przed | 2017 Writing Round Up

I've fully intended to post more this year, but that clearly hasn't worked out. Partly, it's with Ros being older, she's going to bed later and leaving me with only scraps of time at the end of the day for doing anything personal/creative/fannish. Partly, it's that a lot of what fannish time I do manage I'm spending faffing about on Tumblr.

But mostly, it seems, I've spent my time writing a truly record-breaking amount of fic.

Stumbling into a new fandom usually gets me writing a lot, but for whatever reason, Captain America and the Winter Soldier have been especially inspiring. Hmmm, I wonder why?

Ahem.

Yes, well, the end result of falling down the Stucky rabbit hole was that I wrote just slightly over 150K words of fic. Which beats the 108K that resulted when I first got into Take That.

So, here's the list of everything I've written and finished this year.

Lost and Found - Steve's Story (9289 words)
Lost and Found - Peggy's Story (14313 words)
Lost and Found - The Soldier's Story (7178 words)
Lost and Found - James' Story (6003 words)
An ongoing AU series inspired by this stunning piece of fan art. What if Steve had gone back for Bucky's body after he fell from the train?

Captain America Has a Fella (2361 words)
Captain America Is Out and Proud (5209 words)
Captain America Finds His Fella (5567 words)
Captain America Finds His Fella – missing scene (1481 words)
Captain America Finds His Happy Ending (2918 words)
Another series, this time told mostly from the POV of a USO showgirl Steve befriends when he's doing the war bonds tour, and taking them both into the modern era.

Let In the Sun (3045 words)
A gen-ish story written for the Beefy Bucky Birthday exchange. Two golden days in the long friendship of Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes.

The Boiled Cabbage Strategy (2847 words)
The Cagney Tarantino Gang (1163 words)
To sequels to the first Stucky fic I ever wrote, The Altar Boy Act. The whole series is mostly an excuse to have Steve and Bucky swear a lot and mess with Tony Stark.

Brooklyn Runaways (12822 words)
My main contribution to the Cap Reverse BB. A pre-war story about what happens when Steve and Bucky aren't quite careful enough about hiding their relationship. I got to work with the wonderful artst slaughterme-barnes on this one. Her art was just beautiful.

Wuxia Avengers: Heroes' Justice (10355 words)
Another Cap Reverse BB story, this time a pinch hit for potofsoup's amazing art of the Avengers as Chinese Wuxia characters.

Gweilo Gongfu (33969 words)
My contribution to the Stucky Big Bang, featuring more art from the lovely potofsoup. A pre-war story where Bucky is Chinese American and teaches Steve about both martial arts and Chinese culture. This one is very much a work of love on my part.

1A (3204 words)
A smutty little story set just after Steve is chosen for Project Rebirth, and inspired by art from slaughterme.

Goodnight Moon and Red Balloons (5401 words)
My Yuletide story, for the Chris Evans movie, Gifted.

A Goddamn Winter Wonderland (11122 words)
A modern no powers AU written for the SteveBucky Secret Santa, and the tropey-est story I've ever written. H/C with a side of stuck in a cabin, sharing a bed and huddling for warmth.

Mrs. Wilson's Boys (12106 words)
The one non-Stucky story I wrote this year. This one is Sam/Steve/Bucky, told almost entirely through phone calls to Sam's mom.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

This is SPECTACULAR. Congratulations and well done you!

Coming off the previous year when I only posted 3K of fic, it's a very nice change. \o/

Wow - bravo! For only having scraps of time you've written a truly amazing number of stories! Congratulations!

When Ros was a baby, I got used to writing in whatever spare fifteen minutes I could grab. And up until stupid menopause and hot flashes messed up my sleep patterns in the summer, I was getting up at 5:30 or 6 every day and putting in an hour or so of writing before anyone else was up. I'm hoping to get back to that schedule in the new year.

That's how I've been writing for the past couple of years. Because of my work schedule and all the huge amount of work involved in moving back into my house once it was rebuilt time was at a premium, so I set myself an easy minimum of 300 words a day, five days a week. And, managed to write 150,000 words over two years. I remember reading somewhere, "Get started, don't stop", and followed that advice. It's amazing how quickly the words start to pile up. Good luck with future writing!

I don't set official minimum word counts ('cause some days things flow, and some days they just don't), but I've tried to be consistent about set aside writing time on most days. You're right that the words pile up if you just keep at it. Good luck to you with the new year of writing too!

I found, for me, having a set number of words most days works, because otherwise if I wait for things to flow, I write a lot less. Instead, on days that words don't flow, I write anyway, usually adding details to scenes I already have in mind. Once I was able to convince myself of the idea that it's OK to write crap on the first draft, and that it didn't how bad the writing was, everything became easier. I write without any consideration for typos, cliches, repetive wording, or just sounding stupid, to capture the essence of the story, knowing that I'll be doing a lot of editing later. And sometimes the words really flow and work out well the first time, and sometimes they require a lot of rewriting. Thanks for the good wishes! I started this year's writing yesterday. (I'm getting over the stomach flu, so was too out of it the preceeding days.)

I always try to just vomit out the first draft and then clean it up in the edit stage. For me, first drafts are hellish. It's the editing that is the fun part for me. And while I keep my eye on the word count, I don't give myself any particular quotas. Some days I'll churn out a thousand words. Some days it's lucky if I get a hundred. What I have been finding, though, is that I do better work in the mornings. When I try to write at night I just spin my wheels. Which for a former nighthawk is an interesting turn of events.

It's quite a deep rabbit hole, isn't it? I don't think that even at the height of my Spuffy obsession I was producing this much fic at this fast a clip--it sort of takes over your life. There's just so much you can do. Welcome to the rabbit hole, and we're glad you're having such a productive year!

It's an insane rabbit hole. I've only read a fraction of the fic that's out there, and there's always new great stuff being posted. And then there's the writing... Back in the days of zines, I'd be happy to write 60K words a year.

Until now, I have always quite consciously avoided large fandoms knowing there was no way I could keep up with them, but apparently I was powerless to resist Steve and Bucky. Not to mention Sam and Nat and the rest.

NIIIIIIIIIIICE. Yeah, I hadn't even been in fandom for years and years, let alone writing fic, and I saw TFA/TWS (a year after everyone else, LOL) and that was IT. Congratulations on that great productivity!

I'd ben quietly trucking along in my small fandoms, and was an entirely casual viewer of the MCU. But then I saw TWS, and Steve started getting under my skin, then

just_ann_now recommended This, You Protect, and it was game over.

I'm putting no pressure on myself to keep writing at this clip and am curious to see how the next year proceeds.

Wonderful stats! *pins medal on you*

It's a crazy amount of words. But it's been fun!

That is an amazing amount of writing, congratulations on getting all of the accomplished. And what makes it even better is that I know you, and that means it's all good writing. Hope you're having fun with it but it sounds like you are.

Well, I *hope* it's good. *g* I'm definitely having fun. At least when I'm not pulling out my hair because a scene's not coming together. So, just business as usual, really.

Wow, that's so amazing! Well done you *g*

Thanks! It's been an interesting year. :D

Because I love your writing so much you've inspired me to dip my toe into the Stucky world and I've enjoyed what I've read even though my heart is firmly planted elsewhere *g* The piccies in this post are wonderfully delicious and I can see how easy it would have been to fall down that Stucky hole!

I'm honoured you strayed from the lads to read a bit of Stucky. The Marvel boys have thoroughly taken over my brain. (They're very pretty. *g*)

2017 Writing Round Up

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