Year in writing 2018
Jan. 1st, 2019 07:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwynMy overall word count was way, way down this year. There's a lot of reasons for that, but that doesn't make it less disappointing. I have over 21k of something that is part of a big bang not posting till mid-February, so even though that hasn't factored into the official word count posted on AO3, I'm counting it myself.
February:
The Captains and the Kings Written for the Fandom Loves Puerto Rico auction winner Innie, this was a chance to write more Jack Benjamin being a competent badass in his own right, which is my favorite kind of Jack.
March:
Anything To Make You Smile Like a lot of people, I didn't see falling in love with Black Panther coming, especially Shuri, and Shuri with Bucky after the tag.
Stars in Your Vicinity This was the first of the follow-up stories to Celluloid Hero, where Bucky reacts to Steve's movie stardom.
May:
lucida, obscura I didn't write anything except this Captain America Big Bang fic for the next few months. This is a war story and love story about some very strange, terrifying things happening to Bucky in the aftermath of the Hydra factory.
July:
Is You Is or Is You Ain't My Baby The second follow-up to Celluloid Hero, where Peggy reacts to Steve's time in Hollywood and they move their relationship forward.
September:
Waiting for Deliverance Another Shuri-centric fic, this one after Infinity War, with Bucky, M'Baku, and Steve.
November:
Let the Golden Age Begin The last of the Celluloid Hero follow-ups, this one in the modern era with a post-ice Steve getting to know Sam and bonding over his old movies.
December:
This Much Is True My main Yuletide assignment, a crossover with TJ Hammond from Political Animals and Nick Gant from Push.
Present Tense A Yuletide treat for the movie Catch and Release, an adorable movie that almost no one has seen.
What's the story that makes you happiest?
lucida, obscura. This has turned out to be one of my favorite things I've written in this fandom--it was hugely disappointing that the artist never bothered to read it and it didn't seem to get much interest, but I loved how it turned out. Bucky's wry, droll, slightly panicked voice made me happy, and I loved writing Howard Stark, too, and getting to use my WWII knowledge to such a degree.
My 5 favorite stories this year:
Honestly, there are so few I think that's most of them! But I guess:
lucida, obscura
Anything to Make You Smile
The Captains and the Kings
Let the Golden Age Begin
This Much Is True
My 5 best stories this year:
lucida, obscura
The Captains and the Kings
Let the Golden Age Begin
This Much Is True
Anything to Make You Smile
Most popular story:
By metrics, I guess lucida, obscura.
Story most underappreciated by the universe, in my opinion:
All of the Celluloid Hero -verse stories performed, even by my embarrassingly sad standards, poorly. There were a lot of people I honestly thought would love that initial story but never read it, and they continue to not read the rest of the fics in the universe. :-D
Funnest story:
For writing fun, I guess the fic I'm working on now that's for the Stucky AU Big Bang, even though we're not supposed to talk about them? Which...why? I will never understand why, once the anon claims are over and the artists have fics, we're supposed to keep it secret. But it's a 1950s-set AU with touches of canon CA: TFA, and I'm having an absolute blast writing it. I think it'll be a fun story to read as well, so that answers both aspects of the prompt.
Sexiest story:
I wrote three M rated fics this year, but no E, which might be a new record for me. So nothing overtly sexy, but I'd probably say The Captains and the Kings, because Jack gets to be kind of flirty and has some sexytimes interludes and also gets to be super competent, which I find sexy.
Story with single sexiest moment:
I think the first-time sex with Steve and Bucky in lucida, obscura. It's more romantic than a tab A slot B kind of explicit scene, but for me that's what makes it sexy.
Story with single sweetest moment:
That one is tougher. Maybe in Anything To Make You Smile, because it's Shuri and Bucky BFFs and it's hard for that not to be sweet, and I loved having them just sit and talk about possibilities for future inventions.
Hardest story to write:
Writing my Yuletide story was kind of tough--I've been feeling really discouraged, and my plans to post fic on my birthday always push back my start dates for writing, and there's a lot of physical pain in writing right now. I also had this basic idea of having Nick seduce TJ and what the eventual goals would be, but for the life of me I couldn't put my finger on a deus ex machina to make Nick go after him. Fortunately, my whining tominim_calibre paid off and she tossed out this fantastic idea, so I had the catalyst I could fit all my other plans in the story around.
Easiest story to write:
Either Anything To Make You Smile or Stars in Your Vicinity. Both were things that came out pretty easily, especially Stars because I'd been thinking about it for a long time.
Story that made you cry/saddest story:
Waiting for Deliverance, because it's really hard not to be sad thinking about half the freaking population of the universe being gone, and Bucky being taken from Steve yet again.
Story that shifted my own perceptions of the characters:
I never gave it much thought before I started writing This Much Is True, but there's a weird fanon about Nick Gant that he's a player, and that is so freaking strange to me. He's this sort of mildly incompetent dork in the hot, cut body of Chris Evans, so I guess that's what prompts it. But having him be this guy who beds a new woman every night is more Colin Shea than Nick Gant, and it was kind of funny writing against that, just a little more of a challenge because I think the fandom as a whole wants him to be something that isn't necessarily there on the screen.
Biggest disappointment:
Well, it'd be hard to top having the artist not even care to read the story I worked so hard on to go with her art.
Biggest surprise:
The fact that I wrote 10k of Kings fic and 15k of Political Animals/Push, probably. That was way more words than I ever anticipated for either of those fandoms.
Most telling story:
I don't know what this means. But I suppose Let the Golden Age Begin, because a lot of it is about grief and mourning and loss as Steve tries to cope with being in the 21st century, all the people and the way of life he left behind. It's definitely a topic that seems to come out for me a lot with regards to Steve.
Favorite opening line:
I didn't really have one this year because of the abrupt way a lot of the stories start, but this one from Is You Is or Is You Ain't My Baby isn't too bad:
Steve watched Peggy stride through Howard’s laboratory, trying his damnedest to keep his eyes off the sway of her hips, the way her shiny brown hair bounced against her perfect neck.
Favorite closing line:
Not really the closing line but the almost closing lines:
He couldn't be King Jonathan of Gilboa, and he couldn't be Captain Jack Benjamin anymore. So who was he instead?
Maybe that was the real freedom: to find out. Jack wasn't entirely convinced this was the way to do it, but—there was time to figure that out.
Favorite line from anywhere:
I liked so many of the lines from lucida, obscura, and I just mentioned this one a few days ago, but I still really like it:
Bucky struggled to look Steve in the eye: it threw him back to seeing Steve that first time in the factory, tall and strong and just familiar enough that he thought it was a dying dream. It was possible all of this was some dying dream, his own Owl Creek Bridge.
Favorite title:
The Captains and the Kings, because it's about military men, and the throne, and all that, but also, Kipling, you know--the military man's preferred fave. (From Recessional)
Looking back, did you write more stories than you thought you would this year, fewer than you thought, or about what you predicted?
Quite a lot fewer, even if you add in the stuff that's written but can't be posted till later. It's slightly less than half what I did in 2017.
What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted in January 2018?
I never expected to fall in love with Shuri and everyone from Black Panther, so that was awesome. I didn't expect to have the chance to write Kings again, which was nice, and I enjoyed finally having a reason to write Political Animals after a lot of false starts. I wish I hadn't had the reason to write yet another story about Steve losing Bucky.
Story that could have been better?
I've never written just Steve/Peggy, so I kind of wonder if Is You Is... turned out okay, but so few people have read it I don't really have a sense of whether it succeeded or failed.
Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?
I played around some with voices this year, and at least in lucida, obscura and Captain and Kings I think it went well. But I didn't move too far off the beaten path, generally, it was more about doing more stuff I haven't before like crossovers.
This year's theme and the story that demonstrates it most:
Everything is awful and the only good thing in the world is friends.
What story do you want to have written?
Same as last year:
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:
lucida, obscura
What's next for 2017:
I am trying to get back into writing my Stucky AU Big Bang fic, since I had to stop to write birthday fic and Yuletide. I'm only halfway and at 21k so far, that means there's a lot left to write.
my final word count wasn't even destina has convinced me that it is worth the sparkle text I usually give it: 65,600 not counting the AU BB, with
http://picasion.com/gl/azZH/
February:
The Captains and the Kings Written for the Fandom Loves Puerto Rico auction winner Innie, this was a chance to write more Jack Benjamin being a competent badass in his own right, which is my favorite kind of Jack.
March:
Anything To Make You Smile Like a lot of people, I didn't see falling in love with Black Panther coming, especially Shuri, and Shuri with Bucky after the tag.
Stars in Your Vicinity This was the first of the follow-up stories to Celluloid Hero, where Bucky reacts to Steve's movie stardom.
May:
lucida, obscura I didn't write anything except this Captain America Big Bang fic for the next few months. This is a war story and love story about some very strange, terrifying things happening to Bucky in the aftermath of the Hydra factory.
July:
Is You Is or Is You Ain't My Baby The second follow-up to Celluloid Hero, where Peggy reacts to Steve's time in Hollywood and they move their relationship forward.
September:
Waiting for Deliverance Another Shuri-centric fic, this one after Infinity War, with Bucky, M'Baku, and Steve.
November:
Let the Golden Age Begin The last of the Celluloid Hero follow-ups, this one in the modern era with a post-ice Steve getting to know Sam and bonding over his old movies.
December:
This Much Is True My main Yuletide assignment, a crossover with TJ Hammond from Political Animals and Nick Gant from Push.
Present Tense A Yuletide treat for the movie Catch and Release, an adorable movie that almost no one has seen.
What's the story that makes you happiest?
lucida, obscura. This has turned out to be one of my favorite things I've written in this fandom--it was hugely disappointing that the artist never bothered to read it and it didn't seem to get much interest, but I loved how it turned out. Bucky's wry, droll, slightly panicked voice made me happy, and I loved writing Howard Stark, too, and getting to use my WWII knowledge to such a degree.
My 5 favorite stories this year:
Honestly, there are so few I think that's most of them! But I guess:
lucida, obscura
Anything to Make You Smile
The Captains and the Kings
Let the Golden Age Begin
This Much Is True
My 5 best stories this year:
lucida, obscura
The Captains and the Kings
Let the Golden Age Begin
This Much Is True
Anything to Make You Smile
Most popular story:
By metrics, I guess lucida, obscura.
Story most underappreciated by the universe, in my opinion:
All of the Celluloid Hero -verse stories performed, even by my embarrassingly sad standards, poorly. There were a lot of people I honestly thought would love that initial story but never read it, and they continue to not read the rest of the fics in the universe. :-D
Funnest story:
For writing fun, I guess the fic I'm working on now that's for the Stucky AU Big Bang, even though we're not supposed to talk about them? Which...why? I will never understand why, once the anon claims are over and the artists have fics, we're supposed to keep it secret. But it's a 1950s-set AU with touches of canon CA: TFA, and I'm having an absolute blast writing it. I think it'll be a fun story to read as well, so that answers both aspects of the prompt.
Sexiest story:
I wrote three M rated fics this year, but no E, which might be a new record for me. So nothing overtly sexy, but I'd probably say The Captains and the Kings, because Jack gets to be kind of flirty and has some sexytimes interludes and also gets to be super competent, which I find sexy.
Story with single sexiest moment:
I think the first-time sex with Steve and Bucky in lucida, obscura. It's more romantic than a tab A slot B kind of explicit scene, but for me that's what makes it sexy.
Story with single sweetest moment:
That one is tougher. Maybe in Anything To Make You Smile, because it's Shuri and Bucky BFFs and it's hard for that not to be sweet, and I loved having them just sit and talk about possibilities for future inventions.
Hardest story to write:
Writing my Yuletide story was kind of tough--I've been feeling really discouraged, and my plans to post fic on my birthday always push back my start dates for writing, and there's a lot of physical pain in writing right now. I also had this basic idea of having Nick seduce TJ and what the eventual goals would be, but for the life of me I couldn't put my finger on a deus ex machina to make Nick go after him. Fortunately, my whining to
minim_calibre paid off and she tossed out this fantastic idea, so I had the catalyst I could fit all my other plans in the story around.Easiest story to write:
Either Anything To Make You Smile or Stars in Your Vicinity. Both were things that came out pretty easily, especially Stars because I'd been thinking about it for a long time.
Story that made you cry/saddest story:
Waiting for Deliverance, because it's really hard not to be sad thinking about half the freaking population of the universe being gone, and Bucky being taken from Steve yet again.
Story that shifted my own perceptions of the characters:
I never gave it much thought before I started writing This Much Is True, but there's a weird fanon about Nick Gant that he's a player, and that is so freaking strange to me. He's this sort of mildly incompetent dork in the hot, cut body of Chris Evans, so I guess that's what prompts it. But having him be this guy who beds a new woman every night is more Colin Shea than Nick Gant, and it was kind of funny writing against that, just a little more of a challenge because I think the fandom as a whole wants him to be something that isn't necessarily there on the screen.
Biggest disappointment:
Well, it'd be hard to top having the artist not even care to read the story I worked so hard on to go with her art.
Biggest surprise:
The fact that I wrote 10k of Kings fic and 15k of Political Animals/Push, probably. That was way more words than I ever anticipated for either of those fandoms.
Most telling story:
I don't know what this means. But I suppose Let the Golden Age Begin, because a lot of it is about grief and mourning and loss as Steve tries to cope with being in the 21st century, all the people and the way of life he left behind. It's definitely a topic that seems to come out for me a lot with regards to Steve.
Favorite opening line:
I didn't really have one this year because of the abrupt way a lot of the stories start, but this one from Is You Is or Is You Ain't My Baby isn't too bad:
Steve watched Peggy stride through Howard’s laboratory, trying his damnedest to keep his eyes off the sway of her hips, the way her shiny brown hair bounced against her perfect neck.
Favorite closing line:
Not really the closing line but the almost closing lines:
He couldn't be King Jonathan of Gilboa, and he couldn't be Captain Jack Benjamin anymore. So who was he instead?
Maybe that was the real freedom: to find out. Jack wasn't entirely convinced this was the way to do it, but—there was time to figure that out.
Favorite line from anywhere:
I liked so many of the lines from lucida, obscura, and I just mentioned this one a few days ago, but I still really like it:
Bucky struggled to look Steve in the eye: it threw him back to seeing Steve that first time in the factory, tall and strong and just familiar enough that he thought it was a dying dream. It was possible all of this was some dying dream, his own Owl Creek Bridge.
Favorite title:
The Captains and the Kings, because it's about military men, and the throne, and all that, but also, Kipling, you know--the military man's preferred fave. (From Recessional)
Looking back, did you write more stories than you thought you would this year, fewer than you thought, or about what you predicted?
Quite a lot fewer, even if you add in the stuff that's written but can't be posted till later. It's slightly less than half what I did in 2017.
What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted in January 2018?
I never expected to fall in love with Shuri and everyone from Black Panther, so that was awesome. I didn't expect to have the chance to write Kings again, which was nice, and I enjoyed finally having a reason to write Political Animals after a lot of false starts. I wish I hadn't had the reason to write yet another story about Steve losing Bucky.
Story that could have been better?
I've never written just Steve/Peggy, so I kind of wonder if Is You Is... turned out okay, but so few people have read it I don't really have a sense of whether it succeeded or failed.
Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?
I played around some with voices this year, and at least in lucida, obscura and Captain and Kings I think it went well. But I didn't move too far off the beaten path, generally, it was more about doing more stuff I haven't before like crossovers.
This year's theme and the story that demonstrates it most:
Everything is awful and the only good thing in the world is friends.
What story do you want to have written?
Same as last year:
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:
lucida, obscura
What's next for 2017:
I am trying to get back into writing my Stucky AU Big Bang fic, since I had to stop to write birthday fic and Yuletide. I'm only halfway and at 21k so far, that means there's a lot left to write.
my final word count
http://picasion.com/gl/azZH/
no subject
Date: 2019-01-02 07:32 am (UTC)thislast year - are therefore also not worthy of sparkle text, being so much less than what YOU wrote, and frankly, this I cannot accept. Sparkle text is for everyone. Especially meeee. Those words were HARD AS HELL and I want some damn sparkles. *g* Could you give yourself a break, please? Seriously. *throws some sparkle confetti on you*no subject
Date: 2019-01-02 08:55 pm (UTC)I am so happy that you're writing--I know they're hard as hell to produce, but I'm really thrilled that we are getting more of your words. I hope maybe, with your newish circumstances, it'll come back to you, but even if it doesn't, I just hope you have fun thinking about the stuff that gives you joy.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-02 09:58 am (UTC)I'm so glad you wrote a number of stories that made you happy last year. I think that is the most important thing.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-02 08:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-02 06:33 pm (UTC)And I'm so glad you persevered through the difficulties for my Yuletide gift. It is wonderful. (People write Nick as a player? Really? Your description of him as a mildly competent dork in the hot body of Evans is far more accurate.)
And I somehow had missed your Kings story. Will be downloading that to read forthwith!
no subject
Date: 2019-01-02 08:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-02 10:20 pm (UTC)And now I'm thinking it's time for a re-watch of both Push and What's Your Number. :D
no subject
Date: 2019-01-02 10:58 pm (UTC)I mean, it could be worse. It could be as bad as Losers fanon, where I can identify exactly where it started and which will never not irritate the crap out of me.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-02 11:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-02 11:07 pm (UTC)Fanon!Jensen has suffered THE MOST and usually from psychotically abusive and homophobic parents! He is a soft and vulnerable fragile flower! Sometimes even practically virginal!
And I just...
Yeah.
Flames! Flames on the side of my face!
(I bonded with someone at VividCon about it in 2018 and that may have been one of my fandom highlights of the year.)
no subject
Date: 2019-01-02 11:11 pm (UTC)Wait... WHAT???!!!
Jeezus, I’d have bonded with you over that, too! Jensen is so not a woobie, and Cougar so is! Man, now I really want to write some Losers fic more than ever.
Flames, indeed.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-02 11:19 pm (UTC)(I have a: insomnia; b: low-to-no standards when reading pairings I like when I can't sleep; and c: the ability to read really quickly. What this means, effectively, is that I have read damn near everything in that fandom on AO3 more than once and have only myself to blame for any bald spots and/or resulting dental work needs.)
no subject
Date: 2019-01-02 09:02 pm (UTC)Yeah, you know, when Min pointed out that he's often written as a guy who beds lots of women and etc., because I was droning on about how I find his mild incompetence adorable, I kind of looked at her like -.o, but then I thought about the fic I've read, and went back to read through the works category, and I could see it. Even some of my favorites have had him sleeping around a lot, and...yeah. It's so weird to me. The Sniffs comment on it, you can see it in his interactions with Kira, and the way Pinky makes fun of him by calling him Romeo and Champ--he's just a Soft goof.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-02 10:22 pm (UTC)Nick is definitely a Soft goof. I'm thinking I need to re-watch Push, just to confirm this fact. ;-)
no subject
Date: 2019-01-04 12:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-04 02:32 pm (UTC)