In Which Kelly Talks About Herself. A Lot.

[kelly_chambliss]

Now that all my holiday fests have had their reveals, I can post my (only slightly belated) end-of-year fic meme. I always enjoy these -- both writing my own and reading other people's. I love the chance to pull together an assessment of a year's worth of disparate stories. (I suppose I like it for the same reason I used to enjoy [in a masochistic sort of way] final exams -- I'd never have gone through the difficult process of synthesizing my learning if I hadn't been forced to, and I was always glad once I had. I learned loads from the process.)

Here's what I wrote in 2012 (all HP):

Femmeslash
• Colour My World based on woldy's excellent Escape Routes For a Stormy Night. For Remix Madness 2012 (Amelia Bones/Poppy Pomfrey; PG-13; 1900 words)
• Determination for hp_halloween (Minerva McGonagall/Septima Vector; PG-13; 200 words)
• The Good Life. A remix of the delicious It Takes Two by miss_morland. For femslash_remix (Minerva McGonagall/Rita Skeeter; R; 2000 words)
• Life, Love, and the Headmistress for minerva_fest (Minerva McGonagall, Neville Longbottom, Wilhelmina Grubbly-Plank, Pomona Sprout, Augusta Longbottom, Hermione Granger, Ron Weasley; PG-13; 10,400 words)**
• Stunners (Minerva McGonagall/Rolanda Hooch; PG-13; 200 words)
• Talk Dirt to Me for daily_deviant (Wilhelmina Grubbly-Plank/Pomona Sprout; R; 1875 words)

Gen
• The Headmaster for deeply_horrible (Severus Snape, Minerva McGonagall, Poppy Pomfrey, Portrait!Albus; R; 5250 words)
• Hopeless for hoggywartyxmas (Millicent Bulstrode, Pomona Sprout, Neville Longbottom, Pansy Parkinson; PG; 9400 words)
• Life, Love, and the Headmistress for minerva_fest (Minerva McGonagall, Neville Longbottom, Wilhelmina Grubbly-Plank, Pomona Sprout, Augusta Longbottom, Hermione Granger, Ron Weasley; PG-13; 10,400 words)**
• Raven's Honour for hp_friendship (Minerva McGonagall, Pomona Sprout, Rolanda Hooch; PG, non-magical AU; 11,000 words)
• Things Needful for hp_darkfest (Minerva McGonagall, Albus Dumbledore; R; 3000 words)

Het
• Flying Dutchman for daily_deviant (Wilhelmina Grubbly-Plank/Aberforth Dumbledore; NC-17-ish; 1700 words)
• Never for dysfuncentine (Minerva McGonagall/Severus Snape; R; 6750 words)
• Purple Lace based on thistlerose's fabulous Even After All These Years. For Remix Madness 2012 (Minerva McGonagall/Alastor Moody; PG-13; 1300 words)
• Rx (Minerva McGonagall/Severus Snape; PG; 1450 words)
• Smiles of a Summer Night for hp_beholder (Minerva McGonagall/Alastor Moody; R; 8800 words)
• Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Snape for reversathon (Minerva McGonagall/Severus Snape; PG-13; 4000 words)

Sexy Singles
• Feet on the Ground for daily_deviant (Filius Flitwick and the feet of various Hogwarts staff; R; 2800 words)
• Tasting the Tempest for daily_deviant (Wilhelmina Grubbly-Plank; R; 1200 words)

M/M Slash -- Apparently none, unless you can think of something I'm missing.

My Fest Participation, 2012
• daily_deviant (Not technically a fest, but it does represent a regular deadline)
• deeply_horrible
• dysfuncentine
• femslash_remix
• hoggywartyxmas
• hp_beholder
• hp_darkfest
• hp_friendship
• hp_halloween
• minerva_fest
• Remix Madness 2012.
• reversathon

Some Stats

Total number of fics = 18 (four fewer than 2011)
Total number of words = 73,225 (34K fewer than 2011)
Total number of non-HP fics = 0 (down from two in 2011)

Fics Under 1000 words = 2
1000-4999 words = 10
5000-9999 words = 4
10,000+ words = 2

Total number of het fics = 6
Total number of femmeslash fics = 6*
Total number of gen fics = 5*
Total number of sexy singles = 2
*"Life, Love, and the Headmistress" is counted in both categories, because challenging categorical boundaries was one of the points of the fic.

Total number of fics that include Minerva McGonagall in the main pairing or focus = 12
Total number of HP fics in which Minerva is mentioned but is not central = 2
Total number of Minerva-free fics = 4
Total number of HP fics including Severus Snape in the main pairing/focus = 4 (down from 8 in 2011)
Most common pairing = Minerva/Severus (3; down from 7 in 2011)
Character with largest number of different partners = Minerva (are you surprised?) She got busy with Severus (3), Alastor (2), Rolanda (1), Rita (1), Septima (1), and (maybe) Wilhelmina (1).
Total Number of Pairings I'd Never Written Before = 4 (down from 10 last year. Minerva/Septima, Wilhelmina/Aberforth, Wilhelmina/Pomona, Amelia/Poppy)

Other Fandom Activities for 2012
• I served as moderator of the second minerva_fest. We had two dozen excellent entries; I was quite pleased with the fest.
• I did several months' worth of reccing crack_broom in the "Femmeslash, "Gen," and "Rarest Reccer" categories. I also did one month of "Threesomes." (Sadly, though, Crack_Broom as a comm seems to be dying.)
• I continued for another year at daily_deviant, though I managed to forget my August deadline, and I did not do "Kinky Kristmas" this year. My posting day remains the 15th of even-numbered months.
• I continued for a second year as an editor at quibbler_report; I'm the Tuesday editor.
• In July, I had a wonderfully memorable trip to Europe, where I spent a lot of time with my dear friends therealsnape and tetleythesecond; I also had a grand afternoon with vaysh11, the_winterwitch, miss_morland, minervas_eule, and pale_moonlite. (Pale has since left fandom, and I miss her, but we still have our fun memories of her and, of course, her fabulous stories.)
• At various times during the year, I spent lovely afternoons with verdeckt, albalark, and dueltastic.

Upcoming for 2013
• In May, I will attend Misti-Con in New Hampshire. I've submitted a programming proposal and look forward to hearing whether it's been accepted.

Fic Q and A
Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you'd predicted?
I expected to write less than I had in 2011, and that's just what happened: I wrote about 34,000 fewer words in 2012. I'm not finished with HP yet, but I definitely have less to say than I once did.

(Previous years:
2009 = ~124,000 words
2010 = ~72,000 words
2011 = ~107,000)

What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted in January? Remix! I'd been only vaguely aware of remix fests before this year, but the whole premise turns out to be great fun.

In terms of pairings, I wrote two HP pairings that I'd never considered before -- Wilhelmina/Pomona and Wilhelmina/Aberforth -- yet in both cases, as I wrote, the pairings came to seem so natural that I wondered why I hadn't been writing them all along.

And I didn't really plan a masturbating, foot-fetishist Flitwick, but again, after I wrote the fic, it seemed obvious and inevitable.

What's your own favorite story of the year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you happiest? Hard to choose, but I'll have to go with "Life, Love, and the Headmistress." I started with a gimmicky premise -- to write a story about McGonagall in which she never really appears -- and I was very pleased with the results. I also had the chance to explore Neville as a character, which was fun.

I also like "Hopeless" -- I was pleased with the way Millicent came out. And I liked the Moody voice in "Smiles of a Summer Night."

Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them? I wouldn't say I took "risks" as such, because I stuck with my usual HP characters and style, but I did make a few changes. I branched out a bit from McGonagall to write about characters who are new or mostly-new to my repertoire: Neville, Millicent, Aberforth, Flitwick. I also experimented with my first non-magical AU in "Raven's Honour."

And I wrote a lot more gen this year. All three of my longest stories (9K or longer) were gen, and I thoroughly enjoyed writing them.

What did I learn? That characterization is still my favorite aspect of writing.

From my past year of writing, what was....

My best story of this year: Probably one of the long genfics: "Hopeless," "Life, Love, and the Headmistress," or "Raven's Honour."

Story of mine most under-appreciated by the universe, in my opinion: I always get far more appreciation than I have a right to. But this year, the story that got the least response outside the flist is "Flying Dutchman." Zero reviews on FFN; zero comments from non-flisties on Daily Deviant. Not many Wilhelmina/Aberforth fans out there, evidently.

But it doesn't matter. I got such kind and thoughtful responses from all you dear flisties, and there were two fics in different fests that got over 25 comments each. So I have no complaints in the "appreciation" department.

Most fun story to write: "Feet on the Ground." I love Filius.

Story with the single sexiest moment: I didn't write as much sex this year as I have in the past, but I think "Talk Dirt to Me" has some pretty sexy moments.

Most "Holy crap, that's wrong, even for you" story:
"Things Needful" -- Albus Imperiuses Minerva -- for the Greater Good, of course.
"The Headmaster" -- Severus Cruciates Minerva -- for the Greater Good, of course.

Story that shifted my own perceptions of the characters: I'm always pleased if I can write stories that make me understand characters that I either don't like in canon or don't pay much attention to. I'd never given much thought to Millicent Bulstrode, for instance, beyond thinking that she's a two-dimensional caricature in canon. But once I decided to focus on her as the main character in "Hopeless," I found that she's fascinating and multi-dimensional.

Hardest story to write:
• "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Snape" had the most false starts.
• "Things Needful" required the most rewriting. In the first version, I tried to conceal the identity of the person using the Imperius Curse, but that approach really didn't work: not only was the mystery not mysterious enough, but the story didn't have a point beyond the gimmick of "who is this?" My excellent beta (thank you, miss_morland!) helped me see the problems, and once I decided to make the story into a direct character study of Albus, I think it was much more effective.
• "The Headmaster" is the story I am least sure of -- after I finished the first draft, I was very close to just junking the whole thing; I'd totally lost perspective on it. I feared it was too exploitive, that in trying to understand how Snape reached the point of being a monster, I had ended up seeming to excuse him, which I didn't want to do. I sympathize with the position he's placed in, but not with the choices he makes. I'm still not sure about the fic overall, but I do think it raises important questions.

Easiest Story to Write: Both my Remix Madness stories flowed pretty easily. I had only a weekend to write both of them, and I surprised myself by being able to pull them together.

Story That Could Have Been Better: All of them, of course. But probably "The Good Life" is the one that still needs the most work. Both the Remix Madness fics could use another draft, too, since they were written in a very short time. But I think they turned out better than "The Good Life."

Story With the Single Sweetest Moment: If by "sweet," you mean, "Severus does something that could be interpreted as kind even as he is being sneering and insulting," then the answer is "Rx."

I think "Flying Dutchman" and "Talk Dirt to Me" are nicely sweet, too.

Most Overdue Story: Oh, dear, it's been a long time since I could claim that I turned in every story by deadline. But I don't think I was more than a week or so overdue on anything except my own Minerva_Fest story, but since I was the mod, I could excuse myself.

Story That Made You Cry: There were a couple that made me want to cry with frustration, but otherwise, none.

Did You Meet Your Writing Goals for 2012?
Here's what I wrote last year: I'm still toying with the idea of evil!Minerva, but I may just have to face the fact that I'll never write this story. I'd like to try another gen HP fic, and I hope to continue to experiment with characters I haven't written before. I'm also feeling the itch for a new fandom (not to take the place of HP, but just for a bit of variety): more Austen fic and perhaps some "Downton Abbey."

And I've got to cut down on the number of fests. I'll try to stay flexible, because I don't want to rule out anything that might be really fun, but I'm thinking maybe four-five fests instead of twelve.

I also noted that I hadn't paired Minerva with Alastor or Wilhelmina in 2011. "I'll have to change that next year," I wrote.

• I did not write evil!Minerva, and I probably never will.
• I did write two Minerva/Alastor stories and one with Minerva/Wilhelmina.
• I did write more gen. All three of my long stories (9K or more) were gen, and I thoroughly enjoyed writing them.
• I did write several new characters: Millicent, Aberforth, Neville
• I still feel the itch for a new fandom, but I didn't write anything outside of HP this year. I haven't given up the idea of Downton Abbey, though.
• As for cutting down on the number of fests. . .um, I have to report failure. I wrote for 12 fests in 2011 and I also wrote for 12 fests in 2012 (if you count Daily Deviant).

Fic-writing goals for 2013:
• Considering the amount of work required for my professional sabbatical, I definitely must cut down on fanfic writing this year. At the moment, I'm considering only five fests/commitments:

--I've signed up for dysfuncentine
--I plan to do hp_beholder.
--If I mod another run of minerva_fest, I'll of course write for that.
--And if hoggywartyxmas has a 2013 edition, I'll be signing up for that one.
--For the moment, I'm keeping my slot at daily_deviant, but I may have to take a hiatus if it eats up too much sabbatical time.

• And I'm going to try to stop beating up on Minerva! I gave her such a hard time in "Things Needful" and "The Headmaster"; she needs a break.

Otherwise, I have no particular plans. If something really fun comes along, I'll consider it.