More 2016 writing stats
I uploaded 19 new works to AO3 and posted 12 ficlets (works under 1000 words) to Tumblr. The category breakdown is as follows:
M/M 12 works, 10 ficlets
M/F 4 works, 1 ficlet
F/F 3 works, 1 ficlet
Ten of the twelve ficlets were M/M pairings, one was M/F and one F/F. The ficlets I write are likely to be by request.
When I break down the main characters in each story, 11 are male (Kylo Ren, Armitage Hux, Jack Rollins, Brock Rumlow, Steve Rogers, Snoke, Andrew Henry, Clan Techie, Bucky Barnes, Sarwen Niral* and Orson Krennic) and 9 are female (Jyn Erso, Rey, Phasma, Ava, Kyoko, Natasha Romanoff, Madeline Madrigal, Sorah Shah* and Yva*).
The 3 marked with an asterisk* are original characters.
When I write about canon characters, I overwhelmingly write white characters. 14 of the 20 characters I wrote about this year are white - yikes! 1 (Snoke) I’m coding as racially ambiguous. 4 are characters of colour. Notably, 3 of these four are my own OCs.
What does this tell me about my writing this year?
I branched out notably towards the end of the year, writing in more fandoms and starting to move away from Kylux.
This was overwhelmingly a satisfying move.
I tried creating OCs for fandom purposes, and I actively tried to construct a diverse cast of OCs to offset the overwhelming whiteness of my main pairings.
Mixed success, but I learned something about setting aside fear of failure. Writing OCs of different ethnicities also informed my non-fandom fiction writing; my novel and novella casts got notably more diverse with practice.
Lots more writing about women this year, and even in works slash pairings, women got more time and speech in scenes.
This is a big win, although my femslash gets massively less attention from readers.
I tried writing bad poetry (Dauntless), finished a weekly serial on time (Click), played with epistolary elements (He Who Desires) contributed to two exchanges (Adrift and How to be a Woman) and played with (often gendered) power dynamics (Martinet, Boy, Raw, How to be a Woman).
I want to come back to this post at the end of 2017 and see how I’m doing. This year I tried to make a serious commitment to craft in my writing, and I considered writing more diverse characters to be a part of that. For accountability, and to show how making concerted efforts for every fic adds up over the year, I wanted to put these numbers out there. No hiding - we admit our failures like adults!
