jedibuttercup

Since I started writing fan fiction in 2002, I've had exactly two years that averaged under 60,000 words; 2005 and last year, 2008. My production seems to be directly tied to my emotional state, which is probably no surprise to anyone who knows me, and both years were bad years for me.

Still, as I did manage 45,058 words of fiction in total, and it's that time of year again--

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2008 Fanfiction Totals

Of the 45,058 words written this year, 25,758 of them were non-crossover; 24,858 were non-Buffyverse.

For comparison purposes, here are the previous years' totals:

2007 - 141,018 (24,300 non-cross; 67,400 non-Buffyverse)
2006 - 163,612 (26,136 non-cross; 43,836 non-Buffyverse)
2005 - 47,878 (All crossovers; 2,500 non-Buffyverse)

2002, 2003, and 2004 are harder to differentiate, as I didn't keep records of chapters and fics by month until late 2004, so I'm not sure just where everything fell. But between them, it comes to about 196,000 words, or an average of 65,000 words a year, most of it Buffy/Angel non-crossovers.

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Breakdown of Fic, by Category and Length:

Book and Movie Fandoms, Non-Cross:

Five Crosses Michael Carpenter Never Bore - Dresden Files, 2600 words, Michael/Harry (yuletide)
The Man For The Job - The Mummy, 1200 words, Jonathan-centric (yuletide)

TV Fandoms, Non-Crossover Fic:

Paved With Good Intentions - Drive, 1200 words, Alex-centric (yuletide)
Evidence of Things Unseen - SGA, 1200 words, Lorne-centric (ninebillion)
Knocked Down - B:tVS, 1400 words, Buffy & Dawn
Five Photographs Daniel Took While Offworld - SG-1, 869 words, Daniel-centric
Five Things Greg Sanders Never Said to Sara Sidle - CSI, 739 words, Greg-centric

Mission: Cheer Up My Dad - Eureka, 900 words, Jack & Zoe (eureka_tag)
Changing Tactics - Eureka, 450 words, Eva Thorne (eureka_tag)
Ulterior Motives - Eureka, 1000 words, Harry & Zoe (eureka_tag)
Not Like This - Eureka, 300 words, Jack & Allison (eureka_tag)
Stages of Recovery - Eureka, 800 words, Jack & Fargo (eureka_tag)
Woman, Wondering - Eureka, 700 words, Allison Blake (eureka_tag)
Favoring Fire - Eureka, 400 words, Zane/Jo (eureka_tag)
Coffee For Your Thoughts - Eureka, 500 words, Vincent (eureka_tag)

Crossover Fic:

Upholding the Family Honor - Angel/HP, 1200 words, Spike & Neville
Evening the Odds - SGA/HP, 500 words, John-centric
Dangerous Men - Angel/HP, 2000 words, Wesley & Harry
In Memory of Penny Lesse - Angel/Dr. Horrible, 2000 words, Anne & Billy
A Watcher's Duty - B:tVS/Die Hard 4, 1100 words, John & Lucy
At Least It Wasn't Zombies - B:tVS/Eureka, 1400 words, Jack-centric
Paying Respects - B:tVS/Firefly, 1000 words, Faith-centric
Love, After - B:tVS/Mummy 3, 2700 words, Buffy/Rick
Totally Her Turn - B:tVS/Ice Princess, 600 words, Buffy & Dawn
A Study in Contrasts - B:tVS/SG-1, 1800 words, Willow/Teal'c
Hang In There, Slayer - B:tVS/T:SCC, 1900 words, Buffy/John Connor

Crossover Drabbles:

In Memoriam - Angel/Firefly, 200 words, Lilah & Simon Tam
Music To His Ears - B:tVS/Eli Stone, 200 words, Giles-centric
The Heart That Fed - Angel/PotC, 200 words, Illyria & Calypso
Something to Save & One More Try - 200 + 200 words, B:tVS/Eli Stone, Eli-centric
One Mother, in All the World - B:tVS/T:SCC, 200 words, Sarah-centric

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Major WIP Series/Entries

backagainharry (Harry Potter post-DH time-travel AU)
Chapters: 9 | 10 | 11

watching_river (Firefly post-Serenity AU)
Book's Legacy 11 - Finding Answers

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The Year In Review

1. Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you'd predicted?

See the totals section above; I wrote far, far less than I wanted or hoped to, mostly due to circumstances not under my control affecting my emotional state, such as the sudden death of a good friend and a painfully pinched financial situation.

2. my favorite story (of mine) this year:

-- Love, After: 2,700 words, in which Buffy Summers makes a discovery about Rick O'Connell, and plans for the future are made.

It's set after Mummy 3, in a 'verse where the events of that movie left him immortal and he outlived Evie, and is the only thing I've written where all (both) characters in the fic are naked the entire time (though it isn't a PWP). It's quite possibly the most organic fic I wrote all year, in that an image came to me in the shower, I sat down at the computer afterward to elaborate on it, and the story just flowed out of me in a great rush; not coincidentally, it was also the only one-shot fic I wrote all year that ended up longer than 2,000 words.

3. my best story this year:

-- Five Crosses Michael Carpenter Never Bore - 2600 words, a Dresden Files bookverse AU that pairs Michael Carpenter with Harry Dresden, and shows several glimpses from their world paralleling canon.

I spent a lot of time writing this; I really struggled with slashing a character who's both married and strongly Christian in the canon, nevermind writing slash at all, which is still pretty rare for me, courtesy of being raised by an otherwise-loving mother who can't stand to even be in the room with a gay person. In the end, I had to kill off Michael's wife, and then just never dealt with whether or not he would worry about God's approval of his new relationship; it helped that the Knights of the Dresden Files novels, while very, very sure about the presence of God's hand in their lives, are from a variety of backgrounds and tend to be on the extremely tolerant side about other differences in their friends that might be condemned by the traditional Christian faith. (Such as the fact that Harry, and Michael's daughter Molly, are wizards).

There are some turns of phrase in here that I'm really fond of; and a lot of heavy emotional issues barely touched on and implied rather than spelled out brute-force; I'm rather proud of the effect. One of the reviews I got said that "it is very well written to capture the pain of a pair of wounded souls," and I have also been complimented on the characterization, which can be unexpectedly hard to nail down in a book fandom. Writing this story made me feel like I accomplished something, more than just the usual amusement for myself and my readers.

4. the story most under-appreciated by the universe, in my opinion:

-- Paved With Good Intentions: 1,200 words, set after episode #4 of the ill-fated Drive; mostly Alex Tully characterization as he thinks about how he got there and where he's going.

This fandom was tiny to begin with, and seems to have entirely disappeared over the last year. It would be nice if they would ever put the six episodes actually filmed out on DVD!

5. most overrated story, in my opinion:

backagainharry. I like this story, and it's been a very interesting exercise in careful plotting and characterization, but the outpouring of reviews for it is so overwhelming compared to everything else, it's insane.

6. most fun story:

-- Totally Her Turn: 600 words, a riff on the fact that Michelle Trachtenberg played both Dawn in B:tVS and Casey in Ice Princess, with bonus Cutting Edge references for extra fun.

-- At Least It Wasn't Zombies: 1400 words, in which Jack Carter et. al. meet the real Buffy Summers.

This category was a tie for me this year; the first of these two was a fun little self-indulgent thing that I wrote after watching Cutting Edge again, and the second was my attempt to cross over the worlds of Eureka and B:tVS without breaking the fourth wall over the "Fargo is a Sarah Michelle Gellar fan" issue. I'm pretty sure I succeeded; and I had a lot of fun writing Jack Carter's POV.

7. most sexy story:

-- Love, After: 2,700 words, in which Buffy Summers makes a discovery about Rick O'Connell, and plans for the future are made.

As I said under question #2, this is quite possibly the only story I've ever written where both participants of the pairing are naked for the entire fic, and there is a lot of touching-- though no full on-screen sex-- involved. I wrote it that way for the bonus emotional intimacy, more than for how pretty they are together; nevertheless, it's an actual R-rated fic by me, which felt like a risky experiment at the time!

8. story with single sweetest moment:

-- The Man For The Job - 1,200 words, in which Jonathan observes Rick and Evie together directly after Mummy 1, challenges Rick about his intentions, and discovers treasure

I have a mental image from this one, from the bit where Jonathan sees the way Evie is curled up sleeping in Rick's arms as they ride across the desert at night, and Rick is gazing down at her, that makes me think "awwww" every time. I'm not much of a one for romantic fluff, but I adore them as a couple.

9. most friendshippy story:

-- Dangerous Men - 2,000 words, in which Wesley Wyndham-Price is interrogated by Harry Potter about his intentions in rejoining the Wizarding world, and discovers that they are not so very different after all.

Some of my favorite dialogue from this year is in this story, especially the last lines from both characters.

10. the story that made me cry:

I don't generally cry at my own stories, but I came the closest with Not Like This, a crushingly emotional episode tag ficlet about a character death in the TV show Eureka.

11. story that shifted my own perception of the characters:

Probably Woman Wondering, another of the Eureka tag ficlets I did, in which I tried to tackle a plausible rationale behind Allison Blake's widely variable and largely incomprehensible behavior toward Jack Carter over the course of the previous year. I liked her a lot better after I got done writing it.

12. hardest story to write:

-- Five Crosses Michael Carpenter Never Bore - 2600 words, a Dresden Files bookverse AU that pairs Michael Carpenter with Harry Dresden, and shows several glimpses from their world paralleling canon.

As I said under question #3, this one crossed a couple of boundaries for me: writing something longer than a drabble in a book fandom, and writing a slash story centered on a Christian character. It was a request for yuletide, and I was determined to do it justice; so I re-read all nine books then available in the series, and did a lot of thinking about what to feature and how to show the building of such a relationship in an in-character way without telling too much.

13. worst story:

-- Evening the Odds - 500 words, a season-3 follow up to my John-Sheppard-is-Harry-Potter universe.

I don't think I did nearly as good a job as I should have with this one; it fell kind of flat.

14. biggest surprise:

Probably that there are still fans of watching_river (Book's Legacy) out there; I updated it this November for the first time in nearly two years, and was very gratified by the reviews!

15. story I wish I'd finished:

Either backagainharry or watching_river; Lord knows I have other WIPs out there, but these two are the lingering monsters, and I really, really want to get them cleared off my plate.

16. story I didn't write but swear I will, someday:

The rest of those tthdrabbles reward fics. I haven't forgotten any of you; I posted another one of them just yesterday, in fact! I'm going to do my best to have them done before the reward-post comes up for the next round, which is scheduled to begin in a few weeks.

17. What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted in January?

Well, I couldn't have seen Dr. Horrible coming, and Eureka was a new fandom to me this year. For pairings, I'd say Buffy/Rick O'Connell took me entirely by surprise; and I'd never, ever have written Willow/Teal'c if it hadn't been for a request. And of course, the Michael Carpenter/Harry Dresden fic for the previous Yuletide. (All of those fics turned out better than I expected, too).

18. Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?

Characterization has always been the thing I worry about the most in my stories; and given my own limited romantic experience and relatively strict religious background, extending that into writing romantic situations of any stripe has always been a hang-up of mine. I learned not to fear writing naked people, and that it was okay to write slash and not feel guilty about it, so long as it can be done in-character; but I also learned that writing plotty gen, especially in crossover or otherwise challenging set-ups, is still my very favorite thing to do.

19. Do you have any fanfic or profic goals for the New Year?

To finish all of the requested stories that built up on my plate last year; to tie up most of the loose ends I've left hanging in my WIPs and shortfic series; and to get back up over the 100,000-word marker for the year.
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