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2010 fanfic review meme
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lost_spook
Completed fics
Drabble meme ficlets:
"Delilah Tod being forced to team up with Jack Harkness" (100 words, Doctor Who/This Time Round)
"what the world (or australia specifically!) thinks about and how it deals with having all those identical cats" (100 words, The True Meaning of Smekday)
Poetic half-drabble meme ficlets:
Batman / 'but on the whole fifty was a mess as though' (50 words, Batman)
Doctor Who / 'The laughing flowers that round them blow' (50 words Doctor Who)
The Muppet Show / 'there I saw hope barbed as barbed wire.' (50 words, The Muppet Show)
The Pretender / 'To lend an Ample Sinew' (50 words, The Pretender)
The Diogenes Club / 'Which helpless Nature drops' (50 words, The Diogenes Club)
Sapphire & Steel / 'An' found myself in seven days of mostly atmosphere' (50 words, Sapphire & Steel)
Other ficlets:
Poker Night: Count the Jacks (200 words, Doctor Who/Stargate SG-1/Pirates of the Caribbean/The Incredibles)
'but on the whole fifty was a mess as though', director's cut (100 words, Batman)
Total: 9 ficlets, 750 words
Looking back, did you write more fics than you thought you would this year, less than you thought, or about what you predicted?
More: I didn't expect to write any fics; I hadn't written any in over a year, and I pretty much assumed I was done with writing. The way I kept dobbing myself in for writing memes this year suggests I may have been wrong on that one.
Where did you publish/archive your stories?
The meme ficlets first appeared on Livejournal, "Poker Night: Count the Jacks" on alt.drwho.creative. They variously found their way into The This Time Round Archive, A Teaspoon And An Open Mind, and/or An Archive of Our Own, as appropriate.
What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted in January 2010?
The True Meaning of Smekday, both because I hadn't read it yet then, and because even after I read it I'd never have attempted fanfic of it without the external prompt.
What’s your favorite story this year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you the happiest.
The Doctor & Romana vignette. Most of the others give me a feeling that I didn't quite get what I was trying for, one way or another, but I'm happy with the way this one turned out.
Also, the story itself makes me happy.
Okay, NOW your most popular story.
Popular? Well, the Doctor & Romana vignette got three times as many comments as any of the others, which is to say that it got three comments.
...no, I tell a lie: "Poker Night: Count the Jacks" got four.
Story most underappreciated by the universe?
Going to have to say the Doctor & Romana vignette again - it seems to have made the few people who read it happy, but it would have nice if it could have reached a wider audience and made them happy too.
(Most of the rest, as I said, I myself think could have turned out better, so it's hard to argue if the universe isn't keen on them. And actually, nearly all of them got at least one appreciative comment, which is not bad going.)
Story that could have been better?
Most of the meme ficlets really wanted to be longer, and I had to chop bits out to make them fit the pre-ordained word count. That trick, Bullwinkle, never works.
I particularly regret the Jack & Delilah vignette; it's all right, but it's missing nearly all the stuff I wanted to say about Delilah trying her wiles on Jack and Jack explaining that he wasn't interested.
Sexiest story?
In a story I wrote?
Okay, maybe the Jack & Delilah vignette, if I'd managed to fit in the bit where she was trying her wiles. Not so much the published version, though.
Most fun story?
The one with the flowers and the laughing.
The Batman scenario was a lot of fun in my head, but I think I mostly failed to transfer it to the page.
Story with single sweetest moment?
The Doctor & Romana vignette, hands down, if you read it as shippy. (Come to think of it, it's probably well in front even if you don't.)
The story that made you cry?
None of them. It takes a better writer than me to make me cry.
Hardest story to write?
Because they were mostly meme ficlets, there's a lot of overlap in the kind of hard the hard-to-write ones were: first, difficulty coming up with something to fit the prompt, then difficulty cramming it into the pre-ordained word count. At this point, none of them stand out in memory as being especially more difficult.
Easiest story to write?
The Doctor & Romana vignette, as I noted at the time, showed up more or less fully-formed as soon as I read the prompt.
Most overdue story?
All of the stories I worked on in 2010 were finished in a timely manner.
This, however, politely ignores the incomplete stuff that's so bogged down I haven't worked on any of it for over a year. There is, for instance, The One With Susan, which I've made no real progress on since 2007. Or 'Dark Carnival', which asyouknowBob started in 2002 and has now spent more time stalled than it has spent moving. (I've known how it ends since 2005 - it's just everything that goes before that which is giving me trouble.)
Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?
This is my first year trying fanfic prompt memes, I think. I did it because a drabble here or there didn't seem like it would be too much trouble, and so the main thing I learned (as if I didn't ought to know by now!) is that trying to fit an idea into a drabble or half-drabble often is a lot of trouble, just in a different way.
Do you have any fanfic goals for the New Year?
No. It would be nice to make some progress on the stalled stuff, or write something longer than a double-drabble, but I'm not expecting it to happen.
lost_spookCompleted fics
Drabble meme ficlets:
"Delilah Tod being forced to team up with Jack Harkness" (100 words, Doctor Who/This Time Round)
"what the world (or australia specifically!) thinks about and how it deals with having all those identical cats" (100 words, The True Meaning of Smekday)
Poetic half-drabble meme ficlets:
Batman / 'but on the whole fifty was a mess as though' (50 words, Batman)
Doctor Who / 'The laughing flowers that round them blow' (50 words Doctor Who)
The Muppet Show / 'there I saw hope barbed as barbed wire.' (50 words, The Muppet Show)
The Pretender / 'To lend an Ample Sinew' (50 words, The Pretender)
The Diogenes Club / 'Which helpless Nature drops' (50 words, The Diogenes Club)
Sapphire & Steel / 'An' found myself in seven days of mostly atmosphere' (50 words, Sapphire & Steel)
Other ficlets:
Poker Night: Count the Jacks (200 words, Doctor Who/Stargate SG-1/Pirates of the Caribbean/The Incredibles)
'but on the whole fifty was a mess as though', director's cut (100 words, Batman)
Total: 9 ficlets, 750 words
Looking back, did you write more fics than you thought you would this year, less than you thought, or about what you predicted?
More: I didn't expect to write any fics; I hadn't written any in over a year, and I pretty much assumed I was done with writing. The way I kept dobbing myself in for writing memes this year suggests I may have been wrong on that one.
Where did you publish/archive your stories?
The meme ficlets first appeared on Livejournal, "Poker Night: Count the Jacks" on alt.drwho.creative. They variously found their way into The This Time Round Archive, A Teaspoon And An Open Mind, and/or An Archive of Our Own, as appropriate.
What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted in January 2010?
The True Meaning of Smekday, both because I hadn't read it yet then, and because even after I read it I'd never have attempted fanfic of it without the external prompt.
What’s your favorite story this year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you the happiest.
The Doctor & Romana vignette. Most of the others give me a feeling that I didn't quite get what I was trying for, one way or another, but I'm happy with the way this one turned out.
Also, the story itself makes me happy.
Okay, NOW your most popular story.
Popular? Well, the Doctor & Romana vignette got three times as many comments as any of the others, which is to say that it got three comments.
...no, I tell a lie: "Poker Night: Count the Jacks" got four.
Story most underappreciated by the universe?
Going to have to say the Doctor & Romana vignette again - it seems to have made the few people who read it happy, but it would have nice if it could have reached a wider audience and made them happy too.
(Most of the rest, as I said, I myself think could have turned out better, so it's hard to argue if the universe isn't keen on them. And actually, nearly all of them got at least one appreciative comment, which is not bad going.)
Story that could have been better?
Most of the meme ficlets really wanted to be longer, and I had to chop bits out to make them fit the pre-ordained word count. That trick, Bullwinkle, never works.
I particularly regret the Jack & Delilah vignette; it's all right, but it's missing nearly all the stuff I wanted to say about Delilah trying her wiles on Jack and Jack explaining that he wasn't interested.
Sexiest story?
In a story I wrote?
Okay, maybe the Jack & Delilah vignette, if I'd managed to fit in the bit where she was trying her wiles. Not so much the published version, though.
Most fun story?
The one with the flowers and the laughing.
The Batman scenario was a lot of fun in my head, but I think I mostly failed to transfer it to the page.
Story with single sweetest moment?
The Doctor & Romana vignette, hands down, if you read it as shippy. (Come to think of it, it's probably well in front even if you don't.)
The story that made you cry?
None of them. It takes a better writer than me to make me cry.
Hardest story to write?
Because they were mostly meme ficlets, there's a lot of overlap in the kind of hard the hard-to-write ones were: first, difficulty coming up with something to fit the prompt, then difficulty cramming it into the pre-ordained word count. At this point, none of them stand out in memory as being especially more difficult.
Easiest story to write?
The Doctor & Romana vignette, as I noted at the time, showed up more or less fully-formed as soon as I read the prompt.
Most overdue story?
All of the stories I worked on in 2010 were finished in a timely manner.
This, however, politely ignores the incomplete stuff that's so bogged down I haven't worked on any of it for over a year. There is, for instance, The One With Susan, which I've made no real progress on since 2007. Or 'Dark Carnival', which asyouknowBob started in 2002 and has now spent more time stalled than it has spent moving. (I've known how it ends since 2005 - it's just everything that goes before that which is giving me trouble.)
Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?
This is my first year trying fanfic prompt memes, I think. I did it because a drabble here or there didn't seem like it would be too much trouble, and so the main thing I learned (as if I didn't ought to know by now!) is that trying to fit an idea into a drabble or half-drabble often is a lot of trouble, just in a different way.
Do you have any fanfic goals for the New Year?
No. It would be nice to make some progress on the stalled stuff, or write something longer than a double-drabble, but I'm not expecting it to happen.