Wednesday, January 17, 2018

2017 My Year In Fic

2017 Fiction Word Count

Progress Bar from Writertopia

  • January: I spent mostly on the Star Wars: My Home is You with a sprinkle Zy's Universe at the end of the month. All I did with Zy's Universe in 2017 was moving the background material I'd corralled in TiddlyWiki into Scrivener, and I don't think I finished that job.
  • February: Writing Star Wars: My Home is You and Zyverse moving.
  • March: Writing Star Wars: My Home is You and Zyverse moving. Writing Rescue the Farmboy AU on a few days at the end of the month.
  • April: Dropped working on Zyverse for the rest of the year, so it ended up being all Star Wars: My Home is You with two days of Rescue the Farmboy AU.
  • May: Star Wars: My Home is You and 1 day of Rescue the Farmboy AU
  • June: only Star Wars: My Home is You
  • July: had a few blank days but I also started my dental implants process, so we'll just assume my jaw hurt too much to write. I did finish Star Wars: My Home is You first draft and started editing.
  • August: Editing Star Wars: My Home is You and at the end of August I got started on putting my website, the BookWorm's Library, back online.
  • September: Editing Star Wars: My Home is You and the Library.
  • October: I started tracking how much time I was spending on the different projects by using the fifteen minutes on each task and writing down the time on my calendar. I found more time this month to write Rescue the Farmboy AU while I was still editing Star Wars: My Home is You. The BookWorm's Library went live, so my continuing Library editing focused on recreating the Reference Wiki. Also during this month, I read Chris Fox's book 5,000 Words Per Hour. He uses micro-sprints to add up to 5,000 words per hour. So I put the fifteen minutes I was doing into the micro-sprint idea.
  • November: I started using Chris Fox's spreadsheet to track my progress in micro-sprints and across projects. His idea is you have to know what you are writing before you can increase it. At this point, I'm still tracking and haven't put much effort into increasing my word count. Progress on writing Rescue the Farmboy AU and Tumblr posts, editing Reference Wiki and Star Wars: My Home is You.
  • December: Writing Rescue the Farmboy AU, Reference Wiki, and Tumblr posts. Editing Star Wars: My Home is You and started posting it in AO3 on 15th.

*Snort* I don't think I like the breaking month-by-month format, so I doubt I'll use it next year. But hey, I did not burn out and skip a whole month of writing! This is solid progress. I'm much stronger on tracking what I'm doing, but I'm putting way too much on my daily plate.

Stories I Finished:

Star Wars: My Home Is You still needs some beta-reading at the end, but it's finished enough to post for people to read.

Stories I Didn't Finish:

Zyverse: I need to finish the moving it into Scrivener, so I can edit what I already have written and move into new stories in that universe.

Rescue the Farmboy AU: I found the movie script online for A New Hope so I no longer had to depend on me transcribing the YouTube snippets! Writing is moving so much faster now on that, but I do think I will have to rewatch during an editing pass so I can describe the sets.

Never touched Strix: Forget the Sun for the whole year.

My favorite story this year: Star Wars: My Home is You

Story most under-appreciated by the universe, in my opinion: Strix: Forget the Sun because I keep forgetting to write it!

Most fun story: Rescue the Farmboy. Luke and Biggs go to the Imperial Academy, and Luke ends up with both Vader and the Emperor wanting him alive and dead respectively. They hitch a ride back to Tatooine with the Senator of Alderaan, but Vader ends up with Luke despite their best efforts.

Stories I wrote that I never thought I'd write: Still Star Wars fanfic. After an awful fix-it fic I wrote back in high school when Kevin J. Anderson ruined Yavin 4 and a missed chance to write for the Star Wars Adventure Journal, I figured I was content to just read, watch, and cosplay. Episode VII awakened more than just the Force.

And I reread that filed high school fix-it fic, it is awful. The only believable part is the petulant teenager because I was a petulant teenager writing it.

And now I feel Disney-Lucasfilm ruined the sequel trilogy they started. I have no idea how this petulance will come out.

Hardest story to write: Strix: Forget the Sun because I keep setting it aside.

Biggest disappointment: That I forgot about Zy's Universe. Again.

Biggest surprise: Micro-sprints and tracking them! I've been doing micro-sprints my whole writing life, but tracking them is the secret of keeping myself focused on the writing task at hand and how I can tell my defective brain that yes, I have accomplished this much today.

What's your favorite piece of dialogue you wrote this year? From Rescue the Farmboy's version of A New Hope (I haven't decided if I should keep the movie titles or not):

     Telepathy works easiest between Force users and Force sensitives. It takes effort and concentration, but less effort than if you’re trying to send something to someone who isn’t a Force user. Form the words you want to say, speak out loud if that helps, and push the words into the connection between us.
     His eyes were already closed, but he squeezed his eyelids tighter. “Hi I’m sorry.” Then he shoved the words and just his words into the connection that still looked like a wire.
     He felt the words hit her like a blow and a headache began. Her mental voice shook a bit when she responded. Not so much effort. Kriff, you’re powerful.

What's your favorite piece of description or narration you wrote this year? From Rescue the Farmboy AU:

Nothing distracting was happening, kest! Damn the Empire! Her hands curled and her fingernails dug into her palms. She thought she had hated the Empire before with its brutality against non-humans and its rigid tyranny against democracy and its subjugation of any protest with callous military might. Now pain lanced her palms but that didn’t halt the shaking vibrating her arms. This was hate, a hot fire under her skin, wanting to seize the Emperor in his black robe and set him alight with it. Her ears under her hair buns were already aflame.
     “Leia,” General Kenobi said.
     She twisted to stare at him, not that she could see in the dark. But why take the chance of giving away their hiding place? The entry ramp was extending down with a hiss of hydraulics.
     We do not need voices, Padawan. General Kenobi’s voice in her head was amused by her confusion, but soon it turned grave. Do not let hatred dwell inside you, Leia. Hate leads to suffering.
     She couldn’t articulate her feelings into words as the boots marched over their heads. That sound and the idea of the Empire just elicited an inner howl of grief that pierced like the hunting cry of a stalking bird now extinct with the rest of Alderaan. The vortex was numbing the fire, but felt like it was pulling her down into the never-ending cold.

Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would, less, or about what you predicted? I reached about 47% of my goal, which is ended up being more words than I wrote last year, but it only turned out to be 282 words per day.

Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them? Tracking is so useful for shutting up my brain that keeps swearing I never do enough of everything (writing, chores, etc.). I feel good that I'm not wasting my free time at the paying job, but I need to transfer it to the weekends and holidays.

Did you meet last year's goals?

That's a no, and boy, how is it a no.

  • Reach 130,000 words in the stories in Zy's Universe.
    • Edit Stellar Gift of Death to a draft ready for beta reading -- didn't start
    • Edit "Words of Parting" according to the feedback I got -- didn't start
    • Edit "Blue Man on the Porch" to a draft ready for beta reading -- disn't start
    • Write a short story on Xeryl's background -- didn't start
    • Write the Ail 12 on vacation case that ended in a shootout (new take on the "Case of the Hideous Medallion") -- didn't start
    • Plot two sequels to Stellar Gift of Death -- didn't start
    • Begin writing the next novel in the series -- didn't start
    • Move story projects into Scrivener -- started, didn't finish
    • Pay for more Dropbox storage
    • -- Done
  • Finish rough draft of Strix: Forget the Sun
    • Move what is already done into Scrivener -- didn't start
    • Finish rough draft according to beat sheet -- didn't start
  • Finish rough drafts of Star Wars AUs
    • Write Star Wars: My Home Is You (Dark Empire AU) -- FINISHED, posting now
    • Write Star Wars: Rescue the Farmboy (Original Trilogy AU) -- continuing to write this one
  • Post regularly to Intentionally Left Blank -- I didn't keep up with this.
  • Redevelop FanFiction Garret -- This remains lowest on the list of priorities here. -- Never worked on this.
  • Set up a professional website -- This is in the research stage. -- Never researched this.
  • BookWorm's Library maintenance -- Had to reinstall the entire site from my backups this year.
  • Add the Part of the Night series to FF.net -- Finished
  • Add more fanfics to AO3 -- Never started.
  • Work on home concentration. -- Namely I need one day of the weekend with a solid chunk of writing in it. I'm thinking of trying a day off a week to forestall my taking a whole month off instead around May. Results: I didn't work every day, but I didn't set an official day off. So with tracking, I didn't lose a month of productivity.

My daily writing plans to help the above list of goals get done:

  • Write 600 daily words. Can be split among the projects. -- After much trial and tribulation, I finally got the formula correct on my Excel spreadsheet to count when I made my daily word count goal. (It is so saved on the template now.) I had 58 days of meeting or exceeding 600 words a day.
  • Schedule a day off during the week; maybe why I fade out by May is because I don't. -- I didn't schedule days, but with tracking I kept a better focus on what I was doing all year. I missed some days writing, but never a whole month.
  • Spend 45/15 after I get home editing Stellar by Ali Luke's Two-Year-Novel Plan. -- This did not happen. I'm really sure it won't with my schedule the way it it.
  • Work in meditation time with Brain FM. -- Didn't try this at all.
  • Do more chores in the morning so I have evening time for writing. -- More chores in the morning is just a good idea all the way around.
  • Reward myself when goals are reached. -- 2017 was a bad year for reaching all my goals.

Do you have any goals for the coming year? The goals from my 2018 one-page business plan are:

  • Reach 130,000 words in the stories in Zy's Universe.
    • Edit Stellar Gift of Death to a draft ready for beta reading. Use Ali Luke's Two-Year-Novel Plan.
    • Edit "Words of Parting" according to the feedback I got
    • Edit "Blue Man on the Porch" to a draft ready for beta reading
    • Write a short story on Xeryl's background
    • Write the Ail 12 on vacation case that ended in a shootout (new take on the "Case of the Hideous Medallion")
    • Plot two sequels to Stellar Gift of Death
    • Begin writing the next novel in the series
    • Finish putting story projects into Scrivener
  • Finish rough draft of Strix: Forget the Sun
    • Move what is already done into Scrivener
    • Finish rough draft according to beat sheet
  • Finish rough drafts of Star Wars AUs
    • Write Star Wars: Rescue the Farmboy (Original Trilogy AU)
    • Write Lucinda's story
  • Post regularly to Intentionally Left Blank
  • BookWorm's Library maintenance
  • Add Media Center to BookWorm's Library
  • Post to Tumblr
  • Add more fanfics to AO3
  • Work on home concentration. -- I want a day of nothing but writing on the weekends unless I have other plans.

My daily writing plans to help the above list of goals get done:

  • Write 600 daily words. Can be split among the projects.
  • Work in meditation time with Brain FM.
  • Do more chores in the morning so I have evening time for writing.
  • Reward myself when goals are reached.

Here's to 2018. We'll get through it together.