Meme: Fanfic Year In Review

[john_amend_all]

Memed from lost_spook:

For the year of 2010:

Fics Completed

• The Path of Duty
• Child of the Gods
• The Guilty Party
• Looking For Love In All The Wrong Places
• Getting the Boot
• The Investigators
• Once Bitten, Twice Shy (drabble)
• This Takes Me Right Back (drabble)
• Got There In The End (drabble)
• Close Encounter
• Nominative Determinism
• Suspended Sentence
• Keeping Her Hand In
• Business As Usual
• Pass The Doctor
• The Hounds of Heaven
• Look Who's Talking: The Expert
• Less Than Ideal Circumstances
• A Life At The Opera
• Samantha's Turn
• Old Shame
• Among the Jarveys of the Metropolis
• 22 Pairs
• Sweet Hearts (drabble)
• Itchy Feet (drabble)
• Debriefing (drabble)
• The Dragonslayers (drabble)
• Thus It Begins (drabble)
• Murder on the Outside Express (plus an interlude)
• Storytime! The Adventure of the Priory School
• Take The High Road (drabble)
• Various Angles (double-drabble)
• Ages Ahead of the Fashion (drabble)
• Storytime! The Adventure of the Illustrious Client
• But Not Necessarily Up To Date (drabble)
• The Murder of Cardinal Tosca
• Plus ficlets for the 15 characters meme, the Who characters' opinions of 'Sherlock', and a few bits of comment-fic here and there.

Call it 37, all told, totalling roughly 131000 words. (Or 58, if you split 22 Pairs into its constituent drabbles).

Looking back, did you write more fics than you thought you would this year, less than you thought, or about what you predicted?

This is weird. Before adding it all up, I was sure I'd written much less this year than last; certainly, from Easter onwards, writing has been harder for me for some reason. But it turns out I wrote more works, and not much less in terms of word count.

Where did you publish/archive your stories?

The Whoniverse ones on Teaspoon (usually linked either from my LJ or an appropriate community). The TTR ones were posted on alt.drwho.creative and auto-archived at TTRArchive. The Sherlock one at AO3.

What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted in January 2010?

Pairings: each and every pairing in 22 Pairs and Sweet Hearts. Fandom: Sherlock, what with not knowing about it in January 2010.

What's your favorite story this year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you the happiest.

Close Encounter — a ficlet that grew, and grew, and grew.

Okay, NOW your most popular story.

The one with the most reviews is Nominative Determinism, which has both Tenth Doctors and Rose. Now there's a shocker 😃. The critics' choice this year is The Investigators, with a calufrax rec and a healthy number of comments on its original post.

(When I answered this question last year, my Christmas fic hadn't been posted; when it was, it quickly rose to the top of the pile. Here's hoping the same thing happens this year...)

Story most underappreciated by the universe?

Only one of this year's stories garnered no reviews, no comments and no Teaspoon favourites. To whit, Keeping Her Hand In. Obviously everyone's heartily fed up with me banging on about Zoë all the time.

Story that could have been better?

Pass The Doctor and Less Than Ideal Circumstances both feel rushed to me.

Sexiest story?

I'm not sure I'm any judge of that. Logically it ought to be one of the pairings in 22 Pairs, but if other pairings in the same story send people running away screaming, does it count?

Most fun story?

The Investigators. Zoë and Isobel save the world — well, Britain — with unrealistic fight scenes and nail scissors.

Story with single sweetest moment?

I'm tempted to say Sweet Hearts, but that would be an appalling pun. Possibly Lucie and Victoria's Sleep Cute at the end of The Path of Duty.

The story that made you cry?

None of them. I can be made to cry, but not by my own writing.

Hardest story to write?

Keeping Her Hand In, because I had to keep it under Big Finish's limit of 2500 words. It's the third attempt to write a fic within the limit; the second may surface at some point, if I can come up with an ending for it.

Easiest story to write?

Apart from some of the drabbles, The Path of Duty; I was snowed up, the telephone line had gone down so I didn't have any Internet access, and there was very little to occupy my mind except that.

Most overdue story?

Murder on the Outside Express — I first posted a snippet on 17 February 2009, and the story was completed nearly a year later on 14 February 2010.

Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?

Writing stories set in history rather than in entirely invented futures or worlds. It involves that irritating thing, research. So far no-one's pulled me up on any details, so maybe I got away with it.

Some of the pairings in 22 Pairs may have risked my readers' sanity, too.

Do you have any fanfic goals for the New Year?

Have fun.

More specific goals:

• Another adventure for Zoë and Lily.
• Think of a story to match the title TTR: Murder at Midnight.
• I'd still like to revisit the Regency at some point.

Bonus: How did I do on last year's goals?

• Write that TTR murder mystery evening I keep going on about. — Yes: Murder on the Outside Express
• Do a proper story with a Shalka-9, Master, Lucie, Victoria team. — Yes: The Path of Duty
• Revisit the Genius and Geniality setting. — No
• Write another cake!fic. — Yes: The Expert.