Angelic Paranoia

Here is the 2018-2021 post for comparison.

Stats:

List of Completed Fics:
Star Trek Discovery: A Sense of Peace and Joy
The Bill: Worth It
Star Trek Enterprise: One Day at a Time
Star Trek Enterprise: The Discipline Compulsion
Doctor Who: Chicken Ambush
Doctor Who: A Time Lord, a Human and a Baby
Doctor Who: All Tied Up
Doctor Who: Skater Boy
Doctor Who: Mistaken for the Doctor
Doctor Who: How (Not) to Save a Life
Doctor Who: Say What You Mean
Doctor Who/SJA: The Ballet Date
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds: Time and Memory
Doctor Who/SJA: Vanishing Act
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds: Don't Talk to me
Spooks: Copycat
Doctor Who: Wrong Time, Wrong Doctor
Doctor Who: So in Front as Behind
Doctor Who: Snow and Insults
Doctor Who: Happiness is a Honeymoon Cruise
Superman & Lois: Full Force
Superman & Lois: Farmhouse Breakfast
Star Trek: The Next Generation/Enterprise: Natural Medicine
Star Trek Enterprise: Time To Go
Star Trek: The Next Generation/Doctor Who: Blue Box Revolution
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds/Discovery/Original Series: It's Not Easy To Be Me
Quantum Leap: Let's Not Talk About This
Doctor Who: The Missy Manoeuvre
Star Trek: The Next Generation: Costume Party
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds: The Dancing Vulcan
Doctor Who: The Halloween Guy
Doctor Who: Hush Little Baby
Doctor Who: A Magician's Trust
Doctor Who/SJA: Old Friends and New
Doctor Who/SJA: UNIT Recruitment
Doctor Who: To The Ball
Doctor Who: The Safe House
Doctor Who: Collapse
Doctor Who: Adrenalin High, Adrenalin Low
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds: Alien Fugue
Star Trek: The Next Generation: Waking Up With Will
Star Trek Enterprise: Unfortunate Son
Star Trek: The Next Generation: Testing the Theory
Superman & Lois: Someone Else's Shoes
Murdle: The Tragic Case of True Feelings
Galaxy Quest: Unintended Consequences
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds: Launch Day Anniversary
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds: Champion Drink Pourer
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds: Shopping Trip
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds: After
Superman & Lois: How to be a Good Dad

Total number: 51
Total word count: 74,748
Ship/fandom/character breakdown:

Type:
Gen: 34
Het: 13
Slash: 2
Femslash: 2

Fandoms:
Doctor Who (BFA): 3
Doctor Who (Classic): 18
Doctor Who (New): 5
Doctor Who (UNIT): 1
Doctor Who (unspecified): 1
Galaxy Quest: 1
Murdle: 1
Quantum Leap: 1
Sarah Jane Adventures: 4
Spooks: 1
Star Trek: Discovery: 2
Star Trek: Enterprise: 5
Star Trek: Original Series: 1
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds: 9
Star Trek: The Next Generation: 5
Superman & Lois: 4
The Bill: 1

Characters who appear in more than one fic:
Christine Chapel: 3
Ian Chesterton: 4
Beverly Crusher: 3
Susan Foreman: 2
Fourth Doctor: 2
First Doctor: 4
Jo Grant: 5
Clark Kent: 4
Jonathan Kent: 2
Jordan Kent: 2
Lois Lane: 4
Joseph M'Benga: 3
Ace McShane: 5
Missy: 2
Number One: 5
Erica Ortegas: 2
Phlox: 2
Christopher Pike: 7
Jean-Luc Picard: 3
William Riker: 3
Seventh Doctor: 4
Sixth Doctor: 4
Sarah Jane Smith: 5
Spock: 3
Kate Stewart: 3
Harry Sullivan: 2
Evelyn Smythe: 3
T'Pol: 3
Third Doctor: 4
Trip Tucker: 4
Nyota Uhura: 2
Barbara Wright: 5

This year was very much the Doctor Who and Star Trek year. Of the 51 fics I wrote, only 9 are not either Doctor Who or Star Trek.

Specifics:

Best/worst title?
Best: I still love A Sense of Peace and Joy.

Worst: Skater Boy, if only because I can remember what the rest are, but not at all for this one.

Best/worst summary?
None of them are particularly exciting (aside from my Unconventional Courtship fic, which I didn't come up with).

Best: The Safe House: The Doctor and Evelyn are temporary house mates. The house might not survive the experience.

Worst: The Missy Manoeuvre: When Clara finds Missy running a pub, she knows Missy has an ulterior motive. She's right.
Just because by this point I'd read a lot of summaries with the same structure, and also because I feel like the summary could make it sound more exciting.

Best first line?
A tie between The Ballet Date: Kate checked her watch. She was hoping it would be the interval soon, but it turned out she'd only been watching the ballet for ten minutes.

and The Safe House: "Doctor," Evelyn called, with a warning tone, despite him never paying any attention to it. "What have you broken this time?"

Best last line?
Hush Little Baby: Alistair handed the baby back to the Doctor and washed his hands of the whole thing. Metaphorically and literally.

The Tragic Case of True Feelings: Sometime later Irratino muttered, "I thought you'd never solve that mystery. I read it in the cards weeks ago."

General questions:

Looking back, did you write more fics than you thought you would this year, less than you thought, or about what you predicted?
More. Way more. In about September I was up to about 40,000 and thought that I could probably write 50,000 this year. And then ended up writing almost as much as I had in the first 8 months of the year. I did a lot of writing in the last few months of this year - it was pretty much the only thing I did with my free time.

What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted last year?
One of the answers to this should be Strange New Worlds, since it only started this year, but I was pretty sure I'd a) love it and b) write it.

I think the winner here is Superman & Lois, since I wrote four fics for it, despite not being interested at all in the fic a year ago, after the BBC put the first season up.

I don't think any of the pairings I wrote are massively unpredictable. There are a few I did for one fic, which isn't unusual for me.

What's your favourite story this year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you the happiest.
A Sense of Peace and Joy, I think because it's beautifully angsty.

Okay, NOW your most popular story.
One Day at a Time. As I re-discover every year, writing a popular pairing in a popular fandom gets you more readers.

Story most underappreciated by the universe?
The Ballet Date. As a corollary to the above, writing rare pairings gets you fewer readers. What a shock.

Story that could have been better?
It's Not Easy To Be Me. I tried to write it to make it feel like there was no sense of time, but I don't think I quite achieved that in the way I wanted to.

Sexiest story?
The Discipline Compulsion is sex pollen, so that's probably the closest, even if no one would really call it sexy.

Saddest story?
This category has more competition. I think, of all the angsty stuff I've written (mainly Pike angst) it's A Sense of Peace and Joy, where everyone dies. Some of whom die in canon. But it revels in the angst more than the shorter fics.

Most fun?
Happiness is a Honeymoon Cruise. But then it has Missy in it and Missy is the most fun.

Story with single sweetest moment?
This is another hard category, but I think Testing the Theory, where Christopher admits he loves T'Pan.

Hardest story to write?
Copycat was really hard for some reason. It took a few goes to work the plot out, then I had to make it shippy but subtle, which was also tricky.

Easiest/most fun story to write?
Happiness is a Honeymoon Cruise and The Missy Manoeuvre were so much fun to write. What they have in common is: Missy. As I was writing the first one it made me want to write more Missy.

Easiest was Someone Else's Shoes. It was my Yuletide assignment. I got the email one morning and by the end of the day I had a plot worked out. Then I just sat down and wrote it.

Did any stories shift your perceptions of the characters?
Happiness is a Honeymoon Cruise is not so much a shift and more thinking a lot about the relationship between the Twelfth Doctor and Missy.

Most overdue story?
Two of them tie for this. I started both A Sense of Peace and Joy and The Ballet Date in 2018 and finally managed to finish them this year.

Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?
I did a Flash Exchange. I literally only had a weekend to write. Although I'd already worked the plot out in my head the day before, which helped. But I learnt that I can write a 3000 words in a weekend. A fact that I then used extensively for the rest of the year.

This year's theme and the story that demonstrates it most:
Doctor Who and Star Trek. And a lot of Pike angst, as demonstrated by half the Strange New Worlds fics I wrote.

What are your fic writing goals for next year?
To write less! I need to do other things with my time. And also fewer exchanges. I have a couple of things I'd like to get written (more of the Harry in the present fic, and some more Pike angst), so fewer exchanges will help with that. But I would like to do genfreeformexchange this year, since I've tried to do it a couple of times but just couldn't fit it in. I will also run tardis-festivities again since I was paranoid that it could all go horribly wrong and it really didn't (and got three times as many sign ups as I decided I'd be happy with!). And also I now know what I'm doing with AO3's inconsistent interface.