Fic in 2021!

[starfishstar]

Fic I posted in 2021:

JANUARY (no fic posted – but I participated in a series of wonderful writing workshops in January, February and March, where I got a chance to work on lots of different original fiction ideas)


FEBRUARY

• Bliss of the Domestic Kind (Harry Potter; this was part of what was otherwise a month of writing original flash fiction, but Remus and Sirius snuck into this one!)

• It Could Always Be… (Spinning Silver; for Purimgifts)
  

• The Havoc of Goblins (Miryem and the Purim Goblins, part 1) (ditto)
  

• The Wisdom of Miryem Mandelstam (Miryem and the Purim Goblins, part 2) (ditto)

MARCH – MAY (no fic posted – but I did Camp NaNo (for original fiction) in April!)

JUNE

• Witchery, Sorcery! (The Affair of the Mysterious Letter; for Holmestice) [POEM]

• The Adventure of the Blue Carb Uncle (NRK / Norwegian TV Sherlock parody, aka the “Oklahomo” parody; for Holmestice)

JULY-NOVEMBER (nope; just surviving)


DECEMBER

• Brothers in Arms (Graceling Realm series; for Yuletide)

• Storm Hits the City and the Lights Go Out (Call Me By Your Name; for Yuletide)

• Arrival by Sea (Graceling Realm series; for Yuletide) [DRABBLE]

• One Fox (Fleabag; for Yuletide) [DRABBLE]

Writing-related things I did in 2021:

• Completed, submitted, got accepted, revised and HAD PUBLISHED my article based on my thesis research, in a very good academic journal in my field. Again: not an academic by trade, so this may well be the only time I’m published in this professional realm – it felt really, really, really good.

• Flash Fiction February – apparently I did this, and it was this year? God, it’s been a long year.

• Had a flash fiction piece published (!) in the resulting collection from Flash Fiction February. Apparently this was ALSO THIS YEAR? Good god.

• Did Camp NaNoWriMo in April, for the first time! Used it to play around with some possibilities for one of the novel ideas I continue to think maybe one day I’ll write. Again, when I looked back through my writing folders to try to figure out what I’d even done this year, I couldn’t believe Camp NaNo turned out to have been this year. I feel like I’ve aged lifetimes between April and now. (April is when my mom, who’d been getting sicker and sicker over time, started getting so bad that it consumed all of our lives and I’ve pretty much thought about nothing else from then until now.)

• Wrote one piece for Flash Fiction Month in July – again, I’d totally forgotten about this. Apparently I’d thought I might be able to do Flash Fiction Month again this year, and managed to write just one of the challenges before my life went totally off the rails. Until now I’d FORGOTTEN I’D EVEN WRITTEN THIS. (That doesn’t usually happen to me.)

• Just before completing this post, I also realized that the month-long writing workshops I did in January, February and March…were in January, February and March of THIS year. They were great fun – online, of course, and a mix of writing prompts, discussions, visiting speakers, etc.

• Continued my wonderful and now rather long-running weekly writing time with a local friend. Still via Zoom, of course, though in the last couple months we’d very, very carefully experimented with in-person meet-ups. (Masked, in adjacent but separate rooms, window open for airflow, and of course both fully vaccinated.) It was great to see her, and amazing to be able to cuddle her cat while writing. :-) Then, of course, omicron came, and now we’re back on Zoom. [NOTE: I’m writing this post during said weekly writing time, and literally as soon as I finished that sentence, my friend alerted me to come back to the Zoom screen, because her cat had showed up and she wanted to make sure I got to see her before she wandered off again.] <3 <3 <3

• Co-modded a fest for the first time! (Holmestice) I was so honored to be asked, and it was great to be part of this and learn all the behind-the-scenes and help participants; it was also, of course, a lot of work. And then my mom ended up in the hospital (one of FOUR times over the course of this summer; my dad was also in the hospital once, in between two of my mom’s times) and I had to drop everything to focus on keeping her alive.

• Participated in a new-to-me fest (Purimgifts), which was delightful.

• Finally figured out how minichallenges work in Yuletide and signed up for some... I’m not sure it actually changed anything about what gifts I received, but it was fun to think about particular interests within the larger Yuletide framework. (I signed up for: MultiLingYule, Jewltide, Make the Yuletide Gay, ...and a Partridge in a Pear Tree, and the Yuletide Madness Drabble Invitational.) And it did prompt me to write a couple of drabbles specifically as a Yuletide challenge. (I’d discovered the Yuletide Madness Drabble Invitational the previous year, but just too late to be able to do anything about it.)

• Wrote in new fandoms! (Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik, a book I like but probably would never have written for if not for the prompting of Purimgifts, and two very small “More Holmes”es, written as treats for Holmestice.)

• Continued to attend some of the Zoom workshops of my local writing festival, but had to stop when I got a new job that includes evenings, since pretty much all writing workshops seem to be held in the evenings. Will I ever get to attend a writing workshop again?? :(

• Continued to be nominally part of my local writing group, though my attendance has been spotty because see above, re: Life, also Parents.

• Read a bunch of books-about-writing that had been on my want-to-read list for a while, and of course took copious notes, because I’m me.

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

Uhhhhh…I don’t even know. It’s been such a hell year and I have no expectations anymore. More fic, I suppose, since it’s amazing I managed to write anything at all!

Looking back, was your fandom involvement (modding, cheerleading, fest participation, etc.) more, less, or about what you'd predicted?

More! Again, I was so honored to be asked to try coming on board as a mod for Holmestice, a fest I love and that has such a wonderful community around it; even if it did all end very abruptly when Life took over.

What's your favorite story of the year?

Ooooh, let’s see. Not so very many to choose from this year, but I’m pretty proud of Storm Hits the City and the Lights Go Out, which I chipped away at all year, through a year when I had so little time to write. And I think it turned out quite good. :-) I’m also quite proud of The Adventure of the Blue Carb Uncle for capturing some of the tone of the very absurdist parody it’s based on, and the three small fics that make up my Miryem and the Purim Goblins series for Purimgifts, where I fused the character from Spinning Silver with lots of Yiddish/Jewish folklore of my childhood.

What's your favorite fandom fest/project of the year?
If talking of fests: Yuletide and Holmestice both brought me great joy, in very different ways. If talking of projects: maybe doing Camp NaNoWriMo! It let me focus in on one specific original fiction project with a lot more depth and attention than I would usually have for it.

Least favorite fandom project?

Nope, no least favorites. I reject this concept entirely :-)

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

Publishing in an academic journal, I suppose? It’s been great to keep expanding what I’m capable of professionally.

Do you have any fanfic or profic goals for the new year?

Survive. Also, write some. :-)

My best story of the year:

As usual, a bit hard to differentiate between “best” and “favorite”… Any of the ones mentioned above under “favorites” would work here. I’m also pleased with the drabbles, especially the Fleabag one. Always so satisfying to discover that, yes, I can express something substantial in just 100 words!

Most fun story:

The Adventure of the Blue Carb Uncle! Hands down!

Most sexy story:

Storm Hits the City and the Lights Go Out, for sure. (Call Me By Your Name does seem to be my only sexy fandom!) There’s no actual sex in this, as usual, but it’s very sensual, as well as Full of Feelings.

Story with the single sexiest moment:

Hm, probably same as above.

Story that shifted my own perceptions of the characters:

Love this question, as always. Probably here, too, Storm Hits the City and the Lights Go Out applies. It’s from Oliver’s perspective, which is always an appealing part of fic writing: to write in a fandom that’s so tightly focused on the relationship between two characters (Elio/Oliver) and is told only from one character’s perspective, then use fic to explore the other character. Not that I haven’t written Oliver POV a bunch before, but I wrote this specific fic in part to explore why Oliver doesn’t dare to stay together with Elio at the end of the movie, and what it might take to get him there in the future.

(I still think about a comment someone left on one of my other fics, saying that it’s not so difficult and Oliver should have just come out and stayed with Elio… I can’t help thinking that that commenter must have been very young, and just did not get how difficult it actually was to come out in the ’80s, or even now, or if you’re raised with a lot of strict expectations, or a million other things that make it way more complicated than “Oliver’s a coward and he should have just come out.” I wrote this in part in answer to that, and to explore for myself what factors might be involved for him.)

Hardest story to write:

Nothing stands out as especially hard this year, thank goodness. Mainly the challenge was finding time – or inspiration – when things were so hard overall.

Biggest surprise:

Holy hell, how much of this year I apparently FORGOT. Or in most cases, not that I actually forgot that a thing happened, just that I was absolutely sure the thing had taken place more than a year ago. We were all saying in 2020 how that year felt like a decade, and I could have sworn 2021 went by a lot faster…until just now when I looked back at everything I did this year and discovered that apparently 2021 was a decade, too.

List of WIPs:

No current WIPs, surprisingly! (I mean, plenty of ideas I may come back to at some point, but nothing that’s currently in progress and trying to get finished in a near timeframe.) I’m right now signing up for Purimgifts, though!

(For the first time in several years, I don’t have an update on some next bit of incremental progress on my Remus/Tonks fic… Just went and looked, and apparently the last time I opened that file was January 1, 2021. Whoops! Oh, well, I guess I was working on original fiction a lot this year instead.)

Total fics posted:

10

Total word count posted:

16,333

Of course, that’s just fic; I also completed various original fiction and flash fiction, plus wrote 15k for Camp NaNo – and my 11k academic article!

 


All in all, wow, it was a much better writing year than I realized. Also...a much, much longer year than I realized.
 

Comments

[grrlpup]

There is so much! Congratulations on all of it. :) :) :)

[starfishstar]

Aw, thank you! :-)

[rabbitica]

Wow, congrats on getting your thesis published! I just went and looked it up, very cool :-)

[starfishstar]

Aw, thank you! That was always pretty much the plan (publish, so that my findings could - hopefully - be of use to more than just me) ...it just ended up being a long road to get there.

[rabbitica]

I feel like publication always is! But you did it!

[scfrankles]

I'm really sorry you and your family have been going through such a difficult time. But I'm so impressed with what you managed to write ^^

Many congratulations on your article based on your thesis research being published ^__^ And congratulations on having your flash fiction piece published too! ^__^

[starfishstar]

Thank you! I appreciate both the sympathy and the congratulations. :-) And yes, it was so exciting to have a flash fiction piece published! (EVEN THOUGH it was the lowest possible bar...it was a collection from that challenge and they took one piece from everyone who participated. But still exciting!) Flash fiction, and especially publishing flash fiction, always makes me think of you. :D