Fanfic Year in Review 2018

[pedanther]

(memed from thisbluespirit, who did it properly, unlike what I'm about to do)

This is probably going to be very short this year, because I have only one completed fic, my contribution to this year's Remix Revival.

It's still going under a cut, because the fic I remixed had strong language in it, including the title and summary, and so does the remix.


Stats

List of Completed Fic
Teachable Fucking Moments (Lost in Fog Remix) (Inception, Arthur/Eames)

Total number: 1

Total word count: 1,096 (AO3 says 1,061, but it's not counting the epigraph)

Ship/character breakdown: Arthur/Eames (1)


Specifics:

Best/worst title?
It's okay. One of those titles where I came up with it at the last minute to replace something that really didn't work very well.

Best/worst summary?
I don't know. It's a paragraph from the story -- the first paragraph I wrote, and the one that points the direction this story takes from the story it's remixing. And it kind of echoes the summary of the original story. How it works for someone coming across the story cold, without knowing the original, I have no idea.

Best first line?
It's pretty good, the first paragraph. Does a good job of setting up the tone of the story.

Best last line?
Like the title, the best I can say for it is that until shortly before the deadline it was considerably worse.


General questions:

Looking back, did you write more fics than you thought you would this year, less than you thought, or about what you predicted?
Maybe slightly less. One work over 1000 words seems to be my speed, but in past years I've often managed a few ficlets as well. But I'm always pleasantly surprised to have finished anything.

What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted last year?
Yes. I have occasionally considered writing fic for Inception, but I'm more interested in the worldbuilding than the ships, and the Arthur/Eames ship in particular has never drawn my attention strongly; I'd never have written it if it hadn't been part of the prompt.

What's your favourite story this year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you the happiest.
Okay, NOW your most popular story.
Story most underappreciated by the universe?
I do genuinely like it, it probably wouldn't have qualified as my most popular if there had been any competition at all, but it would be wrong to call it underappreciated. The recipient was delighted with it (I'd been seriously worried that they might hate it), and that's good enough for me.

Story that could have been better?
Oh, probably. Couldn't they all? If you'd asked just after I'd written it, I could have given you chapter and verse on where I didn't achieve everything I was aiming for, but I re-read it a while later and actually I quite like how it turned out.

Sexiest story?
Not really. It might be an Arthur/Eames story, but it's still an Arthur/Eames story written by me.

Saddest story?
Most fun?
Story with single sweetest moment?
Hardest story to write?
Easiest/most fun story to write?
Yes.

Most overdue story?
No. As usual, if there was a deadline I got it finished on time. It's the ones that don't have deadlines that languish unfinished (and therefore are beyond the scope of this question).

Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?
This was my first time doing a proper remix, and it ended up being an unfamiliar pairing in an unfamiliar fandom. (When it came to the fandoms we matched on, I loved what the original author had done -- the Arthurian stories are particularly neat -- but couldn't think of anything I could add to them.) And because it was a remix I spent a lot of time worrying that the original author would hate it, but it turned out okay.

There was an interesting point during the writing of it, not directly related to it being a remix: Usually, when I get a story idea, I either know where it's going from the outset, or it never ends up getting written, because my brain doesn't like going to all that effort when I don't even know where I'm going. With this one, the story idea was all beginning: I knew where and how it started, enough to get the first scene down, but I had no idea at first where it was going from there. But it was the only story idea I had, so I kept puzzling at it, and eventually I figured out where it had to be going -- and my brain immediately lost interest in writing the rest of the story, because why did I need to go to all that effort when I already knew how it ended? And that lasted a week or two before I found a way to get my brain interested in writing the story again, and I remember thinking that I had learned a valuable thing about how to get around my brain in this situation. But I'm not sure now that I remember what it was that I did...

This year's theme and the story that demonstrates it most:
Your guess is as good as mine.

What are your fic writing goals for next year?
Write something.

Comments

[thisbluespirit]

I don't think that's not doing it properly! Also, while it's definitely frustrating not writing as much as you want, I tend to wind up hating my stuff - I write too much, too carelessly, not like these people who write one thing but polish it carefully! You can't win?

Didn't you move this year? That would take up more than enough energy that writing would inevitably get shoved aside.

Saddest story?
Most fun?
Story with single sweetest moment?
Hardest story to write?
Easiest/most fun story to write?
Yes.

LOL.

What are your fic writing goals for next year?
Write something.

The best goal.

[pedanther]

"properly" isn't really the right word, true. What I meant to say, before I overcondensed it, is that anybody encountering the meme for the first time and unsure how it's supposed to be done won't get the best guidance from using this post as an example and would do better looking to somebody who wrote enough separate stories for the questions to mean something.