Writing Year in Review!

I was tagged by @pttucker to do one of these, so here we go!

January: ...Did I really start the year by posted Arthur & Eames’s KtCR epilogue? Was that really only this year? It feels like I wrote KtCR ages and ages ago, but apparently that was the first thing I posted this year. (The epilogue was definitely written long before this, I feel sure.) Later that same month, I spent basically an entire weekend stranded by a snowstorm. Someone came up with the idea of doing flash blizzard fics, which is how I wrote The Option of Furnishing a House with Blanket Forts, while I was sitting in the VIP room for Amtrak at Chicago Union Station. I had the VIP room admission because I’d paid for a sleeper car for my overnight train to Memphis, and I *loved* traveling by train, so much that I definitely wanted to write a fic about it but couldn’t really decide what kind of fic I wanted to write. So I borrowed an old trope and wrote a Five Times fic on the train: Five Times Arthur and Eames Met on a Train, And One Time They Definitely Didn’t.

February: In February I posted a little more to the Next Big Thing DVD commentary, which is something I really have to finish, sorry, guys. I also posted Valentine, a little ficlet in the Luckyverse, because I felt bad that I hadn’t had anything special planned for Valentine’s Day, oops. IO had some kind of fabulous idea during a watch party and I FINALLY wrote and posted a fic called Don’t Think About Elephants which I’d basically wanted to do ever since falling into the Inception fandom. Oh! And it was a leap year this year, which meant an extra writing day, so I wrote not one, but two fics, both called Bissextile, because, I don’t know, I thought that was clever or something.

March: In March I think I agreed to give away a fic to whoever won the Oscar pool? Somehow there were two winners? It’s always vague but I have to say, in all honesty, that the two fics that came out of this--A Delicate Art and Staple Item--were two of my favorite fics to come out of this year, I re-read them all the time. So thanks for the prompts! Someone expressed disappointment that I hadn’t had a fun St. Patrick’s Day fic planned for HGTV-verse. So then I wrote The End of the Rainbow, because, yeah, they had a point. In March I also posted Any Eventuality, which was a Lucky fic I’d written ages earlier and had been sitting on for a rainy day...which happened in March because it’s a fic about an ill Arthur and I was sick with a cold at the end of March this year and so felt I should post a sickfic in commiseration. Oh! Wait! Then I also posted You Should See My Cuts of Cheese in March because, like, I don’t even know what goes on with my fic, you guys.

April: April was a slow month. I don’t feel like I wrote Sherlock and John’s KtCR epilogue that month, but now that I look back I feel like I must have, as there was nothing posted until the end of the month, when that showed up. I do remember it was hard for me to write, because by then I hadn’t written Sherlock and John in a while, so it wouldn’t surprise me that it had taken me a few weeks to get it out. In then, in what is actually a fairly typical move for me, having spent a few weeks fighting with writing, I sat down and wrote an entire novella in a weekend, based on a lingering dream I had one night: The Proper Form of Address.

May: I posted nothing in May. Which is unusual for me. I must have been recovering.

June: In June I posted Birds, Bees, Giant Claw Machines, inspired by a Tumblr post. I also posted Happy Ending, which was a fic I’d written many months earlier and had been holding in reserve.

July: Inceptiversary! And I wrote the most fun fics for my bingo card! Safe House, My Man Eames (an AU I’d always wanted to write), and The First Sorrow Wept Without Her.

August: In August I wrote and posted a quick little coda in the PSLverse, Pumpkin Spice Latte Season. I also wrote and posted Pure Imagination. RIP, Gene Wilder. :-(

September: I usually use Labor Day weekend to write myself something fun. This year, in honor of Gene Wilder, I finally tackled the Willy Wonka AU I’d been longing for forever: Golden Ticket. I also posted Biggest Fan, which was a fic I’d written for the Inception fanbook thing.

October: October was a month of Reculer pour mieux sauter, which was a fic I think I started last year and finished writing sometime this spring. I also had too many ideas for Halloween fics and so wrote two: A Very Special Halloween Episode and (the unexpectedly feels-y) Right Here, Love.

November: In honor of Reverse Bang and some AMAZING art, I tackled a pairing I’d never written before! Arthur/Ariadne, in the aptly titled Ariadne. I also wrote puppy fluff for more AMAZING art (thanks, Tom Hardy, for loving dogs) called Puppy Love. And then I, like, randomly wrote a fic called Why Is Eames So Hot?

December: I spent November in dire need of fluff. So I wrote myself a lot of it, posting it throughout the month and finishing in December. It took the shape of a sequel to The Proper Form of Address that I titled The Proper Protocols. And, finally, @kedgeree11​ ran a brilliant Secret Saito and I ended up writing Silver Bells (despite the fact that I’d had no intention of writing Christmas fluff this year).

Year in Review

If I’ve counted correctly, I posted 32 fics this year and, according to my AO3 statistic, they were composed of 342,152 words. That’s actually only about half of the production of last year, and it feels like I wrote only half as much this year, but looking back over the year I’m very pleased with it. I wrote A LOT of shorter, spontaneous stuff, and that was very freeing and fun. For many years now, my fic posting schedule has been meticulously planned. It was nice to just write-and-post, no heavy plot pressure, no schedule to keep up with. If something inspired me, I sat down and I wrote it. And nothing got out of control the way NBT had, which was maybe a break I needed. :-)

I also started writing more original stuff this year and actually liking it, which was not an experience I’d had in a while. But Archer and Bennet and their world were delightful to get to know and I think I needed that floodgate to open for me.

The most challenging fic I wrote this year was “Reculer,” because that’s an intense fic and I was worried I wasn’t getting it right. I am very, very pleased with how it turned out.

On the agenda for next year: my academia AU, a couple more Lucky fics, the NBT wedding sequel...oh, and an original project!

And, hopefully, lots of fic that will take my be wonderful pleasant surprise!

Happy New Year, everyone! Thank you for being the most hilarious and inspiring group of people, thank you for every single wonderful comment you leave even when I’m a terrible writer and take forever to get back to you, thank you for making my life more incredible on a daily basis. I wish you all the best in 2017!