The other day, I was working on moving all of my fanfiction over to AO3 (well, everything since 2006, anyway; I'm no longer publicly acknowledging anything I wrote before that), I came to the realization that I'm not very prolific anymore. This shouldn't be a huge surprise, but I guess toward the end of the year I'm so busy with Yuletide (and there's a sense of accomplishment associated with that) that I don't spend much time looking back over the previous year. I'm very aware of the fact that I'm by no means a great writer, but in order to become better, I should probably spend more time reflecting on my writing and setting goals for the future.

Enough TL;DR — let's break it down into numbers.

2006: 60,506 words (23 stories, including drabbles)
2007: 14,956 words (5 stories)
2008: 12,234 words (3 stories)
2009: 13,596 words (2 stories)

I've decided that I want my goal for 2010 to be at least 30,000 words and at least 10 stories. 30,000 words because that way I'm writing about half of what I wrote in 2006 and double what I've written the past several years; 10 stories because most of my fanfics are at least 3,000 words long, but I'm definitely on an upward trend as far as average wordcount goes, and I don't want to just write 3 10,000-word stories and say I'm done. I also think 10 stories is a good number because that comes out to about one story every month, since I do also want to aim for some consistency here.

This is all limited to fanfiction, by the way. I am planning on writing some original stuff to enter into a campus magazine here, and I've been wanting to participate in NaNo for a good 8 years or so now, but I've never been able to commit to it because of school. I'm not sure if 2010 is going to be the year — probably depends on whether I go on to grad school or get a job. Anyway, even if I do NaNo, it won't count toward this particular goal.

( Slightly more detailed plans.Collapse )

For now I think I have a few ideas to start working on, but at some point I may turn to you, f-list, for prompts and ideas. Some of the best work I've done actually came out of that Christmas request meme I did back in 2006, so I might do something like that again this year.

Happy New Year / Gelukkig Nieuw Jaar / 明けましておめでとう

I was going to post a really long, introspective entry about the ups and downs of the year 2009 on my personal site, but the blog script is b0rked and I can't be bothered to debug it. I considered writing up the entry anyway, and posting it when I get the site fixed, but then I realized, maybe this is a good thing. Maybe that entry just shouldn't be posted.

So, I'm not going to say a whole lot about 2009 except to point out that it was an interesting year in the sense that I started off at an all-time high. If you could talk to the me in January 2009, I would've told you that I had everything I wanted and that, for once, all of the different parts of my life seemed to be working out. Things went south pretty quickly, though, and 2009 is ending on a low. Though, things seem to be kind of on the upswing; I am certainly not as low now as I was back in, say, September. However, things are taking a lot longer to go back up than it took for them to come crashing down, and I imagine it'll be a while before I truly feel good about everything again. I know I have some emotionally trying times ahead, what with grad school applications, job search, inevitable rejections, and graduation.

One of the other interesting things is that 2009 has been the year when I've blogged/journalled the least since I started way back in 2001. Austin suggests that maybe that's why I've been unhappier than usual, because I haven't been utilizing my outlet, but my feelings about blogs/journals have been changing a lot. I'd like to say that in 2010 I will try to blog more, but I'm not sure if that will happen, what with having to be more careful what I post publicly on the interwebs because employers are going to be Googling my name, as well as overall pending life changes that are going to be taking up most of my time and energy. I don't know how blogging will fit in, and how I want it to fit in.

One resolution is that I would like to write more, and maybe be more connected to fandom in general (hopefully Tanabata will help with that). For the past couple of years, I haven't written anything aside from my yearly contributions to yuletide, and I do miss it. Writing nearly 14K words in less than two weeks made me remember how much I love it. I thought about signing up for getyourwordsout or some similar challenge, but again, I'm really hesitant to make pledges when 2010 promises to be a year of Major Life Changes™.

At least 2010 promises to be a year of great video games, what with Mass Effect 2 coming out in less than a month, and hopefully Final Fantasy XIII at *some* point, if Square-Enix can get their asses in gear. As soon as I get paid for the $3000 web design job, I'm buying a PS3 and getting Assassin's Creed II and DragonAge: Origins. I'm finding that although I enjoy many different kinds of fandoms, game universes inspire me more than any other, so hopefully that means I'll feel more strongly inspired to write.

I need to wrap this up because we need to get going soon. My mom got a second, part-time job at the race park, and she has to work tonight, so I'll be spending my New Year's Eve there. That means that if the yuletide reveal happens at midnight, I likely won't be around, so. If you're one of my recipients and you find my journal, HI! 8) Your request was awesome! It was fun writing for you! :D Let's be friends!