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fourteenacross · 6 years

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2017 Fic Year in Review

2017 in fic! I still have to get used to this looking so different to how it looked from like, 2007 to 2015. I also did a lot of like...weird not!quite!fic things? Which I’m counting in my word count, just because I did put thought into them? But I’m not sure if I should? I don’t know. Anyway, I’ve had two glasses of champagne and a glass of red wine, so WHATEVER. Hamilton: Ghosthunters full-length fic Birthday Shots (2069) Commercialism, Merit Badges, and Liquid Courage (8179) Communicable (24382) Well Deserved Recognition (3738) Truth or Dare, Jungle Juice, and a Linen Closet (8532) Q&A Saturday - June 6, 2015 (1120) everyone must breathe until their dying breath (116,690*)

Ghosthunters ficlets: Mattie and Alex texting (1708) John and Francis at boarding school (794) Washington after the air grows cold around me and you (423) August 14 (573) Molly and the haunted chair (1159) Laf's sad Christmas (1656) John on the phone with his dad (1543) John's PoV on Alex's birthday body shots (1606) Alex and John's tattoo (2326) John at the beginning of but i won't go far away (1032) John draws Alex (1888) John is reckless (2036) John explains his tattoo (1307) John and Alex eat poptarts in bed (1924) Jo and Mattie, Jo realizes she's in love (715) John's birthday and turtles (1275)

Ghosthunters apocrypha: John's in the hospital (840) The Schuyler-Hamilton-Laurenses get a dog (332) July 12 (1634) August 27 (1535) November 24 (4020)

Three sentence ficlets: Herc and breakfast (129) Angelica leaving for London (canon fic) (133) John falling in love (102) Alex and art (119) Ghosthunters + tetanus shots (161) Eliza, first day of summer (113) Laf meeting George and Martha for the first time (180) John, first kiss with a boy (165) Burr, drunk and alone (172) John and Francis, getting together (164)

Ghosthunters Not!Fic: John and Mattie, fake dating (2563)

Non-Ghosthunters Hamilton fic: John and Alex share a bed on a roadtrip (2396) Supplemental not!fic to the above (2497) Alex and John on the dance floor with a surprise slow song (2038) Alex and John, almost drowning (3076) Supplement to the above (2335)

Not!Fic: John and his ghost boyfriend (4555) John and Alex, "summer in the city" roommates for a summer internship AU (1491) John and Alex, "may we meet again" teen besties meet again as adults and fall in love AU (2347) Hamilton noir AU, "we get the job done" (1522) Alex and John, "the world turned upside down" BFFs -> lovers AU (6161) Fem4Ham, "helpless" soulmate AU (6613)

Gravity Falls: Mabel, first crush on a girl (118)

Great Comet Not!Fic: Sonya, No One is Alone (756)

MCU: Sam and Steve and trick-or-treaters (467)

Grand Total Fandoms: 4 Total Full Length Fic: 7 Total Ficlets: 46 Grand Total Stories: 53 Grand Total Word Count: 235,409*

* I'm including all the words of the ghosthunters summer story that I’ve written so far, even the ones that haven’t been posted.

Overall Thoughts: Man, this list looks so long, but it’s still so far off the mark that I had intended to hit.

This was a hard year, creatively. It was for everyone, I think, but after having a really great upswing in 2016 when my meds had leveled out, it felt particularly dire to me, even though I knew I wasn’t alone. It’s hard to absorb that sometimes, you know?

I’m disappointed I didn’t finish this summer story before the end of the year. I was making very good time this summer and cranked out like 60k words on a really good schedule. I took a break for DragonCon and the associated scrambling and packing, and then never got back on the horse. It’s one of those things where I can’t tell if it was self-discipline or brain stuff or exhaustion, but I’m mad at myself all the same, cause I’m like that. I’ve still got another 30k to write and I’m going to try to get back on a schedule and stick to it to push out these last couple scenes, but I still keep kicking myself about the whole thing.

A lot of it comes back to something I was talking about in last year’s round up, which is not having, essentially, @pearlo in this fandom. I spent like, five years sending Erica a constant stream of fic ideas and dialogue snippets and talking out every fic idea and texting her in the middle of the night with AUs and all sorts of other shit and it’s a hard transition to not having that built in. It was how I worked out a lot of issues and also expressed a lot of joy. It feels a little like screaming into a void on here, at times, and while you’re all lovely and I appreciate all your encouragement and feedback, talking about your own work all the time occasionally makes one feel like an egomaniac. So...that’s a thing.

On to more positive things! I really liked doing those sort of not!fic things--it got some of my creative juices flowing when I was blocked on ghosthunters and scratched the itch of starting a zillion stories that I had great ideas for but no time to actually follow to the finish line. Doing ficlet memes and stuff, too, felt really good, taking requests and such. Holding in-person writing dates was super helpful, and having @lisapizza around to occasionally badger into hanging out with me so I could talk about this shit.

Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you'd predicted? I definitely expected to finish more, but numberwise and contentwise. I probably shouldn’t be surprised that I got much less done than I intended, given how weird the whole year has been, but I’m still kind of bummed. What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted in January? Hmmmmm....I don’t know that there’s anything that I wouldn’t have predicted? Everything is pretty on par with what I’ve been doing for the past couple years? What's your own favorite story of the year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you happiest? I loved a lot of the stories I wrote this year, because I'm super obsessed with myself. [[< -- I think I've kept that sentence in for the past few years because it remains true]] It’s hard to name anything other than everyone must breathe until their dying breath. I’ve been working on it for two years, on and off, and it was one of the first bits of character building I did as I started to create the verse. There are a lot of wonderful little character moments in it and a lot of parts I really just genuinely enjoyed writing.

Communicable was also something I was working on for a while, and there are so many lovely quiet moments. @the-everqueen actually pulled out my favorite bit of that story for commentary--that whole night they spend together at the Washingtons’ and John’s conversation with Martha the next morning were a joy to write.

Outside of the ghosthunters, the #fem4ham soulmate AU has eaten my brain and soul, and the ficlet about John and Alex sharing a bed really made me wish I had a million extra hours in the day to write about that universe’s John and his struggles. Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them? Not any huge ones? I think my biggest “risk” is the same mistake I make over and over again--feeling pressured to give people an ETA on the next story and then....totally missing that deadline. I’ve gotta stop doing that, for serious. My best story of this year: Definitely everyone must breathe until their dying breath. There are a LOT of moving parts on that thing that are still only slowly unfurling. I wish I had finished the whole thing in 2017 /o\ My most popular story of this year: Okay, see, chaptered stories totally throw off AO3 stats. Hit counts, kudos count, comment count...all of that is inflated by repeatedly pushing those fics to the top of the tags and having people come back for each chapter and all of that. Also, timing? The stuff that was up in January obviously has more hits than the stuff that only just came up in December.

That being said, I think everyone must breathe is probably my most popular fic, but who really knows? Story of mine most under-appreciated by the universe, in my opinion: I wouldn’t say any of the full-length fics are under-appreciated, but I’m so obsessed with the #fem4ham that I sometimes forget that it has less than thirty notes and no one but @lisapizza (and @charmingpplincardigans, based on her comments today at brunch) really cared about it when I posted it XD

Most fun story to write: I wrote Birthday Shots in one sitting and it was the kind of doofy, dialogue-based stuff that’s always pretty fun to play around with. I also liked the ghosthunters apocrypha with John being loopy on anesthesia, which I wrote entirely on the plane to Heroes. John’s ghost boyfriend not!fic was also the first of those that I did and it was pretty fun! Story with the single sexiest moment: Deffo the sex in the woods in VII of everyone must breathe until their dying breath. Story with the single sweetest moment: Hm. There’s a lot of sweet, that’s kind of my whole deal. I think maybe the first house-sitting scene or the train ride after seeing Ned in everyone must breathe until their dying breath. Most "Holy crap, that's wrong, even for you" story: Nothing really. Nothing cracky for me this year. Story that shifted my own perceptions of the characters: The sharing a bed story and its backstory supplement were probably the things that had characterizations most different from the ghosthunters. It was a very different world to pick apart as I was thinking those through. Hardest story to write: Seeing as how I’m STILL WRITING everyone must breathe until their dying breath it is DEFINITELY THAT ONE Biggest Disappointment: Just that I didn't finish more, I think. Biggest Surprise: That dumb bedsharing ficlet has over a hundred notes on tumblr. What the hell. I mean, I’m glad, but also surprised! Otherwise, I’m honestly just surprised you guys have stuck with me this long and been so incredibly patient 💜 Most Unintentionally Telling Story: Everything with Molly in everyone must breathe until their dying breath, for reasons that I’m foolishly hoping end up being moot, but realistically suspect are not going to come to fruition. Plans for the next year: Goals for 2018! 300,000 words! Getting through two more anchor stories! Writing a non-ghosthunters Ham!fic! Work on my dumb novel! Maybe try some nonfiction stuff! I don’t know, just try to be more flexible and kinder to myself, but also get things done? God, who knows, the world is on fire.

#2017 #writing is hard #stuff about me

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