2014 My Year in Fic

2014 Fiction Word Count

Progress Bar from Writertopia

First off, sorry about not posting 2013's My Year in Fic last year. Second off, the health epiphany technically falls under 2015 so you'll find it discussed in my goals for the upcoming year. Third off, don't have one so let's move along.

Stories I Finished:

The Dark Knight Rises: Weapon of the Shadows finally got published.

Part of the Night: The One Rule is finished on AO3. I'm still editing it to post at the Library and FF.net.

Stories I Didn't Finish:

Right after I posted the last chapter of The One Rule, I started on its sequel story The Wayne Legacy. And since I vastly underestimated the word count to scenes ratio, I didn't get finished with the rough draft or move along to another story.

My favorite story this year: The Wayne Legacy.

Story most under-appreciated by the universe, in my opinion: Actually, once the jerkbrain chemicals finally subsided (see below), all the stories have gotten great responses in 2014.

Most fun story: The Wayne Legacy, I've been having so much fun Nolan-izing the Batman canon.

Stories I wrote that I never thought I'd write: The One Rule even though I probably named it in 2013. But I rewrote over half of a whole movie.

Hardest story to write: The One Rule because there were still scenes from the movie to transcribe into my story. I should probably rewatch the Dark Knight Rises and make sure I didn't damage the DVD with how much pausing I did.

Biggest disappointment: That I forgot to post 2013's My Year in Fic.

Biggest surprise: Health assessment (see below).

Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would, less, or about what you predicted? I almost made the word count goal but on just two stories. I thought I would have more stories for that amount of words.

Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them? I really don't like posting WIP and will never do that again.

Did you meet last year's goals?

• First draft of Strix: Forget the Sun -- Nope, never touched it.
• Second draft of Stellar Gift of Death -- Nope, never touched it.
• Post TDKR: Weapon of Shadows -- Done.
• Post Part of the Night: the Wayne Legacy -- Finished the rough draft January 1, 2015.
• Rough draft of the next story in Signs and Portents -- No rough draft but I did outline the story.
• Post in Blank weekly -- Yeah, that didn't happen.

Do you have any goals for the coming year? January 1st I finished The Wayne Legacy's rough draft and looked around my office for what to tackle next. "Stellar Gift of Death's edits" and then I cringed waiting for the jerkbrain to start attacking me for letting that project go for so long.

All was blissfully silent in my head.

And I was absolutely flabbergasted. Don't get me wrong, I've been worried over the ferocity of the attacks to myself, the anxiety over submissions to the point where not working on original fiction was easier, and the growing thin-skinned-ness I've had over fandom wonk that used to roll off my back. I poked again. "Edit to a second draft and hire an editor for ebook publication." Nothing from the jerkbrain amid the excitement to be back in that universe again. Now it is possible to combat one's jerkbrain, but I haven't done any of that work. I just wrote fanfiction and started dietary changes that I detailed in Intentionally Left Blank: Hot Bod Third Try. The last time I remembered a jerkbrain outbreak was around September 4, 2014, when I was only fourteen days into the program.

The other piece of the puzzle was stumbling onto Epbot and reading her archive. This part from her A is for Agoraphobia post jostled back to the surface when I thought about how weird it was for my brain NOT to be screaming obscenities at me.

Next, I went to my doctor for a check-up. (Ergo that Halloween blood draw.) Since this next step will undoubtedly cause me more anxiety, I need the peace of mind that comes from a current clean bill of health. Not only that, there are several deficiencies that can cause increased anxiety: deficiencies of magnesium, potassium (both of which were critically low for me in the past), B vitamins, and even calcium.

Some of the same deficiencies I got worried about after reading Drug Muggers. Then after an A+ visit with my endocrinologist (which deserves its own blog post), the question crystallized in my mind. Was my jerkbrain and the submission anxiety 95% biochemical?

I may never know for certain, but it is extra incentive to keep up the good work on the health front if it means less derailment from what looked like I needed to start seeing a psychologist for if I ever wanted to publish. So since I don't have the jerkbrain screaming at me, I got ambitious for 2015. New Year, New Goals: Have You Made a Plan Yet? from Writers Helping Writers led me to making a one-page business plan for 2015. So the goals from that are:

• Reach 130,000 words in the stories in Zy's Universe. I already have 106,931 words in Stellar Gift of Death and Words of Parting and they both need heavy editing along with Blue Man on the Porch (which I can't find a word count for). I also have pegged two more short story ideas to help reach that goal.
• Submit a horror short story to an anthology. I ran across this opportunity at a con last year, so I'd like to give it a shot if I haven't missed all the deadlines already.
• Finish The Wayne Legacy
• Finish the last story in the Signs and Portents series
• Post 12 updates to Facebook
• Post regularly to Intentionally Left Blank
• Make changes to the BookWorm's Library