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2022 Year-end Writing Recap

Total number of completed stories: 20

Total word count: 87,869

Fandoms written in: The Old Guard (9), Good Omens, BBC Sherlock (4), Our Flag Means Death (2), Inception, Marvel/Hawkeye Comics, and the video games Strange Horticulture and Mystia’s Izakaya.

Looking back on this year is kind of wild! I got a tablet so I could do digital drawings, which has been a lot of fun to play with. And even with all the time I spent drawing, I still did a ton of writing!

Most popular: This Cooktop was meant to Cook for You (The Old Guard) with 378 kudos! A cute, feel-good diner AU where chef Nicky makes sure Joe can keep Halal. Also, the amazing @loftec crafted a teeny tiny physical book version of this story!? It’s difficult to express the sheer delight this brings me.

Personal favorite: Finished just in time for Halloween, Our Flag Means (un)Death (Our Flag Means Death) is a very silly Necromancer AU of that pirate show that I suddenly found sailing onto my Tumblr dashboard. I’m glad I decided to hop aboard, because writing this was a hoot.

Notable: The Knit King (The Old Guard) is my longest story yet with 29.5k words! It took joining the WIP Big Bang event to finish it, and even with 12k words going in, it was a struggle. I was lucky enough to have a great beta (thank you xJane!) and to pair with the artist Kingstoken, who made this delightful cover art!

The premise is crack (What if there was a God of Knitting! Make it Nicky!), but I wrote it serious—and it turned into a fantasy story I hope people find cozy and sweet.

Most challenging: I started 2022 mid-way through writing Let The Full Moon In (The Old Guard) for a gift exchange. It is by far the most explicit story I’ve ever written, and working on it was very stressful! It was like shaking up and cracking open a can of really unnecessary internalized embarrassment. I definitely considered scrapping it and going a PG-13 route multiple times. I was very fortunate to have an amazing beta who helped workshop the kink and smooth everything out (keeping track of limbs in sex scenes is so confusing!?), and I’m really glad to have tackled this story and proud of how it turned out!

Looking forward:

The very tail end of 2022 was kind of awful, and I’m just starting to crawl out of the hole starting with March. It’s been really frustrating to go from regular creative outlets (drawing! writing! etc!) that bring me joy and then find myself too depressed to engage with them. I’ve been reminding myself that my value as a person is not tied to my output of creative works, and that hard times are just times that I am fortunate enough to know are temporary.

In terms of community, I’m not always online consistently (especially not recently), but I have 3 solid Discord groups full of wonderful people, and I’m dipping my toe in the Winterhawk hot tub, which seems like a nice crowd. The start of this year has been rough, but I look forward to everything to come.

#yearly-recap

2021 Year-end Recap

Total number of completed stories: 27

Total word count: 76,693

Fandoms written in: The Old Guard, Good Omens, Untitled Goose Game, The Irregulars (TV), Sherlock (BBC, ACD & 1984), Venom, Diablero, DOTA: Dragon’s Blood, The Chilling Adventure of Sabrina, Hades, Resident Evil Village, Far Cry 6

I had fun this year! I enjoyed writing one-off ficlets for shows and video games that crossed my path (thanks pandemic), and hellooooo Good Omens, glad I’m finally catching up with you!

This is also the first year that I’ve received the blessings of some absolutely lovely beta readers. I can’t get over how generous these magical people are with their time and expertise!

Most popular: Upon the Stairs (The Old Guard) with 236 kudos, written for an event! I had so much fun writing this AU - it’s got monsters and magic and a magical house! Also bugs! And the whole team is there! Did I mention it’s a meet ugly/cute?

Personal favorite: I love Upon the Stairs (see above), but I think my next favorite is A Peculiar Arrangement (Good Omens), a witchy cottagecore romance! The idea came out of nowhere, and I wrote the whole thing in a day like someone possessed. Very self-indulgent.

Notable: I started Three Odd ‘Ducks’ (Good Omens/Untitled Goose Game) in July, with the goal of finishing it in time for Halloween. I kept writing as that day sailed merrily past, blew through Thanksgiving as well, but the day before Christmas I finally managed to wrangle my dollop of fluffy domestic holiday sweetness into completion. This is also my first fic with art! I spent a very long time on the art.

Most challenging: I wrote Weathered til Content (Sherlock Holmes Granada/1984) for the summer Holmestice gift exchange, and even though I was super excited about the prompt (ace!Holmes and his relationship with Mary), I really struggled. The word count kept growing on me, and I was running out of time, and I ended up slapping in a whole chunk of modified casefic from ACD out of desperation. Blessing upon the mod who took the time to read my submission and kindly suggested I take an extension and make it something I could be proud of.

Looking forward: Last year I wrote my first story over 10k words, and this year I wrote three more! My story plans are getting longer (baby plots!) and I’ve started writing bullet point outlines, which start small maybe 3-5 point. Then I’ll write a scene and realize it needs an event preceding it or a follow-up, and the outline grows (it’s alive!).

I’m now actively lurking and occasionally commenting within three wonderful Discord communities, which has been a fun experience!

For 2022, I have a lot of irons in the fire that I’m excited about, and I look forward to seeing what unexpected ideas/fandoms come my way!

#yearly-recap

2023 Year-end Recap

Total number of completed stories: 5

Total word count: 21,049

Fandoms written in: Zelda (1), The Old Guard (1), and Marvel/Hawkeye Comics (3)

2023 was rough! Just… awful start, and then things started to get better for a while, and then it turned into a gauntlet of just… more stuff. I’m tired. Hats off to everyone who slogged through—I don’t care if you did well or handled it with grace, we all deserve a nice nap and our favorite cookie fresh from the oven. But I did manage to get a few stories in:

Most popular: Turn Up The Heat (Marvel/Hawkeye) with 149 kudos! It’s a silly meet-cute AU with Bucky panicking and sneaking into a fitness class to avoid someone… only to belatedly realize his hiding spot is a hot yoga class! Misery ensues, but the instructor is all kinds of attractive… heck, I love meet-cutes. They’re just so silly and fun and optimistic.

Personal favorite: I wrote Lambent at Dawn (Zelda) after many evenings with Tears of the Kingdom and then reading this absolutely fantastic fic reimagining the triforce trio. The idea of Zelda, Link, and Gandorf actually getting a chance to have a happy ending really stuck with me, and I drew a soft snuggly picture about it, and then wrote the short story to accompany it. It was probably the creative highlight of this year for me, I felt really inspired and motivated while making both.

Most challenging: Mission: Christmas (Marvel/Hawkeye, E). I signed up for the Winterhawk Wonderland Gift Exchange feeling cautiously optimistic. Gift events are such a cool way to bring a creative community together, and I wanted to be a part of that! But it turned out to be a real struggle. I managed to drag out a 10k story shortly before deadline, decided I hated it, started a new document using my first story as a rough reference, gave up, started drawing an image instead, remembered that drawing is hard, went back to the new document, then back to drawing… just a rollercoaster of insecurity and doubt! And even though I struggle with writing explicit scenes, and I could have skipped it, I insisted on including that too. Looking back, why? Stubbornness, maybe? But I got it done, and a generous beta helped me out despite the last-minute timing during the holidays. Now that I have some space from it, and after reading some of the really kind comments, I can say I am happy I saw it through to the end.

Looking forward:

I don’t want to jinx 2024, so I’ll just say I’m looking forward to the new year. I want to start writing more, and get back to drawing. If I’m really ambitious, I’d like to watch Our Flag Means Death Season 2 and find the energy to get back into The Old Guard fandom (so creative, but often with darker themes that I have not been emotionally prepared to handle this year).

I Don’t Sail These Seas, But…

You ever stumble into fandoms you don’t actually know? I found a lot of sad characters getting happily ever afters with Untamed (where the tragic backstory that tears two fated lovers apart - before they inevitably reunite - is just so ridiculous, but like, in a chocolate sundae with extra toppings sort of way), along with Batfam (the most generous heaping of found family comfort that I have been soaking up like a sponge).

#yearly-recap