then I was excited (I get to revise!) and then I worked a ton on it, expanded it to nearly twice as long, and in the end had a fic that I’m really proud of and that readers seem to really like. The power of a good beta!
Biggest surprise:
Huh! Another good question. Finding myself suddenly writing lots of Remus/Sirius fics right at the end of the year? (Hadn’t written any since the final round of the R/S Games in late 2017.) Came about because I rediscovered R/S Small Gifts and meant to write one treat, but then did a pinch hit as well. At first I wasn’t sure I’d be able to do anything for the pinch hit recipient’s prompt, but then I had an idea and wrote the whole fic over the course of a day or two. I used to be somebody who churned out one-shots, lots of them and fast, always having little ideas and dashing them off in short fics, but I haven’t been that kind of writer in a while. So it felt good to get back to it!
And then on New Year’s Eve, just before going out for the evening, I was thinking about the other idea I’d had for a treat for another person’s prompts in Small Gifts, but that I hadn’t had time to write. And I realized I could at least gesture at the idea by telling it in a much briefer form, as a set of drabbles. So I dashed those off, a final unexpected fic on the last day of the year!
So yes, I guess several of my surprises this year involved a return to Remus/Sirius, right at the end of the year. Now, if I can just finally finish my Remus/Tonks WIP I’ve been working on for years…
List of WIPs:
• the bi Remus/Tonks fic I am perpetually trying to write from the back burner; last year at this time, I see that I wrote, “It’s made a ton of progress (I’ve finally written Tonks all the way up to…the point where she first meets Remus) but will it ever actually be complete?” This year I’d have to say, I’ve actually again made a ton of progress (I’ve written them halfway through the OotP year, and nearly up to the point where they first kiss…) but, indeed, will it ever be complete?
• the final chapter/fic of More Than This World Can Contain (the one where Ginny and Luna go on an adventure!)
• a fic in a new fandom that I didn't manage to finish in time for Yuletide, but it's now been betaed and I just need to find time to revise it.
Total fics posted: 16, in 5 different fandoms.
Total word count posted, at least according to AO3: 46,682! I’m surprised it's that much, since I didn’t write any long fics this year - they’re pretty much all one-shots. And actually the real total is probably slightly higher than that, because due to the way things are dated on AO3, the 2019 word count there includes a couple of short fics that were actually from Yuletide 2018, and doesn’t include longer fics from Yuletide 2019. So the real 2019 count would something more like 50,800. (Yay, technically novel length! And very close to the previous year’s count. Not bad at all for years where I was in grad school and then also dealing with every health curveball life could throw me.)
.
(Crossposted from this post on Dreamwidth, which is now my primary journal. Comments are fine in either place.)
Fic I posted in 2019:
JANUARY
(Didn’t post anything; I guess I was still recovering from the huge amount I wrote for both Yuletide and Holmestice in November/December? Also, though, in January I was intensely revising the fic that then got posted in February!)
FEBRUARY
• Go to the Limits of Your Longing (Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries)
MARCH
• Wasted My Life Playing Dumb (Call Me By Your Name)
APRIL
• Sea Lion Caves in the Dark (Call Me By Your Name)
MAY
• California (Harry Potter; part of More Than This World Can Contain)
• Will Wonders Ever Cease (Call Me By Your Name)
JUNE
• Heart, and Brain, and All (Torchwood)
JULY
• Old Friends (Harry Potter; part of More Than This World Can Contain)
AUGUST
(Didn’t post anything; barely even had time to start revising the fic I ultimately posted in September!)
SEPTEMBER
• Mammas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Wizards (Harry Potter; part of More Than This World Can Contain)
OCTOBER
• This Thing That Builds Our Dreams Yet Slips Away (Raven Cycle)
• La Ronde Corvi (Raven Cycle)
NOVEMBER
• I Was Once As You Are Now (Harry Potter; part of More Than This World Can Contain)
DECEMBER
• The Loneliest Man of Winter (Harry Potter; for Remus/Sirius Small Gifts)
• Let the Tea Leaves Fall (Harry Potter; for Remus/Sirius Small Gifts)
• Time Is the Enemy, Time Is the Guide (Call Me By Your Name; for Yuletide)
• All That I’ve Known to Be of Love (Call Me By Your Name; for Yuletide)
• River, Sea and Stream (Harry Potter; for Remus/Sirius Small Gifts)
Things I did:
• rejoined my local writers’ group, now that I’m back from Scotland
• went on a very productive writing retreat with my writers’ group
• went to a cool local writing festival; got intrigued by flash fiction
• made & met “mini” NaNoWriMo goals in November
• worked on songwriting again for the first time in a while, and for the first time feel like I’m starting to have a small body of songs I’m happy with; performed at two (small) music festivals
• didn’t sign up for either round of Holmestice, because life was too unpredictable to be able to make commitments, but during the summer round accidentally fell into reading all the fics right in the last few days and participating in the guessing post after all ;-)
• didn’t sign up for Yuletide for the same life reasons, but came back around and wrote some treats, because how could I not?
• got a sudden burst of Harry Potter nostalgia that led me to rediscover the Remus/Sirius Small Gifts fest… didn’t sign up for this either, because I remembered its existence too late for sign-ups, but wrote a pinch-hit and a couple of treats. (This was a new fest for me! I’d betaread for a friend in it, but never participated directly.)
• through some hard life stuff this year, saw clearly how writing is the one thing I want to do whether things are bad or good, and the thing I need to do when things are bad (found myself literally and explicitly processing trauma in the form of fiction); all of that above (setting writing goals in November even though I didn’t really have time, writing for fests even though I didn’t really have time) was very clearly because I needed writing so badly right then
• meanwhile, STILL writing my master’s thesis, goshdarnit, after numerous health setbacks and family crises. IT WILL BE FINISHED IN 2020 OR BUST.
• as always, read and discussed lots of books in my quarterly book posts… though not quite as many as books usual
• in the realm of fannishness: got to go back to the UK for a bit (I miss it!) and traveled some, including an all-day train ride from northeast Scotland to southwest England (because for some reason when I think “I’m going to be in Scotland” apparently I think “then I should go to Cornwall!”); also spent a couple days in Cardiff nerding out about Torchwood and other BBC Cardiff things (fun!); once again managed to wrangle a day in London at the end of the trip in order to see theater, of course
Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you'd predicted?
More! With the way this year has been, I was hoping to even manage an average of one fic per month, i.e., 12; but thanks to a burst of Small Gifts + Yuletide at the end of the year, I posted 16 fics!
Looking back, was your fandom involvement (modding, cheerleading, fest participation, etc.) more, less, or about what you'd predicted?
More than I’d expected, less than I’d like.
What's your favorite story of the year?
Oh, oh, oh, gosh. This is hard because I wrote in a lot of different fandoms this year, so it’s hard to compare directly. I’m very proud of my Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries fic: Go to the Limits of Your Longing - I worked hard and revised hard, but it was worth it.
And I’m quite proud of my set of Call Me By Your Name fics, which began last year as two Yuletide fics but ended up as a series of five, called He Thinks of Elio. People also responded really positively to this year’s CMBYN Yuletide fic, All That I’ve Known to Be of Love.
I’m proud of The Loneliest Man of Winter (Remus/Sirius). And of course I’m fond of my ongoing set of Harry Potter genfic, More Than This World Can Contain.
What's your favorite fandom fest/project of the year?
Oooh, usually it would be Holmestice, but I wasn’t able to participate in either round this year! So: Yuletide - which is also my favorite.
Least favorite fandom project?
Nope, none, never. :-)
Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?
Not really a “risk,” per se, but I continued last year’s expansion into writing in more different fandoms, which has been really fun growth for me. Maybe in particular the two Raven Cycle fics: one of them (This Thing That Builds Our Dreams Yet Slips Away) that depicts a darker relationship than I would usually write, and one (La Ronde Corvi) that looks at each of the main characters’ trauma.
Do you have any fanfic or profic goals for the new year?
Same as last year: just manage to keep writing at all, despite life stuff + trying to finish my thesis. Once I’m done with the thesis (HOPEFULLY IN MAY PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE) I’d love to get back to a little more thinking about original fiction again: learning how to properly write short stories, trying out flash fiction, etc.
My best story of the year:
Hmmm, I never know what I’m meant to base this on: what I think is best? what got the most kudos? comments? But in this case it seems pretty clear that the ones that really got an especially positive response from readers were All That I’ve Known to Be of Love (Call Me By Your Name) and Go to the Limits of Your Longing (Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries). Interestingly, both of those are epistolary fics - something I don’t think I’d ever done before this year!
Most fun story:
Hmm, also a hard one to answer: most fun to write? most fun to read? Maybe I’d say Go to the Limits of Your Longing - it’s two people who really care about each other but have very, very different personalities, who get an unexpected chance to really explore what they mean to each other and what they could be to each other, when they’re suddenly separated by a great distance and have to communicate only by letter. With a lot of passionate longing, and some ardent quoting of Rilke. :-)
Most sexy story:
Yeah, once again that’s gonna be all things Call Me By Your Name! I am not a sexy writer, but in this fandom it’s hard not to be. Sea Lion Caves in the Dark, Will Wonders Ever Cease, and Time Is the Enemy, Time Is the Guide all have fairly sexy scenes. (Though still not sex scenes, quite.)
Maybe also This Thing That Builds Our Dreams Yet Slips Away (Ronan/Kavinsky, Raven Cycle) but in a very different way, a sexy-antagonistic-possibly-evil way.
Story with the single sexiest moment:
Probably Sea Lion Caves in the Dark, where Elio and Oliver are reunited half a year later, and go down to the beach of the wild, wintry sea for a moment alone together before rejoining the whole family.
“Holy crap, that's wrong, even for you” story:
As always, I’m really not this sort of writer…but I am rather proud that this year I wrote Ronan/Kavinsky, which is a dark, problematic, borderline abusive pairing in canon (that luckily the character eventually steps away from in canon) but somehow it intrigued me to get inside Kavinsky’s twisted perspective. Not sure what it says about me that it felt pretty easy to do!
Story that shifted my own perceptions of the characters:
I always love this question. What a great way to reflect on writing! Maybe Go to the Limits of Your Longing - it’s an epistolary fic, told in letters back and forth between two characters, so I really had to get inside both of their perspectives. Jack is a Remus type (seriously, when I started the show that’s all I could think about, how closely his dynamics match Remus’!), so I could write him all the day long. But Phryne is so (so) different from me, so it was a really good challenge to have to wrestle with her perspective.
And of course More Than This World Can Contain has let me get inside the heads of several somewhat smaller Harry Potter characters: Cho, Viktor, Dean and Neville.
Hardest story to write:
Maybe Go to the Limits of Your Longing: I wrote a version, then found a beta and the beta said, eh, it’s fine, but also pointed out some ways I could think about it harder and go a lot deeper into the story. At first I was a little frustrated (I have to revise?) and then I was excited (I get to revise!) and then I worked a ton on it, expanded it to nearly twice as long, and in the end had a fic that I’m really proud of and that readers seem to really like. The power of a good beta!
Biggest surprise:
Huh! Another good question. Finding myself suddenly writing lots of Remus/Sirius fics right at the end of the year? (Hadn’t written any since the final round of the R/S Games in late 2017.) Came about because I rediscovered R/S Small Gifts and meant to write one treat, but then did a pinch hit as well. At first I wasn’t sure I’d be able to do anything for the pinch hit recipient’s prompt, but then I had an idea and wrote the whole fic over the course of a day or two. I used to be somebody who churned out one-shots, lots of them and fast, always having little ideas and dashing them off in short fics, but I haven’t been that kind of writer in a while. So it felt good to get back to it!
And then on New Year’s Eve, just before going out for the evening, I was thinking about the other idea I’d had for a treat for another person’s prompts in Small Gifts, but that I hadn’t had time to write. And I realized I could at least gesture at the idea by telling it in a much briefer form, as a set of drabbles. So I dashed those off, a final unexpected fic on the last day of the year!
So yes, I guess several of my surprises this year involved a return to Remus/Sirius, right at the end of the year. Now, if I can just finally finish my Remus/Tonks WIP I’ve been working on for years…
List of WIPs:
• the bi Remus/Tonks fic I am perpetually trying to write from the back burner; last year at this time, I see that I wrote, “It’s made a ton of progress (I’ve finally written Tonks all the way up to…the point where she first meets Remus) but will it ever actually be complete?” This year I’d have to say, I’ve actually again made a ton of progress (I’ve written them halfway through the OotP year, and nearly up to the point where they first kiss…) but, indeed, will it ever be complete?
• the final chapter/fic of More Than This World Can Contain (the one where Ginny and Luna go on an adventure!)
• a fic in a new fandom that I didn't manage to finish in time for Yuletide, but it's now been betaed and I just need to find time to revise it.
Total fics posted: 16, in 5 different fandoms.
Total word count posted, at least according to AO3: 46,682! I’m surprised it's that much, since I didn’t write any long fics this year - they’re pretty much all one-shots. And actually the real total is probably slightly higher than that, because due to the way things are dated on AO3, the 2019 word count there includes a couple of short fics that were actually from Yuletide 2018, and doesn’t include longer fics from Yuletide 2019. So the real 2019 count would something more like 50,800. (Yay, technically novel length! And very close to the previous year’s count. Not bad at all for years where I was in grad school and then also dealing with every health curveball life could throw me.)
.
(Crossposted from this post on Dreamwidth, which is now my primary journal. Comments are fine in either place.)