fic talk: end-of-year meme!

[sword_logic]

i did this over on twitter, but i wanted to expand on some of these answers as i crosspost so here we go! original post via tumblr.

1) What’s your personal favourite thing you wrote this year?

S11 au has got to take the cake on this one. i've honestly truly loved everything that i've written this year, but posting the second part of S11 au was a huge, huge accomplishment for me and i'm so proud of it. i also really loved what i wrote for it.

2) What’s your least favourite thing you wrote this year?

...also S11 au. i pushed myself so bad at the end of november, and i cranked out some of the poorest writing i've ever managed. i wish i hadn't done that.

3) Which of your fics was most different from what you usually write?

i never posted (or finished) this little bit of magnus chase fic i wrote way earlier in the year, but i set out to mimic rick riordan's style for it - i think the only other thing i've written in 1st person was a destiny lore-inspired bit, and i'm not sure i ever (or at least recently?) wrote any fic fic in 1st person. it was super fun to try my hand at riordan's style, though. he's got such a great balance of levity and seriousness and silly humor.

I wish Sam was here. Even though it's kinda selfish of me. She's got this grace and balance about things like this, her faith centering her in a way I don't think would ever work for me. Gods, I wish she were here.

Hearth is focusing so intently that I can feel it. I can see it only out of the corner of my eye because I can't bring myself to look away from Blitz, but Hearth's focus is absolutely palpable, filling this weirdly huge bathroom alongside curls of steam, just nowhere near as light.

The water brushes color into Blitz in painfully slow strokes, stone-gray pallor clinging stubbornly to his cheeks, and then all at once a ribbon of red swirls towards the drain.

I don't even see it happen, is how fast Hearth moves.

One second, Hearth is as still as a statue – okay, no, really bad metaphor – and the next, Blitz’s body sags forward half an inch and Hearth’s got the Skofnung Stone between his fingers and I think he might be shaking as he presses it to the wound on Blitz’s gut. And it’s gone.

(The worst part is that the wound isn’t. wasn’t. even ugly. Just a small, neat slash, precisely the width of the Skofnung Sword. Jack would probably wax poetic about it and make me want to smack him against the tile.)

(Okay, smacking anything against this creepily pristine tile sounds great right now, but I digress.)

My knees buckle in relief about the same time Blitz's knees just plain buckle, and I rush into the shower without any regard for how awkward it is. Hearth swoops down onto his knees to catch Blitz and they topple together, breath audibly leaving Blitz as Hearth just absolutely crushes him in his arms.

4) Which of your fics this year was most successful?

i'm defining "successful" here as "achieving what i wanted to achieve," and by that metric, one step ahead of a losing game nailed it. i set out to write about aunor getting caught up in shin's 15 million secret identities and the trash fire of a relationship he's got with drifter, and by god, did i do it. i had so much fun writing this fic.

5) Which of your fics do you wish was more successful?

again... S11 au. not much more to say than what i said above.

6) What’s your favourite piece of dialogue you wrote this year?

this was a really tough one to choose. i feel like my strengths in dialogue lie more in longer conversations than in snappy 1-2 line zingers or punches, which is fine, but that makes it hard to choose for this meme. :B i did really like this line i wrote, though, from a disconnected bit of uldren/jolyon that never went any further:

"Is it a signet? An accolade?" The Guardian pauses. "Does it mean something to the Awoken?"

"No," Jolyon replies. He's got another set of gloves stashed alongside his extra mags, and he pulls them on in quick, sharp motions. "Just means something to me."

7) What’s your favourite piece of description or narration?

by contrast, i knew exactly what this would be:

Maine shrugs in response, and inches down until his neck is cradled in the couch’s backrest and he's folded nearly in half, legs trapped by the low table in front of the couch. He looks ridiculous, like an oversized child that’s pouting, and yet––

And yet, the late afternoon sunlight slants over Maine’s face, spilling over his jaw and onto his neck, the color of honey sinking into damp flushed skin, shadows drawn in precise ridges over his scars.

“...What?”

Wash blinks, feeling sluggish. Maine turns his head further, and the setting sun dances across one eye, settles into shadow past the bridge of his nose, and Wash nearly misses the response again.

8) Which fic this year was most fun to write?

one step ahead of a losing game takes the cake once more! writing this fic really reinforced for me how much i love writing things where We, The Readers have all the cards, but the characters most certainly do not. this is the case in S11 au too – we all know the main story beats for the chorus trilogy, but wash and maine don't. it's so fun to manipulate circumstances so that a certain character is or isn't at the right place at the right time, and it's also very, very satisfying to find ways to hide information in ways that don't involve The Idiot Ball.

9) If you could go back and change something about one of the fics you wrote this year, what would it be?

i'll lay off S11 au for this, since i'm super happy with what i posted. i edit very aggressively and i very, very rarely post something without being thoroughly satisfied with it, so there's not much to say here, but i would have liked to fit a bit more about shin's and drifter's emotional states into albedo. i couldn't find a place to fit something in that wouldn't have thrown the whole fic off-balance, but that's not at all to say i'm unsatisfied with the fic.

10) What, if anything, are you going to try to do differently in your writing in the new year?

writing/planning on paper! i have a nice dot grid notebook ready to go. writing notes down in a physical notebook has helped me tremendously, and i definitely want to write my thoughts and plans out more next year.