lady_ragnell (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lady_ragnell) wrote2021-01-01 10:21 pm
lady_ragnell) wrote2021-01-01 10:21 pm
Entry tags:
Writing Wrap-Up 2020
As I was mentioning in my catchall media post, it's been a creative year for me! I've learned some new skills and practiced other skills--did lots of art (including discovering that drawing fantasy maps is an absolute delight), did [redacted], sewed some holiday projects. I've got lots of creative goals this coming year, but I'll talk about that more at the end of this post. This is all about celebrating what I've done so far, and writing aside, I've done a whole lot, despite (and in some cases even because of) it being an absolutely dreadful year for humanity and for me.
Last year, I split my writing up into three categories, and I'm going to do the same again, for ease of reference.
Godsfall Recaps
My least read but most fun writing (isn't that always the way?). I continue to write at least one letter for every session of D&D I play, and often multiple ones when I'm inspired! I think I do some good work with these, actually, dealing with emotions, and if nothing else, they help me keep better track of what's going on in the game and make me a better and more engaged player, so they're worth doing even if they aren't widely read. I wrote something on the order of 80,000 words worth of recaps this year, though once again I'm unsure of the exact number, since I do them in large compendium documents. Anyone who wants to read along is more than welcome to go give them a try at letterstosestrilles on tumblr! If you do a chronological sort on the "in character" tag, you should get everything.
Fanfic
My AO3 count for the year is 176,263 words, though almost 50k of that is original work posted to the AO3. This is spread across six stories (including the original work) in five fandoms (again, including original work). The only fandom I wrote twice was my Five Dragons D&D fandom, which was a collective 100k, including a novel length Pride & Prejudice AU that I am ridiculously pleased with.
The three non-D&D fics were all written for exchanges or fests! I wrote a She-Ra fic to collaborate with knight_tracer for pod_together, a yearly favorite of a fest, and it was fun getting to try out a new fandom. And then there was Yuletide, where I wrote a Killjoys fic as my main assignment and fic for one of my favorite short stories, Vaughn's "That Game We Played During the War," as a treat. I meant to write more treats, but, well--it's been a weird year. I'm not going to beat myself up too much.
I said last year that I was almost certainly going to write Barbie: Star Light Adventure fic for the Be the First fest, only to discover there were something like 3 fics for it out there in the world (there are four now! Someone wrote me a lovely post-canon fic for Yuletide, along with my other amazing gift). This year, I also gave Once Upon a Fic a miss, I just wasn't feeling inspired since sign-ups were in the middle of my post-2019 burnout, but I'm hoping to do it again this year.
There were also, I would be remiss not to say, a few rounds of ficlets on my tumblr, which were probably another 30k+ across several fandoms and ships. I really ought to repost more of those, but that requires titles and summaries, which means I'm not as good about it as I should be. Still, I should have remembered to mention that last year too! I try to do at least one round of ficlets a year.
Original Work
I had two major original projects this year.
The first was Raised Roots, a novella I posted on the AO3 and spent much of the summer writing, the f/f soft cottagecore story I really just needed this year, with a witch and a pegasus farmer and a small town. A fantasy Hallmark movie, basically! I am so proud of it and I love it so dearly, and it was a little scary to put it out there in the world, but I'm glad I did. Part of me is a little offended that it didn't take off as much as, say, The Course of Honour did when that was posting, but this was fewer, longer chapters, and just didn't quite hit fandom's id as well as that did. It's a lesson in how far I have to go in learning how to market myself, I guess?
The other was my NaNo novel, which was another sci fi political marriage story like last year, in the same "series." (It's a series. I just refuse to call it a series for various reasons.) It came in around 96k, and it was really interesting to write! The POV character was an antagonist in the last two books, particularly the second one, and exploring his character, who he was and how to, if not redeem him, give him useful and good things to do going forward, was really rewarding, if occasionally stressful. It suffers from the same problem a lot of my books do, where 90% of the book is people in rooms having conversations, but at least many of them are interesting conversations?
What's Coming in 2021
I'm in one of those stages where I have so many ideas it's hard to know where to begin!
Unless a fandom besides D&D grabs me, my fanfic output is probably going to continue to be low--I plan to continue doing Yuletide, and pick Once Upon a Fic back up, and as long as knight_tracer wants to collaborate I'm in for pod_together, but other than that, it's going to be the D&D recaps and D&D fic. Which I love writing and am more invested in than anything else, but which selfishly ... well, part of the reason I got into fandom is because the validation is so addictive! When I don't get it, the original work tends to be more rewarding. So again, unless a megafandom grabs me (and even when I adored The Witcher, I didn't get any fic inspiration), it's going to be another year with more original work.
Last year, I split my writing up into three categories, and I'm going to do the same again, for ease of reference.
Godsfall Recaps
My least read but most fun writing (isn't that always the way?). I continue to write at least one letter for every session of D&D I play, and often multiple ones when I'm inspired! I think I do some good work with these, actually, dealing with emotions, and if nothing else, they help me keep better track of what's going on in the game and make me a better and more engaged player, so they're worth doing even if they aren't widely read. I wrote something on the order of 80,000 words worth of recaps this year, though once again I'm unsure of the exact number, since I do them in large compendium documents. Anyone who wants to read along is more than welcome to go give them a try at letterstosestrilles on tumblr! If you do a chronological sort on the "in character" tag, you should get everything.
Fanfic
My AO3 count for the year is 176,263 words, though almost 50k of that is original work posted to the AO3. This is spread across six stories (including the original work) in five fandoms (again, including original work). The only fandom I wrote twice was my Five Dragons D&D fandom, which was a collective 100k, including a novel length Pride & Prejudice AU that I am ridiculously pleased with.
The three non-D&D fics were all written for exchanges or fests! I wrote a She-Ra fic to collaborate with knight_tracer for pod_together, a yearly favorite of a fest, and it was fun getting to try out a new fandom. And then there was Yuletide, where I wrote a Killjoys fic as my main assignment and fic for one of my favorite short stories, Vaughn's "That Game We Played During the War," as a treat. I meant to write more treats, but, well--it's been a weird year. I'm not going to beat myself up too much.
I said last year that I was almost certainly going to write Barbie: Star Light Adventure fic for the Be the First fest, only to discover there were something like 3 fics for it out there in the world (there are four now! Someone wrote me a lovely post-canon fic for Yuletide, along with my other amazing gift). This year, I also gave Once Upon a Fic a miss, I just wasn't feeling inspired since sign-ups were in the middle of my post-2019 burnout, but I'm hoping to do it again this year.
There were also, I would be remiss not to say, a few rounds of ficlets on my tumblr, which were probably another 30k+ across several fandoms and ships. I really ought to repost more of those, but that requires titles and summaries, which means I'm not as good about it as I should be. Still, I should have remembered to mention that last year too! I try to do at least one round of ficlets a year.
Original Work
I had two major original projects this year.
The first was Raised Roots, a novella I posted on the AO3 and spent much of the summer writing, the f/f soft cottagecore story I really just needed this year, with a witch and a pegasus farmer and a small town. A fantasy Hallmark movie, basically! I am so proud of it and I love it so dearly, and it was a little scary to put it out there in the world, but I'm glad I did. Part of me is a little offended that it didn't take off as much as, say, The Course of Honour did when that was posting, but this was fewer, longer chapters, and just didn't quite hit fandom's id as well as that did. It's a lesson in how far I have to go in learning how to market myself, I guess?
The other was my NaNo novel, which was another sci fi political marriage story like last year, in the same "series." (It's a series. I just refuse to call it a series for various reasons.) It came in around 96k, and it was really interesting to write! The POV character was an antagonist in the last two books, particularly the second one, and exploring his character, who he was and how to, if not redeem him, give him useful and good things to do going forward, was really rewarding, if occasionally stressful. It suffers from the same problem a lot of my books do, where 90% of the book is people in rooms having conversations, but at least many of them are interesting conversations?
What's Coming in 2021
I'm in one of those stages where I have so many ideas it's hard to know where to begin!
Unless a fandom besides D&D grabs me, my fanfic output is probably going to continue to be low--I plan to continue doing Yuletide, and pick Once Upon a Fic back up, and as long as knight_tracer wants to collaborate I'm in for pod_together, but other than that, it's going to be the D&D recaps and D&D fic. Which I love writing and am more invested in than anything else, but which selfishly ... well, part of the reason I got into fandom is because the validation is so addictive! When I don't get it, the original work tends to be more rewarding. So again, unless a megafandom grabs me (and even when I adored The Witcher, I didn't get any fic inspiration), it's going to be another year with more original work.
And I have a lot of original work on my mind! I have two series I'm in the middle of (I'm still one deep in the Regency series from last year, and now I'm three deep in the sci fi political marriages. There will, if I have any restraint, be two left in the latter (and maybe some novellas???) and three novels and a novella in the former remaining). I have one very ambitious project that I'd love to dive into once I've done some really intensive worldbuilding and plotting. I have a few short story ideas I'd love to play with.
And also, I've said many times that the reason I'm not published yet is that I hate editing, but ... that's a terrible reason? So one of my goals for this year is to try doing some editing and get something in a shape where I might be able to send it out to be rejected by 8,000 agents in true writerly fashion. We'll see how that goes, I guess!