Running late this year. Better late than never. I told someone that I'm considering 2012 the year I forgot everything I knew about writing. And unfortunately, I think it hit with editing and completion. I wrote 98,706 fictional words in 2012, shooting for a goal of 104,000, which is the closest I have ever come to reaching that yearly goal since I started measuring it.
Stories I finished:
"Batman: Symbol of Intuition" - 563 words. The Dark Knight Rises bit the muse hard for the second half of the year. This was actually the second TDKR fanfic I wrote, but it's first in the series.
"Batman: Partners - 9052 words. The TDKR fanfic I wrote first to fill in the holes Nolan left in on purpose. I got a few things wrong because I had only seen the movie once when I wrote it.
"Batman: Entwined Fates" - 21660 words. I finished everything with this TDKR fanfic in 2012 but getting it published, thanks to all the medical drama my family had during the holidays. But the writing was done in 2012.
Stories I didn't finish:
Stellar Gift of Death - I wrote 27,817 words in 2012 and finally finished the first draft! It's no where close to publication standard yet, but the story is out of my head at last.
"Batman: Forgiveness is for the Living" - 8439 words. Fourth in the TDKR series, but written third. However, I'm still editing it, so it falls under this category.
"Batman: Meanwhile in Gotham City" - 17,738 words. This is the last TDKR fanfic in the series, but the muse didn't leave me alone until I wrote out a master story summary for a what if idea I had. I have no idea if that will get written, so I don't want to label this as my last Batman.
Beat sheet/master story summary for Strix: Forget the Sun - 7360 words. Trying out a new outlining technique with this story. And yes, I counted these words because I included dialogue I plan to use.
Zackverse: Have Your Time: "Medical Magical Emergency" chapters - 7360 words. I needed a break and ended up writing the section of this massive crossover that takes place on the Gargoyles Earth. I also came up with the real title instead of "Epic Sequel to Tin Man: Dragons and Ninjas."
Tin Man: Prince of the Outer Zone - 863 words. I need another break and ended up typing 863 words in the third chapter of this unfinished novel.
My favorite story this year: Stellar Gift of Death. I'm just so glad to have it on this side of done after working on it off-and-on for over a decade.
Story most under-appreciated by the universe, in my opinion: I don't really have one for this category this year. But I am amused that people are still following "Batman: Partners," even though it says "completed" on FanFiction.net.
Most fun story: "Batman:Meanwhile in Gotham City" I introduced the Penguin to the Nolanverse and found out why Jonathan Crane had cameos in the Dark Knight and the Dark Knight Rises, he's just too much fun to write. :D
Stories I wrote that I never thought I'd write: This year it's is the Batman series. The first two shocked, but I thought that was it. Then Alfred demanded his story, and I had to explain the appearance of another character in another story, and the Gordon and Blake demanded their story too. Plus the what if whose master story summary took FOREVER to write.
Hardest story to write: Stellar, and I still have work to do on it.
Biggest disappointment: That I let the Perfect Girl derail my alien language progress.
Biggest surprise: For writing that many words, I didn't end up with more in the finished column.
Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would, less, or about what you predicted? More words but less stories, and I'm still not sure how that happened.
Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them? I'm still working on beating my submission fears to a bloody pulp without much success.
Did you meet last years' goals?
Fiction Writing
- Specific: Finish Stellar Gift of Death - ACCOMPLISHED!
- Edit "Words of Parting" - No
- Edit "Blue Man on the Porch" - No
- World building for the steampunk mystery - No
- World building for Piper of Shadows universe - No
- World building for Zy's universe - a little, not as much as I would have liked
- Edit Forget the Sun for Mez's 2012 project. - I ended up with a new version's master story summary.
- Write 2000 words a week and pick out a new project once Stellar is finished. - Yeah, I got no where near this amount of productivity a week.
- Measurable: Post the weekly total at DUF using the Writertopia progress bar. - I kind of kept up with that.
- Action-oriented: Dedicate at least 30 minutes on a writing project every day. - Didn't keep up with that.
- Realistic: Write what I feel like I can't not write. - I stuck to this.
- Trackable: Each story has a marathon tracker of its own, and metrics are posted every day at DUF. - This was a good idea and I'll keep it up
Submitting more stories- Specific: Submit to three markets. - LOL! That so didn't happen!
- Measurable: Enter submissions into Sonar 3 - Since A didn't happen, B couldn't follow.
- Action-oriented: Look for 12 markets. - Nope.
- Realistic: Look for email markets. - Nada.
- Trackable: Note how anxious I am about the submission in Sonar3. - Again never did it so I didn't have to.
Do you have any goals for the coming year? Short and sweet: indie-publish an ebook. I don't know if it will be Stellar Gift of Death or Strix: Forget the Sun that I've started writing, but that is the one official goal for 2013.
Unofficially, I have lots of projects to finish, but I don't want to put any pressure on myself that will make Perfect Girl flip out and ignore all of it. And I keep accumulating fun writing time as reward for getting chores done that I don't use. I need to build using it into my schedule somewhere.
