2010 My Year in Fic

Meme I did last year (LiveJournal post or Discipline Under Fire blog post), so I thought I'd make it a reoccurring one. Analysis is always fun.

My stories: Completion follow-through still sucks. Most of the stuff I finished has made it only a few places to read it. I had intended to finish a lot in November and December, but the dead computer didn't help. I'm STILL trying to get the new one sorted out *sigh*.

Tin Man: Not His Kink: My first foray into kinky erotica and I actually found enough courage to post it. It won't be going up at FanFiction.Net because it is most decidedly NC-17 in places, but the plan is for it to go up at the Library fairly soon (as in as soon as I get the new computer updated and Internet running again).

Tin Man/Alice: Making Whole: Two little sentences popped into my head when considering a Glitch and Azkadellia adventure in Wonderland, and the next thing I knew I had this story for the first challenge from Tin Man Crossover Fanfiction. Commentary version here.

Tin Man: Don't Know What the Other Hands Are Doing: Written for Tin Man Challenge Round 7: One Hit Wonder. I was inspired by Airofday and the Realm of the Unwanted. It won third place.

Tin Man: Every Day I'm With You: Tin Man Crossover Fanfiction Challenge 2 for Valentine's Day was harder. I don't really consider this a proper short story, since it is a scene for the sequel to Tin Man: Dragons and Ninjas. But it also hangs together rather nicely and shows the Queen and Ahamo at their best.

Tin Man: Wide Open Spaces: Written for Round 9: Scavenger Hunt. Unplanned sequels to a stand-alone novel were a specialty this year, because this was the second one.

Tin Man: Medals and Luckdragons: Written for Tin Man Crossover Fanfiction Challenge 3. I feel very meh about this. While "Every Day I'm With You" works alone, I think "Medals and Luckdragons" doesn't make sense without the rest of the unwritten novel.

Tin Man: Where Did That Come From: Written for Tin Man Challenge Round 11: Things Unseen. At some point, my brain filled in the plot hole in the time sequence of the Tin Man miniseries. I thought it was a rather elegant solution myself and features more of Glitch in his Glitchy-awesomeness. It won third place.

Tin Man: Victory Ball: Written for Tin Man Challenge Round 12: Honored. It's a prequel to an event aluded to in Tin Man: Dragons and Ninjas. After this one, I ignored the challenges to work on original fiction for a while.

The Hitchhiking Highwayman: is original fiction finished and submitted to a paying market. It was rejected, but the publishers were super nice. They even sent an email saying they had successfully received the submission.

Covenant of the Restless: is original fiction that I had finished the first draft of back in 2006. In between then and now, I thought I could incorporate it into a fantasy universe I'm developing called "Piper of Shadows." I finished reworking it and submitted it. I'm still waiting on the response.

The Hyrueliana: I worked on this editing project that will never be completed at some point during the year. Ages ago, I thought it would be a good idea to test Stine's triage editing technique out on this story and I haven't reached the end of the triage yet. *rolls eyes*

Stellar Gift of Death: I worked on this original fiction novel, but fell short of my goal of completing it in 2010. So it is the first thing I am working on in 2011.

My favorite story this year: Tin Man/Alice: Making Whole, I really loved how this came together. Second favorite: Tin Man: Not His Kink because I think it turned out pretty hot in places.

Story most under-appreciated by the universe, in my opinion: Tin Man: Not His Kink, everyone seemed afraid to read my kink.

Most fun story: Tin Man: Where Did That Come From, Glitch roaming around the Northern Palace, forgetting that he's alone and that he's stuffing his inventory pockets (to borrow a gaming metaphor).

Stories I Wrote That I Never Thought I'd Write: Tin Man: Not His Kink, given how hard it's been to dip my toe into smut, I never expected to dive head-first into heavy kink.

Hardest story to write: Covenant of the Restless, when it came to submitting, I freaked out. Yes, I have issues but I am working on them.

Biggest Disappointment: Not finishing Stellar Gift of Death by Dec. 31st. It's my own fault for saving it for last.

Biggest Surprise: How freaked out I got over submissions. My brain has been dodging that fear for a long time. And I got caught up in the review count envy. On the good side, I tallied what I could of all my writing output since I started when I was eleven-years-old and found out I have written over a million words of fiction.

Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you'd predicted?: In the amount of words, less than what I had planned. But then I finished more stories than I thought I had, even if I haven't finished them by posting them at the Library yet.

Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?: I tried updating two chapters a week at the Library along with FF.net and hated it. From now on, the complete story goes up at the Library first. And I need to submit more.

Did you meet last year's goals?:

1. Write 365,000 fiction words in the entire year Only managed 51,914, but I spent a lot of my time flailing about and not writing anything. Looking back, that is really disturbing for me.
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 I wanted to participate, but found that thinking of things to fit the criteria shuts down my muse.
3. Finish original stories Zy's untitled novel or Strix, whichever one catches my fancy first Well, Zy's novel has a title now Stellar Gift of Death, but I'm only around fifty percent done with it.
4. Finish "Making Whole" a Tin Man/Alice crossover for a challenge Done except for posting at FF.net and the Library
5. Finish "Tin Man: Not His Kink"
6. Decide how brave I am and what to do with "Tin Man: Not His Kink" I have decided; I just need to actually do it.
7. Make some headway into the Zackverse. catyuy has been waiting patiently for more Zack. The little bit I've done in The Hyrueliana barely counts towards this.
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" Never reached this scenario.

Do you have any goals for the coming year?:

Write 182,500 fictional words between Jan. 1 and Dec. 31, 2011

• Specific: Write at least 500 words every day
• Measurable: Post the weekly total every Saturday at DUF using the Writertopia progress bar
  • Keep track of daily progress with a marathon spreadsheet
• Action-oriented: Finish Stellar Gift of Death by March 20, 2011
  • Finish a 5000-word short story for Triangulation submission by March 31, 2011
  • Finish steampunk mystery
  • Finish another story in the Piper of Shadows universe
  • Finish the "Blue Man on the Porch"
• Realistic: Finish four original stories before any fanfiction
• Trackable/Time-based: Each story has a marathon tracker of its own, and metrics are posted daily at DUF

Submit enough stories to get rid of the anxiety over it

• Specific: Submit to six markets by Dec. 31, 2011
• Measurable: Find a tracking method that I can update without fuss.
• Action-oriented: Look for 12 markets
• Realistic: Send out at least one story in February, April, June, August, October, and December
  • Have conversations with the Fear Monger; it helps
• Trackable/Time-based: Honestly note the anxiety over each submission on tracking method