2024 Writing (Year in Review)
Jan. 3rd, 2025 12:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yelpBetter late than never!
This year, I posted 35k words on AO3. This is about half of what I posted last year, so it seems my resolution to do fewer exchanges (especially Triple Crown ones) is working. But I think I forgot to do the other half, where I work more on non-exchange writing instead? (And that's really the most important part!)
I'm definitely seeing a trend of low activity for most of the year and then reviving to participate in winter exchanges. I started out this year by wrapping up my 2023 exchange season: a Fandom Trees "pinch hit" and two fics for Bulletproof. In the summer, I made some progress on an ongoing WIP (hallelujah!), and noticed this put me over 500k words posted on my account (in 4 years!), so took a couple prompts on Tumblr to celebrate. Besides that, I wrote nothing until it came time for my winter exchange season again with FIAB, Eyeshield 21 Winter Gift Exchange, Yuletide, and soon Bulletproof once more.
It's unfortunate because winter was again my busiest and most stressful time of year professionally, personally, medically. With more writing gaps, I also felt quite rusty coming into both my WIP in the summer and then FIAB in the winter. Being busy and rusty meant I wasn't able to participate to the full extent I wanted in my exchanges. I got a bunch of FIAB swaps, but they were all in the same fandom (Genshin) which I didn't expect and found discouraging. I actually ended up defaulting on 2 of my 4 swaps, but fortunately the exchange rules were generous enough to allow earning back my wordcount by writing more of my original assignment - which worked out because that was turning out to be a monster anyhow. I also didn't have my normal level of commenting energy - I left 40 comments in the FIAB collection and 16 in Yuletide - and there were several treats I wanted to write but didn't get close.
Overall, though, I feel good about the extent of my exchange participation. I think I've narrowed down to my few favorite exchanges and the amount feels reasonable, if unfortunately clustered in the worst time of year for it. Perhaps this means next year I can aim to work more on personal projects throughout the year, and quarantine exchanges to the winter alone!
Stats - now in table form!
Meme questions
Best title: "Replenish the Sea" - In my last year in review, I noticed that my favorite titles were just random things that sounded nice and were thematically relevant, so I did more of that this year, and liked them.
Worst title: "Heart Tell the Tale" - Several close runners-up but this random phrase from the story didn't suit the tone well and was not very distinctive. The jokey title I came up with ("Testing My Ears and My Patience") might actually have worked better given it was such a silly shortfic.
Longest title: "The Poison Makes the Cure" (25 characters)
Shortest title: "Nat 21" (6 characters) I dithered between this or "Natural 21" and in hindsight the extra letters might have helped the joke land (a play on Nat 20/Natural 20 in D&D and Eyeshield 21).
Best first line: "You know," said Ukyo conversationally, when Senku hadn't looked up from his tinkering for several minutes. "Most people, when they compliment your physical attributes and then invite you back to their room, mean something by it."
I like how this set up the scenario and it fit the rest of the story's tone. Weirdly, several of the other contenders were also from my shorter fic (around 1k). Perhaps knowing I was going to need to be more concise forced me to produce better lines.
Worst first line: In the afternoon, they go underground.
By contrast, this was from my ongoing WIP longfic.
Best last line: Then the rope snaps on Eliot's knife, and Harry's wrists come free.
In context of the rest of the story (also a shortfic) I felt this worked well - the moment of release in tension.
Worst last line: “What’s your move?”
Sigh. I wanted to do a more classically D&D line but I already used the best ones. If it had been Crit Role specific I would have tried to work in a "How do you want to do this?" instead.
Looking back, did you write more fics than you thought you would this year, less than you thought, or about what you predicted? My "data-based" prediction for this year was 60k, but I wrote much less than that (35k). It's the first year I wrote less than I predicted since I got into exchanges.
What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted last year?
Pairing: I wrote a Baizhu/Zhongli fic for FIAB because I found the requested pairing intriguing, but I'm not sure it turned out well. In general, I think I have two broad classes of fic I write: fics based on a particular iddy vibe where I lean heavily into the premise, or fics where I'm intrigued by some aspect of canon, character, or relationship where I'm noodling over it by writing it out. The former tends to get a lot better reception than the latter, which I wouldn't have expected. Both are kind of hyperpersonal and navel-gazey in different ways, and I might have expected my id to be too weird and embarrassing for others to enjoy, while we are all in this fandom business because we like these characters and this setting and want to dig in more? But it actually turns out that when I try to play with two characters like action figures and puzzle out how they would fit together, that's more of a fun activity for me and less fun to read, while there are more people who enjoy my deeply embarrassing and privately clutched iddy likes than I would have thought...
Fandom: I actually wrote a ton more of the same fandoms than I thought I would, especially Genshin. I feel this is kind of unusual for multifandom exchange participants. The only new fandoms I wrote this year were Leverage and Slay the Spire, both surprising in different ways.
What’s your favorite story this year? I'm just gonna say it again for the third year in a row. I like working on my WIP. I'm making such slow progress and I take so many pauses but it's the story I wanted to read so it's my personal fave. I didn't feel my updates this year were as high quality as some of my earlier installments but I still want to make more when I can!
Okay, NOW your most popular story. Replenish the Sea - speaking of embarrassing iddy likes, I wrote this for Bulletproof and was shocked by how popular it was. It's Neuvillette/Wriothesley, sure, but a lot more popular than the one I wrote for FIAB (though, as noted in previous Year in Reviews, fics posted earlier in the year will obviously have a lot more reads than fics posted more recently). Mostly I'm always baffled when I find out other people are into my messed up likes and it's not just me digging my own weird gremlin hole in the muck.
Story most underappreciated by the universe? Nothing really! I suppose I'll put The Cracked Core since I think more people should play Slay the Spire and get deeply sucked into it and lose hundreds of hours of their precious life like me (speaking of crack, ahem), but for a niche Yuletide fandom I was really happy with the reception.
Story that could have been better? I'm not really happy with how the Baizhu/Zhongli fic turned out. I'm not very good at writing shippy things in the first place, but even then I could have leaned into it more. In hindsight, having Baizhu treat an illness of Zhongli's would have increased the stakes and intimacy, but I got intrigued to write outsider POV after seeing it on the recip's likes, and I had that last scene in mind from the start.
Saddest story? Didn't really write anything sad. Hit Me like a Food Truck came close since it was almost set after the death of Musashi's father, but then I thought that was not a very good start to a gift, so it was him dealing with his father's canon hospitalization instead, which is also a bit of a downer - even if the rest of the story is just zany hijinks as usual for that crowd.
Most fun? Heart Tell the Tale was silly fluff, I thought that fit the vibe of a 500k celebration.
Most fucked-up story? Didn't really write anything fucked up, but Comes When Called had some skeevy power dynamics (and also some improbable sexual actions that one might described as logistically fucked up).
Hardest story to write? By Land or By Sea - I really wanted to get down the Neuvillette/Wriothesley pre-canon dynamic that was in my head, but I struggled to match what I had envisioned. I think that struggle also turned it more from the "id fic" category to the "puzzle over how their relationship would be" category that I mentioned above. But I'm still happy with how it turned out!
Easiest/most fun story to write? I feel like I struggled with inspiration a lot this year, but once I got the general idea/outline down, the rest came together smoothly. But I will say my Bulletproof fics were very fun to write.
Top five scenes you would like to see illustrated: I just received a wonderful commission from FTH for an illustration of my very first longfic, so I'm thrilled about that! For this year, I'd say Neuvillette as a figurehead in "Replenish the Sea" (with Wriothesley staring up at him with his lantern), the Medusa Device treatment chamber from "You Are Pain Pinned to Muscle", Ukyou listening for Senkuu's heartbeat in "Heart Tell the Tale", Changsheng and Zhongli in their new forms in "The Poison Makes the Cure", and the gang crammed into the titular food truck in "Hit Me Like a Food Truck".
Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them? No big risks, I think. I played around with adding links to the StS wiki in the text of "The Cracked Core", but then I thought that was kind of silly/intrusive so I added a workskin to hide them. Also in "By Land or By Sea", I wrote something completely stupid ("salt-and-ocean hair" for Neuvillette's blue and white hair... you know, like salt-and-pepper hair... but like the ocean is salty...??) and just couldn't resist the urge to keep it in there. I'm still waiting to get roasted for that but thankfully people seem to have glossed over it in 10k words lol.
What are your fic writing goals for next year? Work on my personal projects!! Finish my WIPs!! This is the year!!
This year, I posted 35k words on AO3. This is about half of what I posted last year, so it seems my resolution to do fewer exchanges (especially Triple Crown ones) is working. But I think I forgot to do the other half, where I work more on non-exchange writing instead? (And that's really the most important part!)
I'm definitely seeing a trend of low activity for most of the year and then reviving to participate in winter exchanges. I started out this year by wrapping up my 2023 exchange season: a Fandom Trees "pinch hit" and two fics for Bulletproof. In the summer, I made some progress on an ongoing WIP (hallelujah!), and noticed this put me over 500k words posted on my account (in 4 years!), so took a couple prompts on Tumblr to celebrate. Besides that, I wrote nothing until it came time for my winter exchange season again with FIAB, Eyeshield 21 Winter Gift Exchange, Yuletide, and soon Bulletproof once more.
It's unfortunate because winter was again my busiest and most stressful time of year professionally, personally, medically. With more writing gaps, I also felt quite rusty coming into both my WIP in the summer and then FIAB in the winter. Being busy and rusty meant I wasn't able to participate to the full extent I wanted in my exchanges. I got a bunch of FIAB swaps, but they were all in the same fandom (Genshin) which I didn't expect and found discouraging. I actually ended up defaulting on 2 of my 4 swaps, but fortunately the exchange rules were generous enough to allow earning back my wordcount by writing more of my original assignment - which worked out because that was turning out to be a monster anyhow. I also didn't have my normal level of commenting energy - I left 40 comments in the FIAB collection and 16 in Yuletide - and there were several treats I wanted to write but didn't get close.
Overall, though, I feel good about the extent of my exchange participation. I think I've narrowed down to my few favorite exchanges and the amount feels reasonable, if unfortunately clustered in the worst time of year for it. Perhaps this means next year I can aim to work more on personal projects throughout the year, and quarantine exchanges to the winter alone!
Stats - now in table form!
| Title | Rating | Category | Wordcount | Updated | Written for | Fandom |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| You Are Pain Pinned to Muscle | T | M/M | 6,091 | 08/31 | - | Dr. Stone |
| Comes When Called | E | M/M | 1,496 | 02/08 | Bulletproof | Genshin Impact |
| Replenish the Sea | M | M/M | 5,936 | 02/08 | Bulletproof | Genshin Impact |
| The Poison Makes the Cure | T | M/M | 4,210 | 12/13 | FIAB | Genshin Impact |
| By Land or By Sea | M | M/M | 9,904 | 12/13 | FIAB | Genshin Impact |
| Hit Me like a Food Truck | T | Gen | 2,102 | 12/21 | ES21 Exchange | Eyeshield 21 |
| The Cracked Core | T | Gen | 1,972 | 12/25 | Yuletide | Slay the Spire |
| Res Judicata | T | M/M | 835 | 01/18 | Fandom Trees | Leverage |
| Heart Tell the Tale | T | M/M | 1,221 | 09/01 | 500k prompts | Dr. Stone |
| Nat 21 | T | M/M | 1,374 | 09/06 | 500k prompts | Eyeshield 21 |
Meme questions
Best title: "Replenish the Sea" - In my last year in review, I noticed that my favorite titles were just random things that sounded nice and were thematically relevant, so I did more of that this year, and liked them.
Worst title: "Heart Tell the Tale" - Several close runners-up but this random phrase from the story didn't suit the tone well and was not very distinctive. The jokey title I came up with ("Testing My Ears and My Patience") might actually have worked better given it was such a silly shortfic.
Longest title: "The Poison Makes the Cure" (25 characters)
Shortest title: "Nat 21" (6 characters) I dithered between this or "Natural 21" and in hindsight the extra letters might have helped the joke land (a play on Nat 20/Natural 20 in D&D and Eyeshield 21).
Best first line: "You know," said Ukyo conversationally, when Senku hadn't looked up from his tinkering for several minutes. "Most people, when they compliment your physical attributes and then invite you back to their room, mean something by it."
I like how this set up the scenario and it fit the rest of the story's tone. Weirdly, several of the other contenders were also from my shorter fic (around 1k). Perhaps knowing I was going to need to be more concise forced me to produce better lines.
Worst first line: In the afternoon, they go underground.
By contrast, this was from my ongoing WIP longfic.
Best last line: Then the rope snaps on Eliot's knife, and Harry's wrists come free.
In context of the rest of the story (also a shortfic) I felt this worked well - the moment of release in tension.
Worst last line: “What’s your move?”
Sigh. I wanted to do a more classically D&D line but I already used the best ones. If it had been Crit Role specific I would have tried to work in a "How do you want to do this?" instead.
Looking back, did you write more fics than you thought you would this year, less than you thought, or about what you predicted? My "data-based" prediction for this year was 60k, but I wrote much less than that (35k). It's the first year I wrote less than I predicted since I got into exchanges.
What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted last year?
Pairing: I wrote a Baizhu/Zhongli fic for FIAB because I found the requested pairing intriguing, but I'm not sure it turned out well. In general, I think I have two broad classes of fic I write: fics based on a particular iddy vibe where I lean heavily into the premise, or fics where I'm intrigued by some aspect of canon, character, or relationship where I'm noodling over it by writing it out. The former tends to get a lot better reception than the latter, which I wouldn't have expected. Both are kind of hyperpersonal and navel-gazey in different ways, and I might have expected my id to be too weird and embarrassing for others to enjoy, while we are all in this fandom business because we like these characters and this setting and want to dig in more? But it actually turns out that when I try to play with two characters like action figures and puzzle out how they would fit together, that's more of a fun activity for me and less fun to read, while there are more people who enjoy my deeply embarrassing and privately clutched iddy likes than I would have thought...
Fandom: I actually wrote a ton more of the same fandoms than I thought I would, especially Genshin. I feel this is kind of unusual for multifandom exchange participants. The only new fandoms I wrote this year were Leverage and Slay the Spire, both surprising in different ways.
What’s your favorite story this year? I'm just gonna say it again for the third year in a row. I like working on my WIP. I'm making such slow progress and I take so many pauses but it's the story I wanted to read so it's my personal fave. I didn't feel my updates this year were as high quality as some of my earlier installments but I still want to make more when I can!
Okay, NOW your most popular story. Replenish the Sea - speaking of embarrassing iddy likes, I wrote this for Bulletproof and was shocked by how popular it was. It's Neuvillette/Wriothesley, sure, but a lot more popular than the one I wrote for FIAB (though, as noted in previous Year in Reviews, fics posted earlier in the year will obviously have a lot more reads than fics posted more recently). Mostly I'm always baffled when I find out other people are into my messed up likes and it's not just me digging my own weird gremlin hole in the muck.
Story most underappreciated by the universe? Nothing really! I suppose I'll put The Cracked Core since I think more people should play Slay the Spire and get deeply sucked into it and lose hundreds of hours of their precious life like me (speaking of crack, ahem), but for a niche Yuletide fandom I was really happy with the reception.
Story that could have been better? I'm not really happy with how the Baizhu/Zhongli fic turned out. I'm not very good at writing shippy things in the first place, but even then I could have leaned into it more. In hindsight, having Baizhu treat an illness of Zhongli's would have increased the stakes and intimacy, but I got intrigued to write outsider POV after seeing it on the recip's likes, and I had that last scene in mind from the start.
Saddest story? Didn't really write anything sad. Hit Me like a Food Truck came close since it was almost set after the death of Musashi's father, but then I thought that was not a very good start to a gift, so it was him dealing with his father's canon hospitalization instead, which is also a bit of a downer - even if the rest of the story is just zany hijinks as usual for that crowd.
Most fun? Heart Tell the Tale was silly fluff, I thought that fit the vibe of a 500k celebration.
Most fucked-up story? Didn't really write anything fucked up, but Comes When Called had some skeevy power dynamics (and also some improbable sexual actions that one might described as logistically fucked up).
Hardest story to write? By Land or By Sea - I really wanted to get down the Neuvillette/Wriothesley pre-canon dynamic that was in my head, but I struggled to match what I had envisioned. I think that struggle also turned it more from the "id fic" category to the "puzzle over how their relationship would be" category that I mentioned above. But I'm still happy with how it turned out!
Easiest/most fun story to write? I feel like I struggled with inspiration a lot this year, but once I got the general idea/outline down, the rest came together smoothly. But I will say my Bulletproof fics were very fun to write.
Top five scenes you would like to see illustrated: I just received a wonderful commission from FTH for an illustration of my very first longfic, so I'm thrilled about that! For this year, I'd say Neuvillette as a figurehead in "Replenish the Sea" (with Wriothesley staring up at him with his lantern), the Medusa Device treatment chamber from "You Are Pain Pinned to Muscle", Ukyou listening for Senkuu's heartbeat in "Heart Tell the Tale", Changsheng and Zhongli in their new forms in "The Poison Makes the Cure", and the gang crammed into the titular food truck in "Hit Me Like a Food Truck".
Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them? No big risks, I think. I played around with adding links to the StS wiki in the text of "The Cracked Core", but then I thought that was kind of silly/intrusive so I added a workskin to hide them. Also in "By Land or By Sea", I wrote something completely stupid ("salt-and-ocean hair" for Neuvillette's blue and white hair... you know, like salt-and-pepper hair... but like the ocean is salty...??) and just couldn't resist the urge to keep it in there. I'm still waiting to get roasted for that but thankfully people seem to have glossed over it in 10k words lol.
What are your fic writing goals for next year? Work on my personal projects!! Finish my WIPs!! This is the year!!
no subject
Date: 2025-01-03 08:49 pm (UTC)And your tables <3
Also, the distribution of fandoms! Genshin is eternal, isn't it.
omgg, your favorite first line is so intriguing ;D Love it
Both are kind of hyperpersonal and navel-gazey in different ways, and I might have expected my id to be too weird and embarrassing for others to enjoy, while we are all in this fandom business because we like these characters and this setting and want to dig in more?
Interesting to see your breakdown of different kinds of fic, and the different reception! I feel like I've had the same thing happen to me, where indulgent iddy things do a lot better, even if I put less effort into them.
me digging my own weird gremlin hole in the muck.
what an image ;D
people should play Slay the Spire and get deeply sucked into it and lose hundreds of hours of their precious life like me
LOL, this is why I refuse to play Slay the Spire ;P Every time someone recommends it to me I mentally make a note to not play it, because I just know I will spend my one wild and precious life glued to a screen playing it (and dying a lot).
Also, the commissioned art is pretty.
no subject
Date: 2025-01-05 06:06 pm (UTC)Why so much Genshin?? I have some questions for myself lol.
indulgent iddy things do a lot better, even if I put less effort into them.
Yeah!! This is why I feel like fanfiction is not just about the fandom. It's about the tropes that you often can't get (or find as neatly organized) in traditionally published fiction.
You are so wise to avoid Slay the Spire hahaha.
no subject
Date: 2025-01-05 08:05 pm (UTC)This is why I feel like fanfiction is not just about the fandom. It's about the tropes that you often can't get (or find as neatly organized) in traditionally published fiction.
Agreed! It's definitely true for people like me who jump around fandoms faster than a snake sheds its skin. xD I think as a Battleship person, it's also about the delight of seeing other people write indulgent iddy things, knowing they had fun and wanted to share it and also just seeing how much fun and good reading can come out of something that's written quickly.
no subject
Date: 2025-01-12 05:48 pm (UTC)That is so fun! It's a way more active, real-time way to do fic. I can definitely understand why you enjoy Battleship so much!
no subject
Date: 2025-01-04 02:22 pm (UTC)Id is an interesting thing where I'm always like
Other people ids: Very cool, I love it, do more!
My id: very embarrassing, reason unknown
I like "salt-and-ocean hair" lol. And I love "By Land or By Sea"!
I also want to finish my WIPS ;;
Hope the new year calms down a little for you!
no subject
Date: 2025-01-05 06:07 pm (UTC)My id: very embarrassing, reason unknown
OMG this is me entirely!!! I feel like it's because I've spent a long time furtively hiding these things so it just feels instinctual lol.
Thank you!! And good luck with your WIPs also! :)
no subject
Date: 2025-01-04 09:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-01-05 06:08 pm (UTC)Good luck to you as well! :D
no subject
Date: 2025-01-05 08:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-01-12 05:49 pm (UTC)