2022 Fiction Word Count:
Insights To Not Forget: Narrowing my focus to one WIP per month the whole month before going to another WIP gave me results I am proud of. Proud enough to use this prioritizing against in 2023. Look, I finally managed to cross-post old stories at Ao3, which I have been planning on doing for years, but this is the first year I have managed any headway on doing it.
Stories I Posted at Ao3 Finally:
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Bloodlines: The Turtles are used to being blamed for the crimes they stop in the Big Apple. But they aren't murderers--despite what Chief Sterns says. And the quest to clear their names is complicated by the arrival of the victim's younger siblings needing protection from the Shredder. Takes place about ten months after the present day parts of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Ronin: Three years after Bloodlines, Allie's beginning college coincides with the appearance of a new vigilante on the streets. The Turtles name her the Ronin, but is she really master-less or is her hatred for the Shredder an Oscar-winning performance?
Wars Are Won By Those Who Dare: Family, Friends, and Foes: Val Tech discovers the Turtles and now they're on the run. But things really explode once they reach Chicago. A crossover with Biker Mice From Mars. This story takes place in 1995, one week after Wars Are Won By Those Who Dare: Reunions and three months after Oroku Nagi's death in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Ronin.
Tin Man: Dragons and Ninjas: Five months after the Eclipse, Longcoat attacks and dragon sightings terrorize the population, so DG and her companions set out to save the O.Z. again and cross paths with a Slipper on a mission of his own.
Tin Man: Where Did That Come From: How did Glitch and Cain get to the Sorceress' Tower so quickly?
Tin Man: Don't Know What the Other Hands Are Doing: What happened to Airofday when the Longcoats dragged her away?
Tin Man: Victory Ball: None of this was worth a lousy medal.
A Mist of Prophecies: A Storm of Things Forseen: Queen Titania has a mission for Cassandra that can bring the halfling gargoyle to a clan that will accept what she is. But can Cassandra trust the Queen that destroyed everything she knew?
A Mist of Prophecies: Shivers the Heart to Hear: Every sorcerer's apprentice has to learn not to mix magics. Now is Angela's turn.
A Mist of Prophecies: The Party: A Gargoyles: TimeDancer Fanfic. Brooklyn and Sata find themselves in the future, just in time for the MidSummer's Eve party given by some members of the Manhattan Clan. Members they have never met before. Well, all except one.
A Mist of Prophecies: Regrets: What compelled the trickster Puck to create the role of Owen Burnett? Second place winner in the 2001 Gathering's Writing Contest, Category: Pucking Around.
Wars Are Won By Those Who Dare: Shatter Your Illusions: Limburger is scheming, the Biker Mice are thwarting, and a new player is riding into Chicago--on a Martian bike. What do you believe and who can you trust? This story takes place in 1995, a few months after "Once Upon a Time on Mars." It is the first story in Wars Are Won By Those Who Dare series.
Wars Are Won By Those Who Dare: Put Me Back Together: Now that Throttle has lost Carbine, he feels that he has nothing left. Can Charley help him realize who still cares for him? Or will Limburger's goons confirm Throttle's worst fear? This story takes place in 1995, three weeks after Shatter Your Illusions.
Wars Are Won By Those Who Dare: Reunions: Limburger's latest attempt to kill the Biker Mice results in transporting the bros and Charley to the Olympian Fury, a refugee ship reported destroyed during the Martian-Plutarkian War. But this new hope for the future is dashed by a threat worse than the Plutarkians. This story takes place in 1995, one week after Put Me Back Together.
Wars Are Won By Those Who Dare: Let Us Give Thanks: Sparks wanting to celebrate Thanksgiving sets off a mystery from Charley's past. Can the Biker Mice find the answers? Fifth in the Wars Are Won by Those Who Dare series. This story takes place in November 1995, five months after Wars Are Won By Those Who Dare: Family, Friends, and Foes.
Wars Are Won By Those Who Dare: Turbo: Turbo arrives in Chicago, and secrets Throttle has kept buried for most of his life now threaten Charley. Sixth in the Wars Are Won By Those Who Dare series. This story takes place in May 1996, six months after Let Us Give Thanks.
Evil Jack: Domestic Bliss: Charley is married to Jack, and they have a four-year-old daughter. But why can't Charley remember anything from the past four years? And why do three bikers keep following her? First in the Evil Jack series. This story is set in 1996.
Evil Jack: In Sickness: Hannah is in the hospital with an unknown disease. How can Throttle save her from that? Sequel to Evil Jack: Domestic Bliss. This story is set in 1997.
Evil Jack: For Worse: Jack returns to Chicago determined to use Charley and Throttle's drunken mistake to destroy the Biker Mice. Third in the Evil Jack series. This story is set in 1997.
Tin Man: Not His Kink: Zero knew her weakness. And he would make her help torture Cain. She wouldn't let herself cry. She had to get Cain out of this. This wasn't his kink.
Stories I Posted:
Nothing new this year. Oops.
Stories I Finished:
Star Wars: Rescue the Farmboy: Mission on Mimban: Word count = 61,382 (8093 written in 2019 + 14,789 written in 2020 + 22,252 written in 2021 + 16,248). So it took many more months than I initally planned on, but the first draft was finished on November 19, 2022.
Trigun 3 Outline Word Count = 157,526 (83,769 written in 2021 + 73,757). This is the longest and most detailed outline I have ever created and I finally finished it on October 24, 2022. It is practically a first draft of the future novel, and has the heft of words to be a novel. I don't think I will copy this method in future outlines. I'd rather have the words in something closer to publication. But it might happen again.
Stories I Didn't Finish:
Strix: Forget the Sun: Word count = 51,890 (26,588 written previously + 4279 written in 2019 + 279 written in 2020 + 15,328 written in 2021 + 5416). I had a breakthrough on why this novel is so hard to write: all my characters are separate and doing things by themselves. I had set aside April, June, and November to work only on this novel and could barely work on it in June and November. I'm only planning to give it one month in 2023. And I hope I get more of the characters together so it's not as hard to write.
Trigun: Three of a Kind: Word count = 20,838. I started the novel from Trigun 3 Outline after I finished Mission on Mimban's first draft. While December 2022 was set aside to work on Zackverse projects and I forgot to continue uploading my older works to Ao3, I discovered its website is not playing nicely with IT settings at my paying job which makes it so hard to edit saved drafts. I needed something else to do and this is the story not leaving me alone.
What I Think About My Stories:
My favorite story this year: Judging from how easy the words are coming, Trigun: Three of a Kind.
Story most under-appreciated by the universe, in my opinion: Strix: Forget the Sun.
Most fun story: Trigun: Three of a Kind.
Stories I wrote that I never thought I'd write: Trigun: Three of a Kind.
Hardest story to write: Strix: Forget the Sun. Every word is precious but I really shot myself in the foot separating all the characters like I have. That was real plotting fail.
Biggest disappointment: That it took three months to finish Star Wars: Mission on Mimban's first draft. I thought I'd get more Star Wars projects done this year but not with how long I took on this one story.
Biggest surprise: How well the monthly focus kept me on track with everything.
What's your favorite piece of dialogue you wrote this year? From Trigun: Three of a Kind
And just when he thought he had failed protecting the sandsteamer, failed saving the insurance girls from the hostage situation the other passengers and crew were in, up they popped to stop Brilliant Dynamite Neon from shooting him. Introducing herself with that insurance society’s name and giving herself an outlaw moniker. And she had surprised him again by getting under his duster after the duel while he was distracted trying to encourage Kaite to do the right thing over his transmitters. Vash had reared back and smashed his head against a wall. “I do not paw you!”
“Permission granted to paw if I’m bleeding out!” Meryl yelled back.
What's your favorite piece of description or narration you wrote this year? From Rescue the Farmboy: Mission on Mimban:
Obi-Wan peeled the one on her stomach free. Charred flesh pulled off the unconscious young woman with it causing the slash to ooze blood. The separation of her tissue didn’t go deep but it looked excruciating. Obi-Wan frowned. Both Luke and Mara were proficient enough with a lightsaber to avoid self-inflicted wounds like this. And Luke would not strike Mara.
Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would, less, or about what you predicted? For starters, let's subtract the Library totals from my word count of the year. Library total = 346,120. 2022 total words = 478,128. So brand new words = 132,008. That is only 74% of my 2022 goal of 177,267, which is not a disappointment at all! But here's hoping I can get more words next year that equals finished project.
Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them? I don't know if the focus on one thing a month was a risk, but it did help. I got to projects that I have planned to do but never had reached time to work on them because everything else is more important. So eventually I will get backlog done! I think I managed more days of writing than previous years, but I will track this next year to find out.
Number of Days I Wrote or Edited: 311 days.
Number of Days Meeting or Exceeding the daily 600 word count: 113 days.
Did you meet last year's goals? Wow, I am so bad at guessing how much I can get done in any time frame. So very bad. The goals from my 2022 one-page business plan are: Spend one month on a writing project instead of doing the juggling thing. If I finish one early, then I'll figure out what to do next. These projects are going into the Weekly Planner that I look at every day so I don't forget as well as the one-page business plan.
- January = Trigun 3 Outline. 29 days only working on Trigun 3 Outline, the beginning of the month was shared with writing 2021 My Year in Fic.
- February = Star Wars: Mission on Mimban. 25 days only working on Mission on Mimban. Nothing else grabbed my attention that month.
- March = BookWorm's Library Update. My mother had a heart attack and I had dental implant surgery, but I still managed to focus this month on a revamp of my website, which hadn't been updated since 2017. That's how many years updates had fallen off the To Do list. And yes, I had put it on there to do. I probably put it on the My Years in Fic for those years too.
- April = Strix: Forget the Sun. 23 days working on this novel. I found a problem in the outlined plot and spent the first week fixing that. Then tried to split my attention between this novel and Trigun 3 Outline by the end of the month.
- May = Zackverse Upload to Ao3. Started with the stories in the Zackverse that I have already written and then kept going to everything I have written. Got 11 stories uploaded. Also kept working on Trigun 3 Outline during this month.
- June = Strix: Forget the Sun. Only 13 days of the month that I worked on this novel. 27 days were spent working on Trigun 3 Outline.
- July = BookWorm's Library Update. This July was a mess. I did work on updates that I didn't get finished in March, but I was rear-ended commuting to work on the 7th, my three nine-week-old void babies made it to my house on the 23rd, then I tested positive for Covid on the 25th and promptly forgot to upload all the updates I had made on the Library files. I also worked on Trigun 3 Outline 27 days.
- August = Star Wars. I thought I would be done with Mission on Mimban by this month when I set up this plan last year. I hadn't and then I only spent 16 days on it, compared to 19 days on Trigun 3 Outline.
- September = Trigun. Oh look the month I was supposed to work on Trigun and no other projects stole my attention the entire month. 26 days of work on Trigun 3 Outline.
- October = Star Wars. I was so close to reaching the end of Trigun 3 Outline I just kept working on it until it was done on the 24th. The last seven days of October were spent on just Mission on Mimban.
- November = Strix: Forget the Sun. Since I was so close to the end of Mission on Mimban, I kept going until I finished it on the 19th. Then I picked up Strix: Forget the Sun and finally realized how hard it was writing the character's scene when he was all solo and how I had done that to all the characters in it. I finally reached the end of that scene and then had a plumbing crisis on the 28th - 29th. I started updating Ao3 on the 29th while waiting on plumbers and continued with that, as well as starting Trigun: Three of a Kind on the 30th.
- December = Zackverse. I see now that I was supposed to start working on a Zackverse story, but I thought this was just more uploading instead since I still had old stories that need to go up. I could only upload and tweak the stories to Ao3 on the weekends when I was home, so I had to have something else to work on while at the paying job. I continued on with Trigun: Three of a Kind.
- Make real progress on the Strix series
- April, June, November: Finish Strix: Forget the Sun's first draft = still not finished
- April, June, November: Edit Strix: Forget the Sun to second draft
- April, June, November: Finish Strix: Forget the Sun's third draft
- April, June, November: Send Strix: Forget the Sun to a developmental editor
- Progress on Star Wars fanfics
- February, August, October: Finish Rescue the Farmboy: Mission on Mimban's first draft = finished
- February, August, October: Edit Rescue the Farm: Mission on Mimban to second draft
- February, August, October: Send Rescue the Farm: Mission on Mimban to beta reader
- February, August, October: Finish Rescue the Farm: Mission on Mimban third draft
- February, August, October: Edit Sororal Lineality: Miha to second draft = finished
- February, August, October: Send Sororal Lineality: Miha to beta reader = finished
- February, August, October: Finish Sororal Lineality: Miha third draft
- February, August, October: Edit Sororal Lineality: Plans and High Command to second draft
- February, August, October: Send Sororal Lineality: Plans and High Command to beta reader
- February, August, October: Edit Sororal Lineality: Plans and High Command to third draft
- February, August, October: Finish Rescue the Farmboy: Extrication first draft
- February, August, October: Finish Sororal Lineality: Kyber first draft
- February, August, October: Outline Everybody Lives But Maul story
- Writing Trigun
- January, September: Finish Trigun 3 Crossover Outline = finished
- January, September: Finish Trigun 1 Outline = didn't go back to this one
- Writing Zackverse
- December: Work on Hyrueliana's overhaul = forgot to do this
- Post regularly to Intentionally Left Blank, Dreamwidth, Discipline Under Fire, and Tumblr Random Thoughts = Do once a week = this doesn't happen so I really need to rethink this one
- BookWorm's Library website maintenance
- March, July: Make sure the software is up to date
- March, July: Add any files that need adding = did this once
- Add Media Center to BookWorm's Library = this section is now in the Library
- March, July: Create section
- March, July: Make artwork
- March, July: Code section
- march, July: Upload files
- Add more fanfics to AO3
- May: Upload Zackverse in story order = Zackverse what I have finished is uploaded
- Upload Rescue the Farmboy: Mission on Mimban third draft
- Upload Sororal Lineality: Miha third draft after Mission on Mimban
- Upload Sororal Lineality: Plans and High Command third draft
- Other publishing
- March, July: Upload Rescue the Farmboy: Liberation to the Library
- March, July: Upload Rescue the Farmboy: One More Service to the Library
- March, July: Post Star Wars: Unexpected Consequences to Library = done
- March, July: Upload Looking For Home: My Home Is You to the Library = done
- March, July: Upload Looking For Home: Outcast to Library = done
- March, July Upload Sororal Lineality: MJ-0002 to the Library
- March, July: Upload Sororal Lineality: Aftermath to the Library
- March, July: Upload Sororal Lineality: Miha
- Update FF.net profile of where newer stories are now
My daily writing plans to help the above list of goals get done:
- Write 600 daily words. Can be split among stories. = The yearly goal was 177,267 that I reached on March 16, 2022. The Library files are what got me there that quickly.
- Write and edit every day. = 311 days out of 365. 85% of the year.
- Work in meditation time with Brain FM. = I still need to do more with meditation and the focus music options. My word amounts do go up more when I do use focus.
- Use my Kanban Flow checklist consistently. = Oh no, I forgot about the checklists again. I have to do some work that my checklists are too much for one person and find a realistic solution for this.
- Don't let chores pile up. = Which is related to the checklist problem I need to solve.
Do you have any goals for the coming year? I'd like to finish up some of the listed drafts so the list looks much more managable after next year. Here's how I'm going to break down 2023:
- January = Ao3 Upload / Trigun: Three of Kind since I can't do the uploads at the paying job I'm pretty sure I will have more left to finish
- February = BookWorm's Library update
- March = Star Wars projects
- April = Zackverse projects
- May = Biker Mice From Mars projects
- June = Trigun: Three of a Kind
- July = Ao3 Upload / Trigun: Three of a Kind
- August = BookWorm Library's update
- September = Star Wars projects
- October = Biker Mice From Mars projects
- November = Strix: Forget the Sun
- December = Trigun: Three of a Kind
- Writing Strix series
- November: Finish Strix: Forget the Sun's first draft
- November: Edit Strix: Forget the Sun to second draft
- November: Finish Strix: Forget the Sun's third draft
- November: Send Strix: Forget the Sun to a developmental editor
- Writing Star Wars fanfics
- March, September: Edit Rescue the Farm: Mission on Mimban to second draft
- March, September: Send Rescue the Farm: Mission on Mimban to beta reader
- March, September: Finish Rescue the Farm: Mission on Mimban third draft
- March, September: Finish Sororal Lineality: Miha third draft
- March, September: Edit Sororal Lineality: Plans and High Command to second draft
- March, September: Send Sororal Lineality: Plans and High Command to beta reader
- March, September: Edit Sororal Lineality: Plans and High Command to third draft
- March, September: Finish Rescue the Farmboy: Extrication first draft
- March, September: Finish Sororal Lineality: Kyber first draft
- March, September: Outline Everybody Lives But Maul story
- Writing Trigun fanfics
- January, June, July, December: Finish Trigun: Three of a Kind first draft
- January, June, July, December: Edit Trigun: Three of a Kind to second draft
- January, June, July, December: Send Trigun: Three of a Kind to beta
- January, June, July, December: Edit Trigun: Three of a Kind to third draft
- Writing Zackverse
- April: Work on Hyrueliana's overhaul
- Writing Biker Mice From Mars fanfics
- May, October: Find Wars Are Won series notes and see if stories can be consolidated
- May, October: Finish next Wars Are Won story to first draft
- May, October: Finish Evil Jack: Till Death Do We Part to first draft
- Post regularly to Intentionally Left Blank, Dreamwidth, Discipline Under Fire, and Tumblr Random Thoughts = Do once a month
- BookWorm's Library website maintenance
- February, August: Make sure the software is up to date
- February, August: Add any files that need adding
- Add more fanfics to AO3
- January, July: Upload twelve already published stories
- January, July: Upload Rescue the Farmboy: Mission on Mimban third draft
- January, July: Upload Sororal Lineality: Miha third draft next
- January, July: Upload Sororal Lineality: Plans and High Command third draft after Mission on Mimban
- Other publishing
- February, August: Upload Rescue the Farmboy: Liberation to the Library
- February, August: Upload Rescue the Farmboy: One More Service to the Library
- February, August: Upload Sororal Lineality: MJ-0002 to the Library
- February, August: Upload Sororal Lineality: Aftermath to the Library
- February, August: Upload Sororal Lineality: Miha to the Library
- February, August: Upload Rescue the Farmboy: Mission on Mimban to the Library
- Update FF.net profile of where newer stories are now
My daily writing plans to help the above list of goals get done:
- Write 600 daily words. Can be split among stories. The yearly goal is 478,128.
- Write and edit every day.
- Work in meditation time with Brain FM.
- Figure out how to keep the house clean.
- Figure out the house remodel.
Here's to 2023. We'll get through all this together.
