2009 My Year in Fic

Meme found at gatechic's post: My year in fic. This should be interesting. For starters, I'm not expecting much since I spent most of the year on the dreaded Faulkner paper.

My stories: First, I have to find the list. Strike that, dated folders. Okay the stories I finished the first drafts in 2009 are...

Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li's Real Ending first draft finished on March 10, 2009 at 573 word. This qualifies as the shortest story I have ever written, and probably the shortest I can get my verbose down to ever. The end of the movie irked me so bad (how the bloody hell do you set up a franchise when you kill off the villain of said franchise!), I didn't get better until after I wrote this. I don't know if it got lost in the comments where I had put it on the Neal McDonough Fans LJ, but nobody left any comments. May copy it on LJ so I can put a better post up now; maybe not. Very undecided.

Tin Man: Pirates of the Nonestic first draft finished on May 17, 2009 at 125,185 words! Not the final word count, that isn't until after I've finished the third draft. Seems like I've been talking about it for a decade or longer, but really I got the brainwave while working on Tin Man: Dragons and Ninjas in 2008, and didn't start on it until after I flunked my first attempt at the M.A. Exam Part 2.

Tin Man: "What Memories Can Bring" first draft was finished on June 4, 2009 at 3752 words. Apparently, the creative engine was still revved after finishing Pirates and the short story developed on a truly evil brain wave I had much earlier.

My favorite story this year: Pirates of the Nonestic, in which I conquered my fear of writing smut, created some lovable OCs, and generally just had a piratical good time. I only hope the readers have as much fun as me and my beta are.

Story most under-appreciated by the universe, in my opinion: Gosh, it's almost a tie, but "What Memories Can Bring" did get some reviews where "Street Fighter: The Real Ending" garnered none, so it wins. Charlie is so going croak; doesn't that make anybody happy? Bueller? Anyone?

Most fun story: Pirates of the Nonestic, I love being sneaky, and with every character on board harboring a secret and DG and Cain only knowing theirs, I had so many opportunities to be sneaky!


Stories I Wrote That I Never Thought I'd Write: "Street Fighter: the Real Ending" I'm notorious for respecting the canon. I may hate a canon development, I may use it as a what if, but dead is dead. Until this story.

Hardest story to write: "What Memories Can Bring" but not so much with the words. The words flowed very easily, but the emotional impact of this story burrowed deep into me. I was commuting home while I was composing it, had "Diamonds and Rust" on repeat on the car stereo, the closest description I have for what happened is Adora Cain possessed me, and I cried her tears. I still don't know if I was able to translate that despair to the story, but I did my best to.

Biggest Disappointment: Having to rewrite the Faulkner paper so many times. I know, I know, it's supposed to be about the fiction. But crushed doesn't even come close to that first "start all over again" advice from my professor. I was expecting edits, but not getting slapped with "the paper isn't here yet."

Biggest Surprise: How frakkin' long Pirates of the Nonestic turned out to be! Wars Are Won By Those Who Dare: Family, Friends, and Foes finished up with 129,197 words but it is a crossover between Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Biker Mice From Mars, and my original group the Mutates with their own involved backstory. It was kind of expected. Tin Man: Dragons and Ninjas was 76,018 words and it is a hefty novel. Pirates is a stand-alone novel with a large cast, but I figured it would be around 70,000 words and based all my deadline estimates on that. I got 70,000 words by my deadline on Feb. 4th, 2009 but still needed to write twenty scenes to finish the novel. I doubled the word count to cover those scenes and finished it between Faulkner paper rewrites and semester breaks.

Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you'd predicted?: Well, I'm actually shocked with the amount I got done considering the stress that Faulkner paper and graduation was putting me through on top of stress from the Extendeds.

Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?: Smut writing. I touched on it as briefly as I have done before in Dragons and Ninjas, and had three sex scenes listed in the Master Story Summary for Pirates of the Nonestic. Then Cain turned the adventure into a honeymoon and DG nor I could stop him. And we really didn't want to. I'm not ready to throw my hat in the erotic genre professionally, but the idea is less scary than it has been.

Did you meet last year's goals?: Considering the only goal I had and was serious about was the Faulkner paper and graduating with my M.A., they were met.

Do you have any goals for the coming year?: 2010 is full of goals. :D

1. Write 365,000 fiction words in the entire year
2. Submit stories to more challenges -- I don't know how long this is going to stay a goal; I'm finding it difficult to meet the deadlines
3. Finish original stories Zy's untitled novel or Strix, whichever one catches my fancy first
4. Finish "Making Whole" a Tin Man/Alice crossover for a challenge
5. Finish "Tin Man: Not His Kink"
6. Decide how brave I am and what to do with "Tin Man: Not His Kink"
7. Make some headway into the Zackverse. catyuy has been waiting patiently for more Zack.
8. If I still need to add more words at this point, next story due in the BMFM: Evil Jack series is "Till Death Do Us Part"

And that's where I'm stopping, cause I really need a caffeine fix.