2019 Fanfic Year-End Summary Type Thing
3/1/20 07:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
neveralarchI posted 155,218 words of fanfic last year! This is the most I've ever written, even I were to try some complicated math to eliminate part of the co-authored fic - second place goes to my very first fic writing year of 2010 (109,900 words), so this is one hell of a way to close out a decade. The count breaks down into 28 stories: 11 stories/11,549 words of Yuletide and 17 stories/143,669 words of Transformers, and then further into 42,022 words of fencing au, 60,201 words of Decepticon Rung, and 41,446 words of miscellaneous TF stuff.
I am second-year tenure track faculty. I bought a house this year. I started dating. I'm still fencing/competing/refereeing. I have to take care of my cats!! Where did I find the ENERGY for this?
I mean, the main answer is that writing fic is fun and I enjoy it, haha. Transformers continues to be endlessly inspiring. And also, I made friends with Dez (Desdemonakaylose/sauntervaguelydownward) this year! Ever since LJ and its communities evaporated, I've really struggled to connect with people online - I never really got tumblr. But I get Discord okay, and I'm starting to get Twitter, I think! Becoming good friends with Dez led to becoming friends with some of her friends, and also encouraged me to reach out to more fan people in general. I feel more connected to TF fandom than I have to any fandom since Doctor Who - so it makes sense that I'm reaching and exceeding the productivity of my Who era.
Also, I mean. About 65,000 words of my count was written either with Dez or in Dez's AU. And that's not even counting all the fic I've brainstormed in chat. There are SO many ideas in chat.
Yearly questions and answers under the cut:
Best/worst title?
I think there's a pretty solid crop of titles this year - solid enough that none of them are really standing out. I think... tie between Quality Seconds and Consumer Goods (both Transformers). Quality Seconds is part of my occasional 'Orbital song titles' series, but Seconds here can be time, or slightly damaged goods sold at a discount, OR being the second person in a poly relationship, all of which ties into how Starscream feels about being Megatron's boyfriend when Megatron's officially married to Optimus Prime.
Consumer Goods, obviously, is an amazing pun for a fic that's about sexily eating plastic.
Worst title is Nero Wolfe's Caffeine Agency (Nero Wolfe), because I could feel that there was a better word than caffeine to replace 'detective,' but it was 1.30 in the morning and I gave up. This is what happened for my worst title last year too. You'd think I'd learn my lesson.
Best/worst summary?
Also solid group of summaries! I think my favorite is Good Morning (Gideon the Ninth), which like the rest of the fic is a riff on the very funny Gideon's Guide to Getting Galactic Swole, but makes me laugh every time I read it:
Gideon's Guide to Doing Some Push-Ups, At Least, Have You Never Used Your Arms, Nonagesimus?
The summary to Full Service (Transformers) is also real fun for me, as this is a fic about sexy gas station fueling:
A trip to New Jersey reveals a new side to Ironhide.
Or, Young Twink Looks On as Big Wet PAID Dude Shoves His Thick Nozzle in Burly Vanette. XXX Not Safe For Minibots!
(Transformers is SO fun, just in general.)
Worst is... Steps to Success (Transformers), I guess. I don't like that last sentence, something about the repetition feels a little off. But it reminds me of Crash and Carry's summary, which was my least favorite last year - and then someone mentioned that the summary really grabbed them! So who knows.
Megatron wants Rung to remain as Decepticon Chief Medical Officer. Rung wants Megatron to realize his ideals and be a better leader. Starscream wants to overthrow Megatron and rule the Decepticons.
No one gets exactly what they want.
Best/worst first line?
First lines are NOT my thing, it usually takes me the whole first paragraph to really get going. The first sentence in A Narrative History of the Home Run (Clickhole baseball article) is GOOD, though:
Willie Mays invented the home run.
As long as you know enough about baseball to get the instant shock of what.
Worst first line comes from Chapter 4 of Surtemps, which is a series of Transformers fencing AU ficlets.
Bluebottle had refereed for thirteen joors today.
There's nothing super wrong with that sentence, except someone commented like 'what's a joor, is this a fencing thing' and I had to say 'no, it's an obscure made-up Transformers time-unit that's part of a long-running in-joke with myself where I mix and match all of the various contradictory words for time that have been used in the ten million Transformers canons, and it serves only to make my fic more difficult to read.' Just trying to explain what I was doing was a wake-up call. I've switched to normal, understandable time units now.
Best/worst last line?
I really like the ending of To Be Securely Held (Transformers):
"Shh." Rung soothed Starscream again, one hand on Starscream's helm and the other rubbing the base of Starscream's wings. "We’ll worry about that later. Just relax and let me hold you."
“I’m holding you.”
“All right.” Rung smiled, though neither Starscream nor the camera could see it. “Then relax and let me be held.”
That's it. That's the dynamic!! Rung is the gentlest dom, and he's going to take care of Starscream in whatever way Starscream will let him ;-;
The ending to Overlooking the Lake (Transformers) is also super good for me, because it's capturing the darker side of the Megatron/Rung dynamic:
"I'm glad you're happy," murmured Megatron, just in case Rung could still hear him. "Despite your arguments and your misgivings. I'm glad I can give you what you want."
Rung is not happy!! Rung is shrivelling up from guilt because of his ongoing complicity in a bloody civil war!! Megatron!!!!
I struggled with a lot of endings this year and spent a lot of time rewriting - especially Passé, Allez, and Castle in the Sand (all Transformers). Dez did a LOT of hand-holding with some of those endings, haha. But I think because of the work and the rewrites and the advice, I'm pretty happy with how all the endings turned out! There aren't any I'd point to as 'worst.'
Looking back, did you write more fics than you thought you would this year, less than you thought, or about what you predicted?
See above, I wrote WAY more than I would've expected. I'm still into Transformers! I've stuck with that about six months longer than expected, and it doesn't seem to be stopping :) One of the things I really like about Transformers is the huge numbers of characters (and canons), so it feels like I've always got more ideas than I have time to write.
Last year my goal was to write the weird pwp idfic I want to see in the world, and I think Full Service, Consumer Goods, and Foolish Things (Transformers) all fit that bill. I'm honestly surprised with how much I really have followed through this year. Shout out to Dez again (and Choko and Zeph, and Twitter friends), because having people who I can tell ideas to and get immediate enthusiastic feedback has really encouraged me to write and finish more stuff.
Where did you publish/archive your stories?
It's all on AO3 again! I got more active on twitter as Transformers fandom has shifted over there, so now I post fic announcements on Dreamwidth AND Tumblr AND Twitter and it takes forever. Such is life.
What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted in January?
Last January I did NOT care about Rung and now... and now... I think about Rung all the time... I've been cursed...
Everything else I wrote this year is 100% in character, but if you told me last year that I'd be co-writing a Rung AU series that combined takes up 13 fics and over 100,000 words I'd be like 'haha and then what ;)'
What’s your favorite story this year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you the happiest.
Favorite story is definitely definitely Castle in the Sand, which Dez and I plotted out in August and made me SO happy for months and months until we finally finished and posted the last chapter in late November. It was weird to come back down from that high - I think (hope) that in a couple months I'll be able to reread it and recapture that floating feeling :)
Okay, NOW your most popular story.
It's (drumroll) Wired! Apparently the people were crying out for Transformers elite trine fic where Starscream is anorgasmic and eventually has good sex anyway.
I really, really love Transformers fandom.
Story most under appreciated by the universe?
I feel very appreciated, as usual :) I really can't point to anything that didn't get an awesome response. Even when I felt a little down on my fic, I just went back and looked at the wonderful comments and was like 'wow, nevermind.' Transformers fandom has an awesome commenting culture and I SO appreciate it.
Story that could have been better?
Rest in the Grass (Murderbot Diaries) was the last fic I wrote for Yuletide and the last one I posted and I wish I'd had another hour to work on it (or access to the books, which my brother left at his house). I had an idea there that I only managed to half-convey. I feel pretty similarly about In All Its Guises (The Raven Tower) - it was a neat idea, but I didn't have the time and materials I wanted to work on it. But sometimes it's just worth getting the neat idea out there.
Otherwise: I've gotten real good at writing stuff I enjoy and want to reread. Success!
Sexiest story?
I'm gonna say These Dreams of You (Transformers), which is a fic about Starscream's sexual fantasies and realizing that sometimes, if you have a very nice and accomodating partner, it can be safe to act some of those fantasies out.
This is also the fic where I started a conversation with Dez like 'while I am not into vore, I think Starscream would be' and ended the conversation like 'I uh. I think I'm into soft vore now.'
Close runners up: Consumer Goods, which was the product of an hours long conversation with Dez about how sexy it would be if Starscream deep-throated water bottles on the kitchen floor, and Full Service, which prompted a chaotic conversation in the Choko, Zeph and Dez groupchat about Optimus Prime having kinky xeno fueling sex with a twink who works at a Jersey gas station.
Most fun story?
Quality Seconds! Dez and I were trying to get each other to finish Full Service while I was at a fencing tournament and she was at a grad school thing and then I started complaining about arranged marriage fic never having the kind of plot I want and then I realized! That I could write it! I just BLASTED this thing out. I was sending chunks to Dez all the time once I started working on it in earnest and it just felt really fun and urgent and good :) I cut out all of the plot set-up that I didn't actually want to write (or read) and did a 'good bits only' strategy and it was GREAT.
(Eventually we did finish Full Service, which is also pretty fun.)
Did any stories shift your perceptions of the characters?
I think Passé is where I spent the most time trying to work myself through a character, since I decided to do the end of the main fencing arc in Megatron's pov to bookend what had started as Starscream's pov. I wanted to understand how you could write a semi-redemptive arc with a Megatron who had been abusive and was struggling to do right - how to write something hopeful without letting him off the hook. (You can tell here that I liked the idea of 'Megatron the Autobot' but I didn't feel like they dug into it enough in canon, haha.) Megatron's headspace was really twisty, and it wasn't until I got to the end of writing the first draft and went back to edit it the first time that I felt like I was finally starting to get it.
Also, I've written a lot of Rung fic this year but writing Fragment (Transformers) was the first time where I really felt like I really got him and got how he could be vulnerable, how he could be sheltered by his relationship with Megatron and Starscream and not just be their untouchable gentle dom. It was super super valuable to have written that and then to come back and edit the first chapter of Castle in the Sand with more insight into Rung's character.
Hardest story to write?
No new wips this year! I finished everything I started - tho there are a LOT of ideas left out in the wilderness of twitter or discord. The hardest thing I finished was probably Allez, which was like pulling teeth even though I knew exactly what the plot was. I started it in Starscream's pov, which didn't work at all, then I shifted it to Wheeljack pov and realized I didn't have anything for Wheeljack to do, and then even once I gave Wheeljack some more character and structure, the fic just didn't want to end. Super exhausting! Especially for a character where I'd already written in his pov and I felt like I got him. I'm happy with how it turned out, though!
Also, writing The Way You Make Me Feel (Hustlers) was weirdly difficult because I'm. I'm just not used to writing human anatomy anymore. People have skin and muscles and hair and it felt like I was trying to write left-handed. The one downside of Transformers.
Easiest story to write?
Tie between Nero Wolfe's Caffeine Agency and A Narrative History of the Home Run. I've spent hundreds of occasional hours reading Nero Wolfe Novels and working an espresso machine since I was 13. Writing Archie Goodwin working at a coffee shop was almost unconscious.
I also love baseball and absurd surrealistic lies, so I basically just spilled A Narrative History into the document and then posted it.
Most overdue story?
I scribbled down about a third of Century Egg (Inspector Chen) in the summer of 2017, and then saw a Yuletide prompt this year that fit it! It was nice to finish it and get it out of my WIP drawer, where it probably would've lived forever otherwise.
I've also been talking all year about writing an amica fic - either an amica triangle for Getaway/Skids/Prowl, or a Prowl/Starscream amica arc in the Decepticon Rung AU. I have not written ANY amica. I would like to apologize profusely to everyone.
Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?
In March after some internal debate I left a comment on Dez's fic The Snap of the Spring where I was like 'hey you don't know me but I keep coming back to this fic and thinking about it and I really wish you write more of it someday especially if it involves this stuff which I will now tell you about' and Dez was like 'oh cool can I just get you to write that?' and then. I did. And then I wrote a bunch more, too!
I've written fic in other people's universes before, so the big writing risk for me was when we started co-writing, a thing that I really just didn't think I could do. Like, I remember reading a co-authored fantasy book when I was 10 or 12 and thinking 'huh, bet that's impossible.' How do you give up control like that? How do you respect someone else's style and merge it with your own?
Turns out you just talk about fic all the time in chat and then write in a google doc and the really great thing is sometimes you get stuck and put the fic down and when you come back there's a brand new scene that you didn't have to write! I've really enjoyed it :)
I also made two tiny zines to hand out at TF Con! (Eventually posted online as Top of the Charts and A Place to Rest. Choomchoom was talking about doing zines and I was like :o and then I Created Some. Doing the actual layout in Word was hard (but will be easy from now on, because I saved the templates), and handing them out in person was excruciating, my whole TF Con experience was just like 'oh wow I forgot how anxious I get in this very specific situation! Hooray! I would like my heart to stop going so fast now.' But I'm really glad that I made the zines and I'm really glad that I went to TF Con, haha. The main thing I learned is that I am not going to a con by myself ever again.
(I def want to do another TF Con - it just has to be with a buddy so I don't have to push myself through quite so many new social situations.)
Do you have any fanfic goals for the New Year?
Amica fic!! I'm gonna make it happen one way or another. And I'd really like to make Shattered Glass Rung/Megatron/Starscream happen too, we've had some awesome ideas for that. But the main thing, I think, is that I'd like to keep the energy from this year going - keep writing fic that I enjoy and that feels fun to write! This was a really good year.
I am second-year tenure track faculty. I bought a house this year. I started dating. I'm still fencing/competing/refereeing. I have to take care of my cats!! Where did I find the ENERGY for this?
I mean, the main answer is that writing fic is fun and I enjoy it, haha. Transformers continues to be endlessly inspiring. And also, I made friends with Dez (Desdemonakaylose/sauntervaguelydownward) this year! Ever since LJ and its communities evaporated, I've really struggled to connect with people online - I never really got tumblr. But I get Discord okay, and I'm starting to get Twitter, I think! Becoming good friends with Dez led to becoming friends with some of her friends, and also encouraged me to reach out to more fan people in general. I feel more connected to TF fandom than I have to any fandom since Doctor Who - so it makes sense that I'm reaching and exceeding the productivity of my Who era.
Also, I mean. About 65,000 words of my count was written either with Dez or in Dez's AU. And that's not even counting all the fic I've brainstormed in chat. There are SO many ideas in chat.
Yearly questions and answers under the cut:
Best/worst title?
I think there's a pretty solid crop of titles this year - solid enough that none of them are really standing out. I think... tie between Quality Seconds and Consumer Goods (both Transformers). Quality Seconds is part of my occasional 'Orbital song titles' series, but Seconds here can be time, or slightly damaged goods sold at a discount, OR being the second person in a poly relationship, all of which ties into how Starscream feels about being Megatron's boyfriend when Megatron's officially married to Optimus Prime.
Consumer Goods, obviously, is an amazing pun for a fic that's about sexily eating plastic.
Worst title is Nero Wolfe's Caffeine Agency (Nero Wolfe), because I could feel that there was a better word than caffeine to replace 'detective,' but it was 1.30 in the morning and I gave up. This is what happened for my worst title last year too. You'd think I'd learn my lesson.
Best/worst summary?
Also solid group of summaries! I think my favorite is Good Morning (Gideon the Ninth), which like the rest of the fic is a riff on the very funny Gideon's Guide to Getting Galactic Swole, but makes me laugh every time I read it:
Gideon's Guide to Doing Some Push-Ups, At Least, Have You Never Used Your Arms, Nonagesimus?
The summary to Full Service (Transformers) is also real fun for me, as this is a fic about sexy gas station fueling:
A trip to New Jersey reveals a new side to Ironhide.
Or, Young Twink Looks On as Big Wet PAID Dude Shoves His Thick Nozzle in Burly Vanette. XXX Not Safe For Minibots!
(Transformers is SO fun, just in general.)
Worst is... Steps to Success (Transformers), I guess. I don't like that last sentence, something about the repetition feels a little off. But it reminds me of Crash and Carry's summary, which was my least favorite last year - and then someone mentioned that the summary really grabbed them! So who knows.
Megatron wants Rung to remain as Decepticon Chief Medical Officer. Rung wants Megatron to realize his ideals and be a better leader. Starscream wants to overthrow Megatron and rule the Decepticons.
No one gets exactly what they want.
Best/worst first line?
First lines are NOT my thing, it usually takes me the whole first paragraph to really get going. The first sentence in A Narrative History of the Home Run (Clickhole baseball article) is GOOD, though:
Willie Mays invented the home run.
As long as you know enough about baseball to get the instant shock of what.
Worst first line comes from Chapter 4 of Surtemps, which is a series of Transformers fencing AU ficlets.
Bluebottle had refereed for thirteen joors today.
There's nothing super wrong with that sentence, except someone commented like 'what's a joor, is this a fencing thing' and I had to say 'no, it's an obscure made-up Transformers time-unit that's part of a long-running in-joke with myself where I mix and match all of the various contradictory words for time that have been used in the ten million Transformers canons, and it serves only to make my fic more difficult to read.' Just trying to explain what I was doing was a wake-up call. I've switched to normal, understandable time units now.
Best/worst last line?
I really like the ending of To Be Securely Held (Transformers):
"Shh." Rung soothed Starscream again, one hand on Starscream's helm and the other rubbing the base of Starscream's wings. "We’ll worry about that later. Just relax and let me hold you."
“I’m holding you.”
“All right.” Rung smiled, though neither Starscream nor the camera could see it. “Then relax and let me be held.”
That's it. That's the dynamic!! Rung is the gentlest dom, and he's going to take care of Starscream in whatever way Starscream will let him ;-;
The ending to Overlooking the Lake (Transformers) is also super good for me, because it's capturing the darker side of the Megatron/Rung dynamic:
"I'm glad you're happy," murmured Megatron, just in case Rung could still hear him. "Despite your arguments and your misgivings. I'm glad I can give you what you want."
Rung is not happy!! Rung is shrivelling up from guilt because of his ongoing complicity in a bloody civil war!! Megatron!!!!
I struggled with a lot of endings this year and spent a lot of time rewriting - especially Passé, Allez, and Castle in the Sand (all Transformers). Dez did a LOT of hand-holding with some of those endings, haha. But I think because of the work and the rewrites and the advice, I'm pretty happy with how all the endings turned out! There aren't any I'd point to as 'worst.'
Looking back, did you write more fics than you thought you would this year, less than you thought, or about what you predicted?
See above, I wrote WAY more than I would've expected. I'm still into Transformers! I've stuck with that about six months longer than expected, and it doesn't seem to be stopping :) One of the things I really like about Transformers is the huge numbers of characters (and canons), so it feels like I've always got more ideas than I have time to write.
Last year my goal was to write the weird pwp idfic I want to see in the world, and I think Full Service, Consumer Goods, and Foolish Things (Transformers) all fit that bill. I'm honestly surprised with how much I really have followed through this year. Shout out to Dez again (and Choko and Zeph, and Twitter friends), because having people who I can tell ideas to and get immediate enthusiastic feedback has really encouraged me to write and finish more stuff.
Where did you publish/archive your stories?
It's all on AO3 again! I got more active on twitter as Transformers fandom has shifted over there, so now I post fic announcements on Dreamwidth AND Tumblr AND Twitter and it takes forever. Such is life.
What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted in January?
Last January I did NOT care about Rung and now... and now... I think about Rung all the time... I've been cursed...
Everything else I wrote this year is 100% in character, but if you told me last year that I'd be co-writing a Rung AU series that combined takes up 13 fics and over 100,000 words I'd be like 'haha and then what ;)'
What’s your favorite story this year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you the happiest.
Favorite story is definitely definitely Castle in the Sand, which Dez and I plotted out in August and made me SO happy for months and months until we finally finished and posted the last chapter in late November. It was weird to come back down from that high - I think (hope) that in a couple months I'll be able to reread it and recapture that floating feeling :)
Okay, NOW your most popular story.
It's (drumroll) Wired! Apparently the people were crying out for Transformers elite trine fic where Starscream is anorgasmic and eventually has good sex anyway.
I really, really love Transformers fandom.
Story most under appreciated by the universe?
I feel very appreciated, as usual :) I really can't point to anything that didn't get an awesome response. Even when I felt a little down on my fic, I just went back and looked at the wonderful comments and was like 'wow, nevermind.' Transformers fandom has an awesome commenting culture and I SO appreciate it.
Story that could have been better?
Rest in the Grass (Murderbot Diaries) was the last fic I wrote for Yuletide and the last one I posted and I wish I'd had another hour to work on it (or access to the books, which my brother left at his house). I had an idea there that I only managed to half-convey. I feel pretty similarly about In All Its Guises (The Raven Tower) - it was a neat idea, but I didn't have the time and materials I wanted to work on it. But sometimes it's just worth getting the neat idea out there.
Otherwise: I've gotten real good at writing stuff I enjoy and want to reread. Success!
Sexiest story?
I'm gonna say These Dreams of You (Transformers), which is a fic about Starscream's sexual fantasies and realizing that sometimes, if you have a very nice and accomodating partner, it can be safe to act some of those fantasies out.
This is also the fic where I started a conversation with Dez like 'while I am not into vore, I think Starscream would be' and ended the conversation like 'I uh. I think I'm into soft vore now.'
Close runners up: Consumer Goods, which was the product of an hours long conversation with Dez about how sexy it would be if Starscream deep-throated water bottles on the kitchen floor, and Full Service, which prompted a chaotic conversation in the Choko, Zeph and Dez groupchat about Optimus Prime having kinky xeno fueling sex with a twink who works at a Jersey gas station.
Most fun story?
Quality Seconds! Dez and I were trying to get each other to finish Full Service while I was at a fencing tournament and she was at a grad school thing and then I started complaining about arranged marriage fic never having the kind of plot I want and then I realized! That I could write it! I just BLASTED this thing out. I was sending chunks to Dez all the time once I started working on it in earnest and it just felt really fun and urgent and good :) I cut out all of the plot set-up that I didn't actually want to write (or read) and did a 'good bits only' strategy and it was GREAT.
(Eventually we did finish Full Service, which is also pretty fun.)
Did any stories shift your perceptions of the characters?
I think Passé is where I spent the most time trying to work myself through a character, since I decided to do the end of the main fencing arc in Megatron's pov to bookend what had started as Starscream's pov. I wanted to understand how you could write a semi-redemptive arc with a Megatron who had been abusive and was struggling to do right - how to write something hopeful without letting him off the hook. (You can tell here that I liked the idea of 'Megatron the Autobot' but I didn't feel like they dug into it enough in canon, haha.) Megatron's headspace was really twisty, and it wasn't until I got to the end of writing the first draft and went back to edit it the first time that I felt like I was finally starting to get it.
Also, I've written a lot of Rung fic this year but writing Fragment (Transformers) was the first time where I really felt like I really got him and got how he could be vulnerable, how he could be sheltered by his relationship with Megatron and Starscream and not just be their untouchable gentle dom. It was super super valuable to have written that and then to come back and edit the first chapter of Castle in the Sand with more insight into Rung's character.
Hardest story to write?
No new wips this year! I finished everything I started - tho there are a LOT of ideas left out in the wilderness of twitter or discord. The hardest thing I finished was probably Allez, which was like pulling teeth even though I knew exactly what the plot was. I started it in Starscream's pov, which didn't work at all, then I shifted it to Wheeljack pov and realized I didn't have anything for Wheeljack to do, and then even once I gave Wheeljack some more character and structure, the fic just didn't want to end. Super exhausting! Especially for a character where I'd already written in his pov and I felt like I got him. I'm happy with how it turned out, though!
Also, writing The Way You Make Me Feel (Hustlers) was weirdly difficult because I'm. I'm just not used to writing human anatomy anymore. People have skin and muscles and hair and it felt like I was trying to write left-handed. The one downside of Transformers.
Easiest story to write?
Tie between Nero Wolfe's Caffeine Agency and A Narrative History of the Home Run. I've spent hundreds of occasional hours reading Nero Wolfe Novels and working an espresso machine since I was 13. Writing Archie Goodwin working at a coffee shop was almost unconscious.
I also love baseball and absurd surrealistic lies, so I basically just spilled A Narrative History into the document and then posted it.
Most overdue story?
I scribbled down about a third of Century Egg (Inspector Chen) in the summer of 2017, and then saw a Yuletide prompt this year that fit it! It was nice to finish it and get it out of my WIP drawer, where it probably would've lived forever otherwise.
I've also been talking all year about writing an amica fic - either an amica triangle for Getaway/Skids/Prowl, or a Prowl/Starscream amica arc in the Decepticon Rung AU. I have not written ANY amica. I would like to apologize profusely to everyone.
Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?
In March after some internal debate I left a comment on Dez's fic The Snap of the Spring where I was like 'hey you don't know me but I keep coming back to this fic and thinking about it and I really wish you write more of it someday especially if it involves this stuff which I will now tell you about' and Dez was like 'oh cool can I just get you to write that?' and then. I did. And then I wrote a bunch more, too!
I've written fic in other people's universes before, so the big writing risk for me was when we started co-writing, a thing that I really just didn't think I could do. Like, I remember reading a co-authored fantasy book when I was 10 or 12 and thinking 'huh, bet that's impossible.' How do you give up control like that? How do you respect someone else's style and merge it with your own?
Turns out you just talk about fic all the time in chat and then write in a google doc and the really great thing is sometimes you get stuck and put the fic down and when you come back there's a brand new scene that you didn't have to write! I've really enjoyed it :)
I also made two tiny zines to hand out at TF Con! (Eventually posted online as Top of the Charts and A Place to Rest. Choomchoom was talking about doing zines and I was like :o and then I Created Some. Doing the actual layout in Word was hard (but will be easy from now on, because I saved the templates), and handing them out in person was excruciating, my whole TF Con experience was just like 'oh wow I forgot how anxious I get in this very specific situation! Hooray! I would like my heart to stop going so fast now.' But I'm really glad that I made the zines and I'm really glad that I went to TF Con, haha. The main thing I learned is that I am not going to a con by myself ever again.
(I def want to do another TF Con - it just has to be with a buddy so I don't have to push myself through quite so many new social situations.)
Do you have any fanfic goals for the New Year?
Amica fic!! I'm gonna make it happen one way or another. And I'd really like to make Shattered Glass Rung/Megatron/Starscream happen too, we've had some awesome ideas for that. But the main thing, I think, is that I'd like to keep the energy from this year going - keep writing fic that I enjoy and that feels fun to write! This was a really good year.
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Date: 2020-01-05 10:19 am (UTC)(no subject)
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