Thoughts and Ruminations on the Year That Was (2016 Edition)

[dizzydrea]

I can't believe 2016 is in the rear-view mirror. This year was a challenging year for me, both professionally and personally, so I'm absolutely astonished that I managed to put as many words into my various projects as I have. But write I did. It was a kind of therapy, a 'take me away' outlet that let me focus on something other than the utter chaos I had going on at work and at home.

This year, I faced a major headcount reduction (a fancy term for mass layoffs) at work. I said goodbye to many people I've worked with since I took this position. It was a hard couple of weeks, but those of us still left standing are grateful that we survived. Add to that the fact that our building is being renovated top to bottom, and they started with my floor. I had to move 120 people to temporary offices and then move them all back when the renovations were done five weeks later. Bearing in mind that these people hadn't had to clean out their cubes in over ten years, it was a crazy few months leading up to the moves. And because I also have a small team on another floor that will start renovations in January, the fun's not over yet!

Personally, things weren't any easier. My father had to have angioplasty, which he came through with flying colors. But that surgery uncovered other health issues that he's still dealing with. My nephew started school this fall, which we're all excited about, but as a child with PDD-NOS (on the Autism spectrum), school is a challenge for him. He's doing well, and improving his skills daily, but it's still hard and we all feel the burden. Especially my mother, who's taken over caring for my nephew after school while his parents are at work, and of course my younger nephew, who doesn't understand why his brother has so many 'special friends'.

Amid all that going on, I did two Trope Bingos and the Marvel Big Bang. Am I a glutton for punishment? Yes, apparently I am.

My original plan was to do Trope Bingo early in the year, followed by the Het Big Bang. I changed horses mid-stream because I knew I owed my readers a sequel to last year's MBB, and if I didn't just sign up and do it, it would never get written. So, I signed up. I reached out to Black Haired Demon, who did my art last year, to do the art for the sequel. It seemed like a good idea to keep to the same theme, and she does some fantastic work. The art for this story is embedded in the story on AO3, so if you get the chance, go check it out. It's fantastic, and I think really makes the story.

As for the story itself, it was challenging to write, no doubt. It wasn't so much a sequel as a side-quel (if you know Closer's work, you know what I mean), starting from the moment the door closes in 1945 and stretching across the following 70 years to loop back to the moment Maria stepped into the room. All I can say is it's a good thing I've had some practice writing angst, because Steve Rogers is angsty as hell! I quite enjoyed writing it, though. I did get a little carried away, which is not at all a surprise, so I had a couple of deleted scenes that I've posted as epilogues.

Doing two Trope Bingos was also not on my list of things to do. It was a bit stressful, considering that the activities surrounding the move were happening right when I was supposed to be writing for TB. I tend to use down times at work to write, because it's nice and quiet, but that wasn't so much happening this time. In a way, I wish I hadn't done it, because it felt a bit rushed. On the upside, my posting date for the MBB fic meant I could use it to fulfil a TB square, so that was one down. And again, I used it as an opportunity to finish a couple of fics I'd let languish on my hard drive for too long. So, all in all, win-win for me.

This year, I revisited fandoms I hadn't written in for a while. I polished off and posted a Stargate: SG-1 fic, and wrote for James Bond, Grimm and Harry Potter, three fandoms it's been at least a few years since I've touched. I also picked up a new fandom: Timeless. I'm enjoying the show a great deal, so when I got my TB card, there was one square that just jumped out for that fandom. Of course, I might have set the record for the quickest out of the gate for a sex pollen story in a new fandom. Mine was the fifth or sixth story to go up. Can't complain too much though; as of this writing, the story has over 2000 hits and over 100 kudos. Yay!

I've also made the difficult decision to leave Fanfiction.net. I've been reluctant to leave the site, even after the morality police went on a rampage a few years back, because it was the first home for my published fanfiction, but I think it's time. I got a review this fall of one of my stories that basically said they liked the story, but if they could just go through and substitute one character for another, they'd be happier. That was my biggest WTF moment of the year, and not in a good way. I always warn for pairings and any content I think might rub a reader wrong, or be a trigger in any way, so for this person to have read something featuring a pairing they didn't like, and then have the temerity to tell me it would have been better if it had been a different character? As my nephew is fond of saying: NOPE.

I am not a vending machine. You can't put ideas in and get fic out. It just doesn't work that way. I write what I like to read, and even I know that not everyone will like the things I write. But to tell me they'd have preferred it another way? Not cool. Also, not a surprise, given the type of fans that tend to frequent ff.net. And while I've had good interactions with fans on that site, it's high time I move on. I'll probably update my profile, just so people don't wonder where I've gone (although, I haven't been posting there consistently in some time, so I'm not sure anyone would notice, really).

This year's word total blew me out of the water. 377,405. What? It's been a long time since I've written that many words in a year. I'd ask where they all came from, but as you can see from the list of projects above, it wasn't all that hard. I guess I was singularly inspired.

There is one thing I'm excited about for next year: I'm going to reach a million words written! I can't even believe I've gotten that far. I started adding up my totals, just wondering how much I've written over the course of my writing career. Turns out I'm just over 900k as of the end of this year, which means I'll hit that milestone sometime next year. I plan to celebrate the hell out of it, let me tell you (lots of wine will be involved, because seriously, I'm gonna need it). I'll probably post some retrospectives on LJ, because this needs thinking on. I may write something special, who knows? I've got ideas, but nothing's reached out and grabbed me yet. We'll see.

As for goals for the New Year, I have a few. I'm going to do Trope Bingo again in January. I just can't seem to help myself, plus I like having random prompts that make me think about what I can write. I'm also going to do the Little Black Dress challenge at Rough Trade. For those of you who don't know about RT, it's a writer's site, where they do three challenges a year. The LBD challenge is combining the Sentinel with any fandom you choose, and writing three stories from different fandoms, each about 10k. It's tough, but I've already got the synopsis for two of the three worked out. I need to finish the third and then work on cast pictures and other details, and then I'm set. It doesn't happen until July, but if I don't prepare ahead of time, I won't be ready.

No big bangs planned for this year, but I'm giving serious thought to doing NaNo. I did a mini-NaNo this year as a dry run. I wrote a story I'd been sitting on forever, just to see if I could be disciplined enough to write for 30 days straight. Turns out, not so much. I only hit about 30k words (out of 50k, for those of you unfamiliar with NaNo), which isn't bad for a first crack. But with Thanksgiving, my writing time dissolved into nothing and the last week of the month was pretty much devoid of words. So, like I said, we'll see if it happens. If I don't do a formal NaNo challenge, I'll probably still try to do something personally, just to get myself warmed up to actually do it one day.

What follows below is the list of best and worst of the year. The one good thing is I don't think there were many bad spots, which means, quality-wise, I'm getting more consistent. I'm also finding it harder to write small, short stories. It seems like everything is epic in length lately. Which makes TB even more challenging. But that's good, in a way. It means the words are coming more easily, something I struggled with for a couple of years.

As always, my door is open if you want to talk fandoms or writing, or anything really. I'm always happy to chat.

So, the highlights from this year:

My Favorites:
Shelter From the Storm (NCIS)
The Bond (Grimm)
Family Always (NCIS)

Best stories:
A Thousand Years (Captain America)
Family Always (NCIS)
Sex in the 70s (Timeless)

Favorite Line:
Family Always (NCIS): Gibbs would never accept the words I love you, so Lock the damned door had always had to suffice.

Not Your Social Secretary (Blue Bloods): I have regrets, Dad. No one alive doesn't. But in the end, it's the things I didn't do that I regret the most. Don't let that be your regret, too.

The Bond (Grimm): It's better if people believe something's there that isn't than to get busted for something we're not even doing.

Most underappreciated by the universe:
The Way Forward (Harry Potter): This was a gen story featuring Harry and Draco on the day the Second Magical War ended (aka: what happened after the Battle for Hogwarts), I knew it would be a tough sell, mostly because there wasn't any romance to it, just two people finding some common ground at the end of an awful war. Still, I liked the story enough to post it (plus, it filled a TB square), and it works as a prologue if I ever decide to write that epic Harry/Draco romance I've been contemplating.

Most reviewed:
The Bond (Grimm): It's been a while since I've written in the Grimm fandom, and even longer since I'd written Nick/Sean before I took on this story. It's based on an idea I had a few years ago, and then never wrote. I knew it would be an epic, and at the time, it made me tired just thinking about it. So, I back-burnered it, thinking I'd get back to it someday. Well, I had the perfect TB square for this idea in Round 6, so I had to write it. Finally. And the reception for the story was equally as epic. Everyone who read it had nothing but great things to say about it, which was gratifying, to say the least. It also earned 185 kudos on AO3 as of this posting. Yay!

Most fun to write:
Shelter From the Storm (NCIS): An AU where Tony is a singer/songwriter and Gibbs is the one tasked with keeping him alive? Yes, please. I had the most fun writing this, mostly because it was all the fun trying to figure out where our favorites would find themselves in this AU. And also because it's just fun writing Tony (challenging, but fun). I looked forward to sitting down every day to write that one.

Sexiest story:
Sex in the 70s (Timeless): Seriously, sex pollen. Enough said.

Hardest story to write:
The Reality of Dreams (Stargate: SG-1): The cheat here is that I started this story probably ten years ago and then left it to rot on my hard drive because I'd painted myself into a corner. I had planned to write a sex scene in the story, but at the time I'd never really written sex before. So before I even got to that part of the story, I just… stopped. When I got my TB card and saw the 'altered states (of the mind)' square, I knew this story would be the perfect fit. But how to finish it? Well, turns out I'm pretty good at writing sexy-times these days, so what I thought was going to be difficult turned out not to be that hard after all. Still, at this point, this story holds the record for longest time between start and finish.

I'm the vanilla one, so where'd this come from?:
Sex in the 70s (Timeless): Again, sex pollen. It was a Trope Bingo square, and the first time I've ever written that particular trope. Not as hard (heh) as I thought it would be. But yeah, sex pollen.

Biggest disappointment:
It's not the fall that kills you (NCIS): I'm not a big fan of Kensi/Deeks (not really a fan at all, TBH), so I wasn't exactly thrilled to write this story. But, the idea fit perfectly with my TB square and also within the Starfleet: NCIS series. But it didn't get a lot of love on ff.net or AO3. Part of that was my fault: when I posted it to ff.net, I copy/pasted the header from my files but I forgot to change the title. My guess is, people were confused, though no one said anything to me. :P

Biggest surprise:
The Bond (Grimm): This story seems to have popped up a few times on this list, but I can't help it. I was shocked by the reception this story has gotten. Apparently, the Nick/Sean shippers are alive and well in the fandom. It was by far my most successful fic of the year, in terms of reviews and kudos.

A Thousand Years (Captain America): I've enjoyed doing the Marvel Big Bang the last two years. It's a great fandom full of enthusiastic fans. When I ended last year's fic on a cliffhanger, I knew it was a risk, but I told myself that that's where the story needed to end. I also knew if I didn't write the sequel, I'd be in a world of trouble. The reception this story got is nothing short of amazing, and I'm grateful that it's resonated with the fans so much. I'm also honestly surprised that people not only remembered last year's story but were excited that I'd written the sequel.

Story that shifted my perception of the characters:
Shelter From the Storm (NCIS): Who are these characters when they're not NCIS agents? Would their life and career choices be similar or totally different? In the end, writing this story helped me to learn who these characters are, distilled down to their essences. I'd never done an AU like this before, where everyone is something other than what they are in the show, but I enjoyed writing it, and I'm sure I'll do it again.

Most telling fic:
The Way Forward (Harry Potter): When I first read the Harry Potter books, I liked the way they ended, liked the epilogue and where it left all our favorite characters. Time and maturity (and listening to friends and other writers talk about the flaws in the stories) have changed the way I think about the books and the way the story of Harry Potter ended. Frankly, I don't like the epilogue anymore, because it's too perfect, too pat. It isn't real, it's a fantasy that I could buy into as a young person, but can't really get behind as an adult. This story was my first foray into altering the outcome of the Harry Potter saga. It forms the basis of my new thinking on the series and all of the choices that JK Rowling made that I disagree with. It's such a simple premise: Harry extends the hand of friendship to Draco, as he should have done all those years ago on Diagon Alley when they first met. But it's also a jumping-off point for all the changes that would need to happen so that JKRs epilogue is erased from existence in favor of an ending that, to put it simply, makes sense.

Story I want remembered:
Family Always (NCIS): The basic truth of this story is that you can run away from a lot of things, but you'll never leave your family behind. They're your family, and they'll always be with you. In this case, its' a family of choice, the family that Tony's built at NCIS. It's how I wished Tony's departure had been handled, mostly because I'm still in denial that he's gone from the show. Even today, after writing this story, I still see Tony, standing at the railing upstairs, looking down on his old team and watching over them.

And, of course, the master list of 2016 stories can be found here. Enjoy!

Comments

[mustangcandi.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry you had a rough year last year too, professionally and personally. It just wasn't a good year for many people. But I'm very impressed by how much you were able to write and accomplish! Well done!!