Entry tags:
Decade in fic meme
Seen at ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
musesfool and looked fun!
2011 - 2020 – a decade in fic meme
Statistics:
Total words posted to AO3 (2011 - 2020):
2011: 264,143
2012: 193,125
2013: 173,867
2014: 212,944
2015: 160,731
2016: 309,439
2017: 342,778
2018: 228,207
2019: 363,344
2020: 434,818
Stats are a bit off of reality because WIPs or multi-chapter fic collections are counted in their entirety for the last year they're updated.
There's something really interesting I wanted to point out, though. 2015 was the year I started writing for Zoe, and my original word count at that point went through the ROOF. Notice that this doesn't result in me writing less fanfic. It's the opposite! When my creative brain is "on," it really cranks. I noticed this synergy at one point when I spent a couple of years actively trying not to write fanfic (this was roughly 2004-2006) to focus on original writing and my original output tanked utterly. Most years my original fic output tends to track pretty closely with my fanfic.
(I'm just going to add: people have naturally different writing set-points. I naturally write pretty fast, but I'm a binge-and-rest writer. Pacing myself is what I'm bad at. I am slowly learning not to write myself to exhaustion and not be able to write anything for days, but I have never been able to write daily and probably never will.)
Total words written (or more accurately, total words posted to AO3): 2,683,396
Most words written in a calendar year: 2020 according to the stats, but as noted above this is A Total Lie because of all my fic collections, some which are 70K or more, showing up for that year. It's probably 2019.
Fewest words written in a calendar year: 2015, the year I started Zoe. This is the one year where my fanfic writing took a noticeable hit because the amount of original words I wrote that year was completely bonkers.
Longest story (discounting ficlet collections): Shelter on a Foreign Shore (White Collar, 65K words)
Shortest story: It's a tie; there are a bunch of drabbles since I participated in a couple of drabble exchanges recently. The one that AO3 decided to put at the bottom for whatever reason is The Same Skin (GotG/Defenders, Misty/Nebula, M-rated, 100 wds)
Favorite (complete) stories by year posted:
(These are extremely hard to pick; in most cases I don't really have just one favorite, so let's just say these are some of my favorites.)
2011: Probably a toss-up between The Right Way To Fall (White Collar; gen, 20K), an AU in which Peter is Neal's long-suffering literal guardian angel, because it was really sweet and fun and I feel like the pacing of both plot and emotions worked really well; and Lemmings (Highlander, gen, 3100 wds), in which some of my favorite h/c tropes completely fail to work as expected or intended on Immortals, because it was hilarious.
2012: I guess I'd say the Psychic Neal series (70K collectively, but there are a number of fics involved). I always regretted not finishing it; I stopped at the end of "season one" on a sort of cliffhanger, and meant to do a "season two" to resolve everything, but it didn't work out - at that point I was feeling pretty burned and bitter about the fandom, and my brainstorming partner abruptly gafiated from fandom entirely, so the series ended up on a permanent cliffhanger. (I mean, it does kind of resolve, but it's clear that there ought to be more.)
2013: Solo, The Measure of a Hero (White Collar, gen, 20K) - superpowers AU in which Neal can turn invisible and Peter develops an abrupt adult-onset shielding ability and has to learn to use it. Loosely, it's a fusion with the MCU, although it's really more borrowing some of the worldbuilding than outright existing in the MCU as such. Non-solo, this was the year in whichfrith_in_thorns and I wrote most of the stories in our Free Of Surface Ties shared White Collar/Fallen London fusion, which was amazing fun.
2014: Ah yes, the year I got into Captain America, the first time I'd been in a megafandom for a while, and my ability to keep up with my comments went entirely off the rails. I'd say probably my favorite off the top of my head is Written in Blood and Bone (Steve & Bucky & Natasha gen, 36K), feat. writing on skin, Bucky living in a cave in Macedonia, and rescue breathing to counteract paralysis poison.
2015: Okay, this year very solidly and definitely has two: Wing and a Prayer (Captain America, Sam & Bucky, 32K), the Bucky and Sam wilderness survival one; and Black Water Rising (Agent Carter, gen, 29K), basically the Story That Started It All for me in Agent Carter fandom, and also a huge helping of my post-season-one feels in story form.
2016: My main fandom for the year was Agent Carter and I wrote a bunch that I liked, but I think my fave for the year overall has got to be And Still of a Winter's Night (Ben January Mysteries, gen, full ensemble, 11K), the Yuletide fic that I wrote off an absolutely brilliant prompt about Shaw going undercover as a Clean Person and nobody recognizing him, and then trying to make that actually work in a believable and canon-compliant way that worked with the setting.
2017: The Song Remains the Same (Agent Carter, Peggy/Jack/Daniel, 58K) - Peggy gets amnesia and thinks it's early 1946 again, and has to fall in love all over again. So tropey and iddy and fun.
2018: Really, how could it not be Cute But Prickly (Iron Fist, gen, 11K), aka the one in which Ward gets turned into a potted cactus. I'm laughing just reading that description. I am totally putting my cactus icon on this post just for that. Although, to be fair, I have to add an honorable mention for Search and Rescue (Alliance-Union, Hellburner team, 8400 wds), because I have had this idea in mind since probably about the late 90s - Ben trapped in circumstances similar to Dekker's - since before I wrote fanfic and long before I ever thought of writing fanfic for these characters, so being able to actually write it for them was a treat. And a special iddy honorable mention no. 2 for Thicker Than Water, the Iron Fist flogging fic. 2018 was a good year for my id.
2019: This is another hard-to-choose year - I think they're getting harder as we get closer to the present day, because I remember them better - but I'm giving top honors to Ghosts of Me and You (Iron Fist, gen, 24.5K), in which Ward is haunted by his dead dad (or maybe he's hallucinating?) because I got to do some fun character stuff in it, and Math and Poetry and Gunmanship (Punisher, Frank & Leo, 6K) because these two characters just lend themselves so well to the roles of grizzled, reluctant mentor and plucky orphan who wants him to teach her to be a gunslinger in a post-apocalypse AU.
2020: A solid toss-up between Balance of Trust (Captain Marvel, gen, 35K), the Maria & Yon-Rogg one in which he shows up in her living room, because it's the longest fic I've written in ages and I'm really proud of it; and The Cartography of Feeling (Torchwood, gen-ish, 20K), in which Owen & Ianto are emotionally linked and forced to gladiator-fight, because it's one of the iddiest things I've written all year.
musesfool and looked fun!2011 - 2020 – a decade in fic meme
Statistics:
Total words posted to AO3 (2011 - 2020):
2011: 264,143
2012: 193,125
2013: 173,867
2014: 212,944
2015: 160,731
2016: 309,439
2017: 342,778
2018: 228,207
2019: 363,344
2020: 434,818
Stats are a bit off of reality because WIPs or multi-chapter fic collections are counted in their entirety for the last year they're updated.
There's something really interesting I wanted to point out, though. 2015 was the year I started writing for Zoe, and my original word count at that point went through the ROOF. Notice that this doesn't result in me writing less fanfic. It's the opposite! When my creative brain is "on," it really cranks. I noticed this synergy at one point when I spent a couple of years actively trying not to write fanfic (this was roughly 2004-2006) to focus on original writing and my original output tanked utterly. Most years my original fic output tends to track pretty closely with my fanfic.
(I'm just going to add: people have naturally different writing set-points. I naturally write pretty fast, but I'm a binge-and-rest writer. Pacing myself is what I'm bad at. I am slowly learning not to write myself to exhaustion and not be able to write anything for days, but I have never been able to write daily and probably never will.)
Total words written (or more accurately, total words posted to AO3): 2,683,396
Most words written in a calendar year: 2020 according to the stats, but as noted above this is A Total Lie because of all my fic collections, some which are 70K or more, showing up for that year. It's probably 2019.
Fewest words written in a calendar year: 2015, the year I started Zoe. This is the one year where my fanfic writing took a noticeable hit because the amount of original words I wrote that year was completely bonkers.
Longest story (discounting ficlet collections): Shelter on a Foreign Shore (White Collar, 65K words)
Shortest story: It's a tie; there are a bunch of drabbles since I participated in a couple of drabble exchanges recently. The one that AO3 decided to put at the bottom for whatever reason is The Same Skin (GotG/Defenders, Misty/Nebula, M-rated, 100 wds)
Favorite (complete) stories by year posted:
(These are extremely hard to pick; in most cases I don't really have just one favorite, so let's just say these are some of my favorites.)
2011: Probably a toss-up between The Right Way To Fall (White Collar; gen, 20K), an AU in which Peter is Neal's long-suffering literal guardian angel, because it was really sweet and fun and I feel like the pacing of both plot and emotions worked really well; and Lemmings (Highlander, gen, 3100 wds), in which some of my favorite h/c tropes completely fail to work as expected or intended on Immortals, because it was hilarious.
2012: I guess I'd say the Psychic Neal series (70K collectively, but there are a number of fics involved). I always regretted not finishing it; I stopped at the end of "season one" on a sort of cliffhanger, and meant to do a "season two" to resolve everything, but it didn't work out - at that point I was feeling pretty burned and bitter about the fandom, and my brainstorming partner abruptly gafiated from fandom entirely, so the series ended up on a permanent cliffhanger. (I mean, it does kind of resolve, but it's clear that there ought to be more.)
2013: Solo, The Measure of a Hero (White Collar, gen, 20K) - superpowers AU in which Neal can turn invisible and Peter develops an abrupt adult-onset shielding ability and has to learn to use it. Loosely, it's a fusion with the MCU, although it's really more borrowing some of the worldbuilding than outright existing in the MCU as such. Non-solo, this was the year in which
frith_in_thorns and I wrote most of the stories in our Free Of Surface Ties shared White Collar/Fallen London fusion, which was amazing fun.2014: Ah yes, the year I got into Captain America, the first time I'd been in a megafandom for a while, and my ability to keep up with my comments went entirely off the rails. I'd say probably my favorite off the top of my head is Written in Blood and Bone (Steve & Bucky & Natasha gen, 36K), feat. writing on skin, Bucky living in a cave in Macedonia, and rescue breathing to counteract paralysis poison.
2015: Okay, this year very solidly and definitely has two: Wing and a Prayer (Captain America, Sam & Bucky, 32K), the Bucky and Sam wilderness survival one; and Black Water Rising (Agent Carter, gen, 29K), basically the Story That Started It All for me in Agent Carter fandom, and also a huge helping of my post-season-one feels in story form.
2016: My main fandom for the year was Agent Carter and I wrote a bunch that I liked, but I think my fave for the year overall has got to be And Still of a Winter's Night (Ben January Mysteries, gen, full ensemble, 11K), the Yuletide fic that I wrote off an absolutely brilliant prompt about Shaw going undercover as a Clean Person and nobody recognizing him, and then trying to make that actually work in a believable and canon-compliant way that worked with the setting.
2017: The Song Remains the Same (Agent Carter, Peggy/Jack/Daniel, 58K) - Peggy gets amnesia and thinks it's early 1946 again, and has to fall in love all over again. So tropey and iddy and fun.
2018: Really, how could it not be Cute But Prickly (Iron Fist, gen, 11K), aka the one in which Ward gets turned into a potted cactus. I'm laughing just reading that description. I am totally putting my cactus icon on this post just for that. Although, to be fair, I have to add an honorable mention for Search and Rescue (Alliance-Union, Hellburner team, 8400 wds), because I have had this idea in mind since probably about the late 90s - Ben trapped in circumstances similar to Dekker's - since before I wrote fanfic and long before I ever thought of writing fanfic for these characters, so being able to actually write it for them was a treat. And a special iddy honorable mention no. 2 for Thicker Than Water, the Iron Fist flogging fic. 2018 was a good year for my id.
2019: This is another hard-to-choose year - I think they're getting harder as we get closer to the present day, because I remember them better - but I'm giving top honors to Ghosts of Me and You (Iron Fist, gen, 24.5K), in which Ward is haunted by his dead dad (or maybe he's hallucinating?) because I got to do some fun character stuff in it, and Math and Poetry and Gunmanship (Punisher, Frank & Leo, 6K) because these two characters just lend themselves so well to the roles of grizzled, reluctant mentor and plucky orphan who wants him to teach her to be a gunslinger in a post-apocalypse AU.
2020: A solid toss-up between Balance of Trust (Captain Marvel, gen, 35K), the Maria & Yon-Rogg one in which he shows up in her living room, because it's the longest fic I've written in ages and I'm really proud of it; and The Cartography of Feeling (Torchwood, gen-ish, 20K), in which Owen & Ianto are emotionally linked and forced to gladiator-fight, because it's one of the iddiest things I've written all year.
no subject
Really, how could it not be Cute But Prickly (Iron Fist, gen, 11K), aka the one in which Ward gets turned into a potted cactus.
Hahahahahahaha :D
I also find that the more I write the more I write. What I mean is that when I'm actively participating in exchanges and such, and writing stuff for those that's required, I'm also quite likely to write stuff otherwise because my writing brain is 'on'. But there's a tipping point balance where I literally run out of time (I'd guess I'm about twice as slow as you in terms of actual "type up words as I think of them") and have to triage between which fic actually gets my love that evening. But what I've found after keeping track of things for a while is that I can actually write a lot if I have free time for it (which shows up in my word counts immediately when I take any kind of vacations/long weekends) -- and this makes me happy to know.
no subject
no subject
(Black Water Rising is still likely my favourite Agent Carter fic ever, and I still can't nail down why.)
I was going to say I probably won't do this meme because a) too much work, b) I stopped writing for a long time, but actually, I think it might give me a needed ego boost. Why not! Cheers :)
no subject
no subject
And it does make sense that writing original fic doesn't have to mean writing less fanfic or vice versa. It can be nice and good for your creativity to switch between things and write wildly different things.