2017 writing recap
Jan. 1st, 2018 12:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwynThis year, my word count was down from previous years, although there was a nearly 20,000 word push there at the very end with Yuletide and a Christmas fic. A lot of it was that I was working on one thing almost all year: Celluloid Hero, which took a lot of my time, then there was the reverse big bang, and the other thing was, well, cancer. Stupid cancer. I can't say anything was what you could call successful if you're judging by stats, because most of it's pretty abysmal, but I'm still very happy with a lot of my writing, so whatever.
I won't list month by month, since some months I didn't have anything but a new chapter of Celluloid Hero, these are just the stories in one lump:
Celluloid Hero The Steve Rogers Goes to Golden Age Hollywood and makes the movies we see little snippets of in CA:TFA
To the Rescue Part of the War Dogs universe, about Bucky and Gretel the Howling Commandog rescuing a kidnapped Steve, written for Bucky's 100th birthday
Four Times Quinn Encountered the Winter Soldier, and One Time the Soldier Engaged A Captain America/Homeland crossover. I wrote this as a birthday present for a friend who is the only other person I know who loves Peter Quinn on Homeland, and fantasizes about him meeting up with Bucky
Save my life and I'll save yours My entry for the Captain America Reverse Big Bang, a kind of Civil War fix-it where characters get to act like intelligent individuals and not credulous morons
We Could Just Run Them Red Lights A little War Dogs universe fic for Steve's birthday, with Rita their sort of service dog
A Bullet in the Barrel of Your Best Guy's Gun A sequel to Man With a Plan, the "you're keeping the outfit" uniform porn I wrote a few years ago, for the Pod-Together challenge
This Is Not Some Kind of Meet-Cute My main Yuletide assignment, for the movie Gifted
The Light You Give A Christmas Carol style fic where Steve has only been back for a few months and just wants to be alone to hate the 21st century, and is that really too much to ask? (the answer is yes)
And the whirlwind A Yuletide treat for Logan, about my little murder cupcake Laura after the movie
What's the story that makes you happiest?
Celluloid Hero. I just loved everything about it--playing with all my obsessions, putting Steve in Hollywood and having him be a cute little fish out of water, having Hedy Lamarr punch his v-card, doing something that really hasn't been done in this fandom at all…it was just very happy-making. And I often have trouble getting betas but minim-calibre read the whole thing and gave me great, sometimes ruthless advice, which I appreciate.
My 5 favorite stories this year:
Honestly, there are so few I think that's most of them! But I guess:
Celluloid Hero
Save my life and I'll save yours
To the Rescue
Four Times Quinn Encountered the Winter Soldier…
And the whirlwind
My 5 best stories this year: I have no idea how to decide this since everything always feels like failure, but this is just what I felt turned out okay.
Celluloid Hero
And the whirlwind
Save my life and I'll save yours
Four Times Quinn Encountered the Winter Soldier…
To the Rescue
Most popular story:
Purely metrics, it's Save my life and I'll save yours, because that had the boost of being posted to the CapRBB community, which my big bang last year did not, so that was good. Judging by people's reactions, though, I think it'd be Celluloid Hero--hardly anyone wants to read it, but the handful of people who did were amazing and left me comments as I went, and they were a good group who stuck with me through sporadic updates due to my health issues and kept encouraging me.
Story most underappreciated by the universe, in my opinion:
Well, my main Yuletide story for Gifted already had the handicap of a super small fandom, but apparently even anonymous, my fic cooties are visible, and it's the least-read in the fandom, with two to three times as many hits for all the other stories. It's hard not to feel like a failure, but the comments were nice, so that helps a lot.
Most fun story:
Writing fun, definitely Celluloid Hero, and I think the little group that followed it might say it was the funnest to read, too, or at least I hope they would. I think some of the people who read The Light You Give enjoyed the various aspects of Cranky Scrooge!Steve.
Sexiest story:
Well, A Bullet in the Barrel of Your Best Guy's Gun was 6k of metal hand fisting, so I suppose that's the point of it, to be sexy. But honestly, I thought Four Times Quinn Encountered the Winter Soldier… was good for that, because I loved writing the attraction connection between Peter Quinn and the Soldier and Quinn starts out the first encounter as a honey trap.
Story with single sexiest moment:
If it's not the blow job in Four Times… it'd be the reunion sex of Save my life and I'll save yours, since that's what the art was for the big bang, and everything in the story leads up to it. Although, huh, I just remembered Bucky pulling his glove off with his teeth in We Could Just Run Them Red Lights.
Story with single sweetest moment:
I guess the ending of To the Rescue, because Bucky and Gretel cuddle up with Steve after they've rescued him.
Hardest story to write:
Probably A Bullet in the Barrel of Your Best Guy's Gun. I never wanted to do a sequel to Man With a Plan, I mean, I adamantly didn't want to despite requests, but my original partner in the Pod-Together challenge didn't seem to like my fic ideas, and since she would have to podfic the story, I wanted to find something she'd want to read. Then we discovered a mutual interest in metal hand kink, so we settled on that. It was tough because I was having trouble writing it, I've never written that much or that kind of porn, and then I got diagnosed with cancer, and I was also trying to write Celluloid Hero and a fic for Steve's birthday…and then my original partner disappeared. Fortunately, I ended up getting Reena Jenkins to come in and pinch hit (I'd been worried, when my partner reappeared, that if she dropped out I couldn't find anyone willing to read such explicit fic) and she did not only a fucking amazing job on the podfic, but she made a podfic of Man With a Plan to go along with it, and had the idea to make a downloadable file of Bucky's Sexy Playlist, which was fantastic. So it was a challenge of a challenge, but turned out well in the end thanks to Reena.
Easiest story to write:
Four Times Quinn Encountered the Winter Soldier, and One Time the Soldier Engaged. All that spy shit's stored up in my brain, and the few things I did have to research were fun, and I loved thinking of Quinn running into Bucky at various points in his CIA career.
Truest story of the year:
I still do not understand what this means. I guess I'd say my Yuletide stories, because Meet-Cute has a lot of stuff about grief & loss and moving on and doing the best you can, and that feels not only true to Frank but true to me. And And the Whirlwind because Laura is a brave little toaster. But also both to me, because I have never written things as personal as that for Yuletide, and they both came from places I know all too well.
Story that made you cry/saddest story:
My Yuletide stories, for reasons noted above. I cannot recall making myself cry while writing anything, maaaybe Things We Lost in the War a few years ago, but writing And the Whirlwind made me cry at the end, and I definitely had a lot of crushing memories come up in the Gifted story.
Story that shifted my own perceptions of the characters:
I've had to try to recover my former love of Tony Stark in a few things I've written this year, because Civil War made me hate him and his actor so much. It's been difficult and I don't feel I've succeeded, but writing him in Save my life... and The Light You Give were good experiences.
Biggest disappointment:
Definitely my Yuletide main fic, and I think Bullet in the Barrel, stats and writing wise. I thought people would want to read Celluloid Hero after it was finished, but not only did that not happen, but a lot of the people who'd been commenting and encouraging disappeared, and I fear I failed them.
Biggest surprise:
I wasn't sure I could do a reverse big bang, and I had deliberately stayed away from art that I felt didn't necessarily have a story prompt in it because I wasn't sure I could come up with something for art that was just hugging or kissing or what have you. But I ended up being, like, 128th on the list so there weren't any choices, and I was really afraid I couldn't do the artist justice. But she didn't mind that I got a plot all over her art, and ended up doing another piece of the kitten Bucky rescues, and the whole story turned out pretty well once I lit on how to make it happen. I'm not sure I have the heart to do another art claims process again, but I was surprised at how well it worked out.
Most telling story:
I don't know what this means either, but I think anyone who knows me would know where some of the stuff in both my Yuletide fics comes from.
Favorite opening line:
From Four Times Quinn Encountered the Winter Soldier:
The first time he encounters the Winter Soldier, Peter Quinn doesn’t even know who he is: unaware that he’s a fable, a ghost story, most especially that he ought to be terrified of him.
Favorite closing line:
Probably the one below, from Save my life, but also this from To the Rescue:
The two of them laughed softly—how many times had they said versions of that to each other by this point?—and Gretel thumped her tail against the wall of the tent, because there wasn’t anything she loved more than the sound of her favorite people, safe and warm and laughing together.
Favorite line from anywhere:
I liked many lines in Save my life and I'll save yours, but the ending was a favorite:
Then Bucky was smiling through the ache and Steve was smiling and they were holding each other, and Bucky said against his shoulder, “At least we already know he likes cats.”
Favorite title:
Celluloid Hero--I'd been struggling with what to call it that made it clear it was Steve in Hollywood, but I hated all the versions of that kind of hooray for Hollywood type thing I could think of. And then one day I remembered The Kinks' song Celluloid Heroes, and that was that.
Looking back, did you write more stories than you thought you would this year, fewer than you thought, or about what you predicted?
Fewer, I think, just because the one WIP took so much of my year, and also cancer. I guess that's the theme of this year: also cancer.
What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted in January 2015?
I never saw Gifted coming--I never thought it would interest me, and much as I like Chris Evans, his movies haven't always been that great, and I hate manipulative kid movies. But I went to see it right after it opened, which I don't always do, and I just fell in love with it. I saw it seven times in the theatre, partly enabled by minim calibre, who saw it more than twice as much as me, and I just knew that it would be a Yuletide fandom for me. And wow, I never expected to write Logan, but I saw someone's request come up on the pinch hit and even though I mixed them up with someone else, I thought I'd write a treat for them, although I ended up gifting it to someone else because I was afraid they might not like something that wasn't a fix-it.
I also, as I mentioned, never wanted to do a sequel to Man With a Plan, but since I'd never done other challenges either, I thought it would be fun to try the Pod-Together challenge, and I'd never done a reverse bang, so there was that. Lots of new stuff!
Story that could have been better?
I don't know that Bullet in the Barrel is any good. It was a weird set of circumstance to write in (I tell you, finding out you have cancer makes it hard to focus), and I'm not sure I'm any good at porn, and judging by the response, my fears about it are probably accurate.
Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?
The aforementioned challenges were definitely a risk, and I wasn't sure I could do them. Four Times was only the second actual crossover I've done, and I've never done a formal Five Times kind of fic (I don't think of Celluloid Hero as really a crossover, though I suppose it is). The biggest thing about Celluloid though was that I knew going in a non-shippy story with Steve interacting with Hollywood people would be a niche market. Very very niche.
This year's theme and the story that demonstrates it most:
I don't think there is one? Or maybe just that everything is awful and the only respite from my suicidal depression is to imagine happier things for my boys.
What story do you want to have written?
There's a War Dogs universe story that is basically the saddest story in the world, even though the "deaths" are canonical and there's no actual animal harm, but I know that no one would want to read it. I've thought about it all year and it's the story I want to write most of all, but I think a bunch of people would be upset with me, and so I don't.
Story I want remembered:
Celluloid Hero.
What's next for 2017:
I'd like to write that sad story, or just more War Dogs universe in general. I have my Fandom Loves Puerto Rico fic for innie that I have to start on now. I may or may not do the next Cap RBB, depending on if I think my heart can handle that brutal claims process. And I have three follow-up stories for Celluloid Hero that show Bucky and Peggy with Steve, and their reactions to his movie-stardom, and then Sam in the modern day and his reactions.
my final word count wasn't in the same range as previous, but it's not too shabby:
I won't list month by month, since some months I didn't have anything but a new chapter of Celluloid Hero, these are just the stories in one lump:
Celluloid Hero The Steve Rogers Goes to Golden Age Hollywood and makes the movies we see little snippets of in CA:TFA
To the Rescue Part of the War Dogs universe, about Bucky and Gretel the Howling Commandog rescuing a kidnapped Steve, written for Bucky's 100th birthday
Four Times Quinn Encountered the Winter Soldier, and One Time the Soldier Engaged A Captain America/Homeland crossover. I wrote this as a birthday present for a friend who is the only other person I know who loves Peter Quinn on Homeland, and fantasizes about him meeting up with Bucky
Save my life and I'll save yours My entry for the Captain America Reverse Big Bang, a kind of Civil War fix-it where characters get to act like intelligent individuals and not credulous morons
We Could Just Run Them Red Lights A little War Dogs universe fic for Steve's birthday, with Rita their sort of service dog
A Bullet in the Barrel of Your Best Guy's Gun A sequel to Man With a Plan, the "you're keeping the outfit" uniform porn I wrote a few years ago, for the Pod-Together challenge
This Is Not Some Kind of Meet-Cute My main Yuletide assignment, for the movie Gifted
The Light You Give A Christmas Carol style fic where Steve has only been back for a few months and just wants to be alone to hate the 21st century, and is that really too much to ask? (the answer is yes)
And the whirlwind A Yuletide treat for Logan, about my little murder cupcake Laura after the movie
What's the story that makes you happiest?
Celluloid Hero. I just loved everything about it--playing with all my obsessions, putting Steve in Hollywood and having him be a cute little fish out of water, having Hedy Lamarr punch his v-card, doing something that really hasn't been done in this fandom at all…it was just very happy-making. And I often have trouble getting betas but minim-calibre read the whole thing and gave me great, sometimes ruthless advice, which I appreciate.
My 5 favorite stories this year:
Honestly, there are so few I think that's most of them! But I guess:
Celluloid Hero
Save my life and I'll save yours
To the Rescue
Four Times Quinn Encountered the Winter Soldier…
And the whirlwind
My 5 best stories this year: I have no idea how to decide this since everything always feels like failure, but this is just what I felt turned out okay.
Celluloid Hero
And the whirlwind
Save my life and I'll save yours
Four Times Quinn Encountered the Winter Soldier…
To the Rescue
Most popular story:
Purely metrics, it's Save my life and I'll save yours, because that had the boost of being posted to the CapRBB community, which my big bang last year did not, so that was good. Judging by people's reactions, though, I think it'd be Celluloid Hero--hardly anyone wants to read it, but the handful of people who did were amazing and left me comments as I went, and they were a good group who stuck with me through sporadic updates due to my health issues and kept encouraging me.
Story most underappreciated by the universe, in my opinion:
Well, my main Yuletide story for Gifted already had the handicap of a super small fandom, but apparently even anonymous, my fic cooties are visible, and it's the least-read in the fandom, with two to three times as many hits for all the other stories. It's hard not to feel like a failure, but the comments were nice, so that helps a lot.
Most fun story:
Writing fun, definitely Celluloid Hero, and I think the little group that followed it might say it was the funnest to read, too, or at least I hope they would. I think some of the people who read The Light You Give enjoyed the various aspects of Cranky Scrooge!Steve.
Sexiest story:
Well, A Bullet in the Barrel of Your Best Guy's Gun was 6k of metal hand fisting, so I suppose that's the point of it, to be sexy. But honestly, I thought Four Times Quinn Encountered the Winter Soldier… was good for that, because I loved writing the attraction connection between Peter Quinn and the Soldier and Quinn starts out the first encounter as a honey trap.
Story with single sexiest moment:
If it's not the blow job in Four Times… it'd be the reunion sex of Save my life and I'll save yours, since that's what the art was for the big bang, and everything in the story leads up to it. Although, huh, I just remembered Bucky pulling his glove off with his teeth in We Could Just Run Them Red Lights.
Story with single sweetest moment:
I guess the ending of To the Rescue, because Bucky and Gretel cuddle up with Steve after they've rescued him.
Hardest story to write:
Probably A Bullet in the Barrel of Your Best Guy's Gun. I never wanted to do a sequel to Man With a Plan, I mean, I adamantly didn't want to despite requests, but my original partner in the Pod-Together challenge didn't seem to like my fic ideas, and since she would have to podfic the story, I wanted to find something she'd want to read. Then we discovered a mutual interest in metal hand kink, so we settled on that. It was tough because I was having trouble writing it, I've never written that much or that kind of porn, and then I got diagnosed with cancer, and I was also trying to write Celluloid Hero and a fic for Steve's birthday…and then my original partner disappeared. Fortunately, I ended up getting Reena Jenkins to come in and pinch hit (I'd been worried, when my partner reappeared, that if she dropped out I couldn't find anyone willing to read such explicit fic) and she did not only a fucking amazing job on the podfic, but she made a podfic of Man With a Plan to go along with it, and had the idea to make a downloadable file of Bucky's Sexy Playlist, which was fantastic. So it was a challenge of a challenge, but turned out well in the end thanks to Reena.
Easiest story to write:
Four Times Quinn Encountered the Winter Soldier, and One Time the Soldier Engaged. All that spy shit's stored up in my brain, and the few things I did have to research were fun, and I loved thinking of Quinn running into Bucky at various points in his CIA career.
Truest story of the year:
I still do not understand what this means. I guess I'd say my Yuletide stories, because Meet-Cute has a lot of stuff about grief & loss and moving on and doing the best you can, and that feels not only true to Frank but true to me. And And the Whirlwind because Laura is a brave little toaster. But also both to me, because I have never written things as personal as that for Yuletide, and they both came from places I know all too well.
Story that made you cry/saddest story:
My Yuletide stories, for reasons noted above. I cannot recall making myself cry while writing anything, maaaybe Things We Lost in the War a few years ago, but writing And the Whirlwind made me cry at the end, and I definitely had a lot of crushing memories come up in the Gifted story.
Story that shifted my own perceptions of the characters:
I've had to try to recover my former love of Tony Stark in a few things I've written this year, because Civil War made me hate him and his actor so much. It's been difficult and I don't feel I've succeeded, but writing him in Save my life... and The Light You Give were good experiences.
Biggest disappointment:
Definitely my Yuletide main fic, and I think Bullet in the Barrel, stats and writing wise. I thought people would want to read Celluloid Hero after it was finished, but not only did that not happen, but a lot of the people who'd been commenting and encouraging disappeared, and I fear I failed them.
Biggest surprise:
I wasn't sure I could do a reverse big bang, and I had deliberately stayed away from art that I felt didn't necessarily have a story prompt in it because I wasn't sure I could come up with something for art that was just hugging or kissing or what have you. But I ended up being, like, 128th on the list so there weren't any choices, and I was really afraid I couldn't do the artist justice. But she didn't mind that I got a plot all over her art, and ended up doing another piece of the kitten Bucky rescues, and the whole story turned out pretty well once I lit on how to make it happen. I'm not sure I have the heart to do another art claims process again, but I was surprised at how well it worked out.
Most telling story:
I don't know what this means either, but I think anyone who knows me would know where some of the stuff in both my Yuletide fics comes from.
Favorite opening line:
From Four Times Quinn Encountered the Winter Soldier:
The first time he encounters the Winter Soldier, Peter Quinn doesn’t even know who he is: unaware that he’s a fable, a ghost story, most especially that he ought to be terrified of him.
Favorite closing line:
Probably the one below, from Save my life, but also this from To the Rescue:
The two of them laughed softly—how many times had they said versions of that to each other by this point?—and Gretel thumped her tail against the wall of the tent, because there wasn’t anything she loved more than the sound of her favorite people, safe and warm and laughing together.
Favorite line from anywhere:
I liked many lines in Save my life and I'll save yours, but the ending was a favorite:
Then Bucky was smiling through the ache and Steve was smiling and they were holding each other, and Bucky said against his shoulder, “At least we already know he likes cats.”
Favorite title:
Celluloid Hero--I'd been struggling with what to call it that made it clear it was Steve in Hollywood, but I hated all the versions of that kind of hooray for Hollywood type thing I could think of. And then one day I remembered The Kinks' song Celluloid Heroes, and that was that.
Looking back, did you write more stories than you thought you would this year, fewer than you thought, or about what you predicted?
Fewer, I think, just because the one WIP took so much of my year, and also cancer. I guess that's the theme of this year: also cancer.
What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted in January 2015?
I never saw Gifted coming--I never thought it would interest me, and much as I like Chris Evans, his movies haven't always been that great, and I hate manipulative kid movies. But I went to see it right after it opened, which I don't always do, and I just fell in love with it. I saw it seven times in the theatre, partly enabled by minim calibre, who saw it more than twice as much as me, and I just knew that it would be a Yuletide fandom for me. And wow, I never expected to write Logan, but I saw someone's request come up on the pinch hit and even though I mixed them up with someone else, I thought I'd write a treat for them, although I ended up gifting it to someone else because I was afraid they might not like something that wasn't a fix-it.
I also, as I mentioned, never wanted to do a sequel to Man With a Plan, but since I'd never done other challenges either, I thought it would be fun to try the Pod-Together challenge, and I'd never done a reverse bang, so there was that. Lots of new stuff!
Story that could have been better?
I don't know that Bullet in the Barrel is any good. It was a weird set of circumstance to write in (I tell you, finding out you have cancer makes it hard to focus), and I'm not sure I'm any good at porn, and judging by the response, my fears about it are probably accurate.
Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?
The aforementioned challenges were definitely a risk, and I wasn't sure I could do them. Four Times was only the second actual crossover I've done, and I've never done a formal Five Times kind of fic (I don't think of Celluloid Hero as really a crossover, though I suppose it is). The biggest thing about Celluloid though was that I knew going in a non-shippy story with Steve interacting with Hollywood people would be a niche market. Very very niche.
This year's theme and the story that demonstrates it most:
I don't think there is one? Or maybe just that everything is awful and the only respite from my suicidal depression is to imagine happier things for my boys.
What story do you want to have written?
There's a War Dogs universe story that is basically the saddest story in the world, even though the "deaths" are canonical and there's no actual animal harm, but I know that no one would want to read it. I've thought about it all year and it's the story I want to write most of all, but I think a bunch of people would be upset with me, and so I don't.
Story I want remembered:
Celluloid Hero.
What's next for 2017:
I'd like to write that sad story, or just more War Dogs universe in general. I have my Fandom Loves Puerto Rico fic for innie that I have to start on now. I may or may not do the next Cap RBB, depending on if I think my heart can handle that brutal claims process. And I have three follow-up stories for Celluloid Hero that show Bucky and Peggy with Steve, and their reactions to his movie-stardom, and then Sam in the modern day and his reactions.
my final word count wasn't in the same range as previous, but it's not too shabby:
no subject
Date: 2018-01-01 10:59 pm (UTC)(One of my recips posted about their gift, the other mentioned it in their Tumblr tags--while reblogging a gifset from me, hilariously--and that, as you know, drives things up a bit.)
no subject
Date: 2018-01-02 06:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-01-02 12:01 am (UTC)YES PLEASE
I LOVED CH and I know a lot of other people who were commenting did too -- it was kind of frustrating to be able to kudos it only once! I wanted to give it a new one for every chapter, it was that good.
no subject
Date: 2018-01-02 06:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-01-02 12:17 am (UTC)Neither story appeared on any recs list -- not on DW, not on Tumblr from what I can tell, not on Discord. One recip did do a very nice "these are the fics I got" post. But there were 14 stories in the fandom, and even for people who went out of their way to rec 4 or 5 fics, I was never mentioned. And that was in the anon period! So, it's weird. Of course what matters is the people that I treated like their fics, and the people who did read the fics liked them too. But I felt (not to sound like MELODRAMATIC JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL ME or something) very on the outside? It was weird.
tl;dr you aren't the only one who feels like they have neon cooties even in the anon period
Like srsly this is what EVERY recs post for my fandom I have seen looks like. All of them: http://unofficialyuletide.tumblr.com/post/169211309429/last-minute-yuletide-recs-murderbot-palooza
Oh well.
no subject
Date: 2018-01-02 06:45 am (UTC)It's just been one long streak of stories that I've worked really hard on, and been met with indifference, even from friends in the fandoms, and so it just felt like the crap cherry on top of the blechy sundae. Not enough to keep me from writing, but it's not entirely encouraging, either.
no subject
Date: 2018-01-02 10:29 am (UTC)But good luck in the coming year, and I hope you continue writing up a storm. I always feel better about myself when I can be creative.
no subject
Date: 2018-01-07 12:03 am (UTC)