On All My Motions

It was shaping to be not much at all. Fortunately, I caught it in time.

( BARELY in time. )

I got caught up in one thing and another over the last several months, didn’t really notice till I thought to check just the other day, but …

I’ve written only one fic this year.

Granted, a few things have happened (relocating multiple times to multiple states, several thousand dollars’ worth of repairs, that teeny-tiny little heart attack business, plus a bit of unexpected personal news that I’m not ready to talk about quite yet (maybe the end of January, let a few other issues shake out first), but I still can’t let 2024 end on that kind of record.

So let’s just see how much I can accomplish over the next month, shall we?

This past year hasn’t gone too badly as far as fic production. Technically I turned out eight stories, which would equal my record from 2003 … but four of those were drabble collections, which I don’t quite count the same. Even without those, I did as well as — or better than — most years. (Of course, I’ve been at this since 1999, so there’s a lot of leeway for the accounting.)

( So, in review: )

As noted in this post, I’ve been focusing this year on the remaining fics I said in 2016 (here) that I would do then. By the end of that year, seven were still undone; while turning out any number of other stories in the interim, I have managed to finish three more from the original list since that time. Now I’m done with the draft of the latest, “the Price of Lace”. As I did with “Zulu Time”, I’m letting it rest for a week before I go back, look it over again, and do final edits before posting.

I really do look to finish them all this year, and writing something every day seems to be carrying me to that point. Only three to go now. Of course, ‘SaM’ is the next up, and I’ve been postponing that one for the last 17 years …

After working on it for quite some time (and planning it for much longer), I’ve finally finished my draft of “Zulu Time” (‘ZT’ listed here) . It’ll be a while before I post it, I want to let it set for a week before going back to it for final editing. The real work is done, though.

That leaves only four stories remaining in the projected-fics list I posted seven years ago. Which doesn’t say much for my punctuality, but does indicate something about perseverance.* Maybe I actually will finish that out this year. (Or maybe not, ‘SaM’ may turn out to be a major undertaking. We’ll see …)

For now, life be good.

*In fairness, I did four of the twelve listed there that same year, and had to skip one because the remix event for which it would have been done didn’t take place. I also turned out thirteen stories not listed there in the meantime, as well as multiple drabbles and linked-drabble fics. Still, I clearly failed to meet the target I set when I posted that list.

On December 20, sparrow2000 did the customary year-end fandom/fanfic roundup. sparrow2000 first discovered me in 2010, and — after skipping a couple of years — highlighted me regularly thereafter. Not last year, though. Hmm, I wondered, am I losing my touch …?

Or maybe it was something even more simple. Maybe I posted only one story throughout the entirety of 2022.

I knew I’d been busy with various real-life issues, and that my output had been kind of sparse. This, though, I haven’t done that badly since 2004. The worst of it is that I did have some other things I could have posted last year, but they were kind of … non-standard … and there would have been work necessary to get them into place, and as I said, I was busy —

Yeah. Time to correct all that. Let’s see what 2023 can bring.

Because of the schedule I’m currently following, I don’t so much have a ‘work week’ as two blocks of ‘work days’ with breaks. As in, Tuesday-Wednesday on, Thursday off, Friday-Saturday on, then my Sunday-Monday weekend. I never have to work more than two days in a row, and two of my days off are weekdays, which helps me get things done that regular working hours would impede.

Right now, I’m hoping to use my time off for immediate effect. Oh, there are other things I’ll have to do — Susan saves up tasks for my days off — but Wednesday I turned out 2,500 words on my most recent fic, and then went three days without having any spare time to continue that. Even assuming a 15,000 word total, I’d be one-sixth done now, and I doubt the story will run longer than that (and probably shorter). I just want to get it done, and get it right.

It’s been a while since I really focused on fanfic production. Last year, because of the rush to get the house ready, then move stuff out of it so it could be shown, then getting everything else out of it once it did sell, then living in a hotel room while waiting for an apartment to come available … I only turned out three stories all of last year, “the Song Remains the Same” and “Down the Ringing Grooves of Change” and “Hell for Leather”. That wasn’t a bad year — average, actually — but I know I can do better and I always want to, so I’m giving it another try this year.

It helps, at least in my own mind, that I’m finally focusing seriously on those stories I always planned to finish ‘one of these years’. (One of them, I really wanted to try and get done by the end of 2005; that didn’t quite work out, and I’ve meant to get around to it eventually ever since.) My absolute minimum? five stories, six if I enter this year’s Summer of Giles and have to come up with something original for that (and I probably will). It really would be nice, though, if I could finally manage to average out to the one-story-per-month — twelve in a year’s time — that has been my ambition for longer than I can remember.

I could do that easily, by the way. Even if I set a 1,000-word minimum, it would be no problem at all for me to bang out a 1,000-word story per month. Problem is, I want to write the stories I want to write, and they keep being longer than will neatly fit a predetermined timeframe. Still doable with the right amount of self-discipline, but then that’s always been a weak area for me.

We’ll see. I’ve made a decent start, and I have some ideas, and this is working out to be a pretty good year, and we’ll see.

Susan was talking with her closest cousin the other day. She (Susan) is currently enthusiastic about Revolutionary War history, and in response her cousin said, “Oh, so-and-so (some relative) followed out some old records, and just found out that one of our ancestors was with Francis Marion during that war.” Susan freaked … and the funny part was, the cousin had never even heard of the Swamp Fox. Susan wants to document enough genealogy that our granddaughter can have an official status as a Daughter of the American Revolution. (Of course, there’s considerable chance that she’s already a daughter of a different revolution, on her maternal side …)

***

A couple of days ago, I went into the office to clear out my desk. I left it nearly five months ago, and only went back once (and even then I didn’t go there; I’d taken my monitor and keyboard home with me, and didn’t want to carry it back only to have to turn it around and carry it all out again, so I used the equipment at someone else’s empty desk). I was at the new center less than a year; a few more months, and I’ll have been away from it for longer than I spent AT it. Time keeps on slippin’, slippin’, slippin’.

***

We had to close off our home’s pet door because raccoons kept coming in to eat the cat food. I actually caught the cat watching them one day; he was, like, “Whatever, dude. They always bring me more anyway.”

***

Work on our house continues, but slowly. Our contractor/handyman squashed a finger and then that turned into an infection, for which he’s receiving treatment but it affects the pace. The central heat has been repaired and a new A/C system installed; the deck is finished (except for a few places where some painting still needs to be done); the jets in the Jacuzzi tub have been brought back into operation; the spare bedroom is finished (including new ceiling in one spot, new flooring, and new paint on the walls); the main bedroom has been refloored; there’s a new lavatory in the main bathroom; new light fixtures have been installed in the entry hall, kitchen, ‘office’, and spare bedroom. All that’s left is the renovation of the spare bathroom, and new flooring in all the areas of the house that don’t have it yet.

Susan wanted to be done by now and have the house on the market. I figure it’ll be sometime into autumn before we can do that. All the same, the process is … er, processing. Neither of us has given up on the dream of moving overseas (I’m fixed on Malaysia, Susan keeps looking at other places), and I’m thinking it will probably be doable by summer 2021. If we manage it faster, well, that wouldn’t be bad, either.

***

For the Snowflake Challenge in 2016 (link here), I listed out a dozen stories that I was going to try to write that year, averaging one per month. One of the twelve turned out to be undoable — it was going to be “this year’s RemixRedux story”, only RemixRedux wound up not taking place that year— but I’ve done enough other remix stories in the meantime that I consider that particular obligation to have been fulfilled elsewhere. Looking back over my record, I can see that it took me four years to turn out the next dozen stories … and, of the ones I’ve produced, five of the ones I specifically promised haven’t yet been done.

I’m still on it. I didn’t give up, I just postponed.

***

All the Everclear is gone now. I am so far resisting the temptation to replace it. No guarantees, though.

***

Sweden — by specifically NOT doing the things we’ve been doing — has reached the level of coronavirus recovery that the U.S. claims to want. Has anyone considered the possibility of attempting to achieve the same result by following the same process? Nah, that’s crazy talk.

***

2020 has been … intense. And we’re not even through the two-thirds mark yet. Maybe that’s why the Everclear ‘evaporated’ as quickly as it did.

So, 1,000-some words more on JBN, my effort for WIP Big Bang. I really hadn’t expected it to go beyond 15,000 total, but I know where I am in the story right now and I know about how much stuff still has to happen, so I strongly suspect that it’s going to be substantially longer than originally planned. Why does this keep happening to me? and why does it always seem to happen when I’m being faced with a deadline?

In semi-related news, I only today became aware of Remix Revival, designed as a replacement for the gone-and-much-missed Remix Redux. I was a dedicated participant at the latter till the year it fell off the table (and started my own annual remix event even before then, because I enjoyed the process so much) … but, you know, I’m not entirely sure I want to get into it this time through. As I’ve noted previously, I’ve been having increasing difficulty meeting deadlines, and I shrink from the thought either of failure or of the frantic last-minute effort I keep having to put in to avoid failure. I still write, I still enjoy writing, but I’m just not going at the pace I happily maintained during my most productive years. While the capacity is still there, I simply keep finding other things I’d rather be doing. Which is definitely sad.

On the other hand, I’ve got a little project on the table that I’d still like to try to fulfill, so my fanfic output may yet see just one final burst of creativity. May, I repeat, because I’ve learned not to make promises on such things.

So we’ll see.

One: I had another ficcer (won’t name names till something is done, but it happened) ask permission to remix one of my stories outside a remix event. I agreed. Funny thing is, there are indications that the prospective remix will be of the type that operates as a sequel … and I’ve already been planning to sequel that particular story anyway. I’ll be curious to see if what comes out has any resemblance to what I’d tenuously planned.

Two: Another of my stories, “Learning Curve, was invited to be part of Best in Fandom at AO3. Again, I accepted. (Somebody offers me goodies, I’ll usually take them up on it.) Maybe a small thing, but welcome all the same.

Three: I signed up for WIP Big Bang. I’d been aware of it for a while (from cornerofmadness), and almost left it too late. Now we get to see what I do with it.

(Also, we’re not that far from this year’s summer_of_giles, and I’m already pretty sure what I want to do for that one when the event arrives.)

Not enough to fill up the rest of the year, but enough to look forward to.