( Under the cut )

( Under the cut )

Bits of this and that: ( Under the cut. )

And that’s it for now. Tune in later for the next pulse-pounding episode.

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.