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Time for the year-end recap. I'm a little disappointed at my fic writing in 2009, but I had a lot of real life going on, including a lot of academic writing, that made it hard to keep up. I'm doing a sort of mash-up of at least two different versions of the year-end roundup, taken from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
aurora_novarum and sg_fignewton.
My stories: Pretty much all gen.
May 2009: I finally posted "Zephyr", an Asgard-centered epilogue to the series, after contemplating it for . . . when did they show "Unending" again? That long. It's about 4,000 words.
Also posted in May, amazingly enough: "Fresh Scars", the first installment in my epic Primeval AU. I mean "epic" in length, since this one is 51,000 words, and I have three more stories in my head. Brilliant Husband is currently reading the next one (nudge, nudge), and I'm beginning to doubt I'll get through all of them.
August 2009 in LJ, October 2009 on my website: "Vale, amice", written for Fig's Alphabet Soup, the Jacob version, in August; it's a Jacob Carter (SG-1) story set near the end of s8. It's almost exactly a thousand words.
October 2009: "Sunrise over Eden", a Deep Space Nine story centered on Amsha Bashir, written for the![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
matrithon community. 2,000 words.
My favorite story this year (of my own): I have to say "Fresh Scars"; I really enjoyed writing a long story with something resembling plot. It's not an adventure story, which I do hope the third installment will be, at least in part; it's very character-driven. It goes somewhere, however, where the others are more snapshots of specific moments, one scene each.
Story most under-appreciated by the universe, in my opinion: I wish I could be like Fig and say that I never feel my work is underappreciated, but I'm not that generous. I will say, however, that I'm actually more disappointed by the receptionmatrithon as a whole received than I am with the reception of my own story, though I had hoped "Sunrise over Eden" would attract a few more readers than it seems to have done. Many of us have complained about the dearth of fic about women, particularly older women. I know some of the fandoms in Matrithon were old or even obscure, but golly, it looked to me like most people got very little response. So I take this opportunity to urge you to trek on over to Matrithon and see if you can find a story to like or love!
Most fun story: "Fresh Scars," oddly enough. Yes, I have angst, but I thought I put a fair amount of humor in there. Some of these characters practically wrote themselves when I put them in a room in a particular situation. Nick and Stephen talking about head injuries, Lester abusing people . . . it just flowed, and I still smile when I reread bits of it.
Stories I Wrote That I Never Thought I'd Write: "Sunrise over Eden." I wasn't ever going to write DS9 fic. I wasn't going to participate in Matrithon, either, but I saw the prompt "Amsha Bashir: prison widow" and had to have it. I knew just what I would write. I rewatched the episode and changed my ideas almost entirely.
Hardest story to write: "Fresh Scars," for its length and complexity; "Zephyr" took me the longest to work out, though. I've been thinking about it ever since that final episode of the series.
Biggest Disappointment: That I didn't write more SG-1 fic. In terms of individual stories, I didn't get "Vale, amice" quite the way I wanted. Other people wrote fic about the same event, and some of them did better! (I suppose it's conceited of me to think I'd like mine best.)
Biggest Surprise: I get two, in two different fandoms:
SGA: "Every Day," an SGA story (epilogue to "Sunday" and "Submersion") won an honorable mention in the 2008 Stargate Fan Awards. Not only was this a surprise because I never received many comments on this fic (nor many hits), I read the list of winners and didn't realize I'd received an honorable mention until some time later!
Primeval: This fandom has welcomed me with open arms. I came out of nowhere, convinced someone whose stories I liked to beta for me (kristen_mara), wrote a story that exceeded fifty thousand words, and people read it and told me they really liked it. Some corrected my Brit fails, in the nicest possible way, and offered to help with future efforts. Wow. Stargate has been an incredibly welcoming fandom too, and I'm not putting down SG fandom in any way—I just never expected to find another fandom like it.
Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you'd predicted? Way, way less. That's partly the way the year end falls; I hope that once BH has finished with my latest Primeval story, I can get it out to betas (be prepared, betas!) and then finalize it in relatively short order.
I really thought I'd write more SG-1. I do have a Vala idea, Fig! I just got it way too late for the Alphabet Soup next week, and it will be long and possibly plotty, if I ever get it right in my head. I have a couple of stories that have been on the back burner forever; I hope to get to those in the summer. Yes, I said summer.
Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them? The trouble is you all won't have seen much of this: my writing risk of the year is creating an original character who becomes really important, but it's Noel Miller, whom you hardly see in "Fresh Scars." He's way more important in the next installment, and I think I'm pretty happy with how he is turning out. (He has an excess of back story that will probably never ever make it to the screen, even if I write all I plan and more.)
Did you meet last year's goals? Oh, crud: I had to look back at last year's entry to see what I wrote for "goals," and here it is:
"I want to get back to writing more Stargate; I have a long, plotty SG-1 story I want to write in 2009. I just need to figure out what happens and in which season to set it; I'm conflicted. It's nine or ten, just so no classic team fans are disappointed. I have a few earlier ones I want to write too. I have another SGA story to tell. I definitely want to complete my Primeval story--and I've already got scenes from a sequel in mind! Uh-oh!"
So that would be a resounding "no" for meeting last year's goals.
Do you have any goals for the coming year? To meet last year's goals?
aurora_novarum and sg_fignewton.My stories: Pretty much all gen.
May 2009: I finally posted "Zephyr", an Asgard-centered epilogue to the series, after contemplating it for . . . when did they show "Unending" again? That long. It's about 4,000 words.
Also posted in May, amazingly enough: "Fresh Scars", the first installment in my epic Primeval AU. I mean "epic" in length, since this one is 51,000 words, and I have three more stories in my head. Brilliant Husband is currently reading the next one (nudge, nudge), and I'm beginning to doubt I'll get through all of them.
August 2009 in LJ, October 2009 on my website: "Vale, amice", written for Fig's Alphabet Soup, the Jacob version, in August; it's a Jacob Carter (SG-1) story set near the end of s8. It's almost exactly a thousand words.
October 2009: "Sunrise over Eden", a Deep Space Nine story centered on Amsha Bashir, written for the
matrithon community. 2,000 words.My favorite story this year (of my own): I have to say "Fresh Scars"; I really enjoyed writing a long story with something resembling plot. It's not an adventure story, which I do hope the third installment will be, at least in part; it's very character-driven. It goes somewhere, however, where the others are more snapshots of specific moments, one scene each.
Story most under-appreciated by the universe, in my opinion: I wish I could be like Fig and say that I never feel my work is underappreciated, but I'm not that generous. I will say, however, that I'm actually more disappointed by the reception
matrithon as a whole received than I am with the reception of my own story, though I had hoped "Sunrise over Eden" would attract a few more readers than it seems to have done. Many of us have complained about the dearth of fic about women, particularly older women. I know some of the fandoms in Matrithon were old or even obscure, but golly, it looked to me like most people got very little response. So I take this opportunity to urge you to trek on over to Matrithon and see if you can find a story to like or love!Most fun story: "Fresh Scars," oddly enough. Yes, I have angst, but I thought I put a fair amount of humor in there. Some of these characters practically wrote themselves when I put them in a room in a particular situation. Nick and Stephen talking about head injuries, Lester abusing people . . . it just flowed, and I still smile when I reread bits of it.
Stories I Wrote That I Never Thought I'd Write: "Sunrise over Eden." I wasn't ever going to write DS9 fic. I wasn't going to participate in Matrithon, either, but I saw the prompt "Amsha Bashir: prison widow" and had to have it. I knew just what I would write. I rewatched the episode and changed my ideas almost entirely.
Hardest story to write: "Fresh Scars," for its length and complexity; "Zephyr" took me the longest to work out, though. I've been thinking about it ever since that final episode of the series.
Biggest Disappointment: That I didn't write more SG-1 fic. In terms of individual stories, I didn't get "Vale, amice" quite the way I wanted. Other people wrote fic about the same event, and some of them did better! (I suppose it's conceited of me to think I'd like mine best.)
Biggest Surprise: I get two, in two different fandoms:
SGA: "Every Day," an SGA story (epilogue to "Sunday" and "Submersion") won an honorable mention in the 2008 Stargate Fan Awards. Not only was this a surprise because I never received many comments on this fic (nor many hits), I read the list of winners and didn't realize I'd received an honorable mention until some time later!
Primeval: This fandom has welcomed me with open arms. I came out of nowhere, convinced someone whose stories I liked to beta for me (
kristen_mara), wrote a story that exceeded fifty thousand words, and people read it and told me they really liked it. Some corrected my Brit fails, in the nicest possible way, and offered to help with future efforts. Wow. Stargate has been an incredibly welcoming fandom too, and I'm not putting down SG fandom in any way—I just never expected to find another fandom like it.Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you'd predicted? Way, way less. That's partly the way the year end falls; I hope that once BH has finished with my latest Primeval story, I can get it out to betas (be prepared, betas!) and then finalize it in relatively short order.
I really thought I'd write more SG-1. I do have a Vala idea, Fig! I just got it way too late for the Alphabet Soup next week, and it will be long and possibly plotty, if I ever get it right in my head. I have a couple of stories that have been on the back burner forever; I hope to get to those in the summer. Yes, I said summer.
Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them? The trouble is you all won't have seen much of this: my writing risk of the year is creating an original character who becomes really important, but it's Noel Miller, whom you hardly see in "Fresh Scars." He's way more important in the next installment, and I think I'm pretty happy with how he is turning out. (He has an excess of back story that will probably never ever make it to the screen, even if I write all I plan and more.)
Did you meet last year's goals? Oh, crud: I had to look back at last year's entry to see what I wrote for "goals," and here it is:
"I want to get back to writing more Stargate; I have a long, plotty SG-1 story I want to write in 2009. I just need to figure out what happens and in which season to set it; I'm conflicted. It's nine or ten, just so no classic team fans are disappointed. I have a few earlier ones I want to write too. I have another SGA story to tell. I definitely want to complete my Primeval story--and I've already got scenes from a sequel in mind! Uh-oh!"
So that would be a resounding "no" for meeting last year's goals.
Do you have any goals for the coming year? To meet last year's goals?
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I'm bookmarking this page so I can come back in 2010 to read these stories.
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(translation from modern English: I back you in whatsoever you decide)
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I'm very much looking forward to the sequel to "Fresh Scars" (and as a beta, half the fun is getting to see it well before posting). I'm so glad you contacted me re betaing "Fresh Scars" in the first place - a well written and long story where Stephen survives and he and Nick set about patching up their friendship will always get my attention ;) And you came up with a great theory re head injuries and Primeval. Hee
Also hope you do get to write the others in this series - are you working on story 3 while BH edits story 2?
Good luck with the writing this year - I'll keep waving a banner for your progress.
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Oh, I wish! I wanted to, but the house is a wreck. Other people say that and don't mean it, but I know what the aftermath of a tropical storm looks like, and that's our house right now. The only difference is that it's not wet inside (much); my home office floor is covered with books, papers, and magazines, and some rooms are worse. I've also had unexpected work dumped in my lap a few times in the last month. I'm nowhere near done with that, and my head hasn't been in a fic-writing place. I do hope to start the third installment this month. The worst thing is that I had huge chunks in my head—I like to work out bits in my head while out walking, then I can rework them easily before they go on the page—but my brain decided to move onto installment five. Yes, that's right: five, not four. And four must come before five. I know the outlines of four, but I do need to write three and four before I can go on to five.
Plus I have these SG-1 stories. . . . I'm already planning writing for this summer, which will surely go better than last—jinxed myself, didn't I?