The White Lily (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
thewhitelily) wrote2017-04-05 03:40 pm
thewhitelily) wrote2017-04-05 03:40 pm
Entry tags:
2016 Wrapup and Goal Progress
Yes, I know it's April. I've been a bit... focussed on writing, and unable to really lift my eyes recently, but I've finally got around to filling in my word count spreadsheet since about September last year, and starting a new one for 2017.
Final numbers for 2016 are:
Words written: 142,266
Words posted: 125,089
New posted stories: 41
% posted: 87.9%
Lifetime words written: 803,446
Lifetime words posted: 348,018
Lifetime % posted: 43% (up from 33% at beginning of the year)
Lifetime posted stories: 58 (counting an old drabble series as a single story)
My goals for 2016 were:
1) Write and increase my portfolio, posting at least one work every month, and working on fluency and finishing things rather than half writing and wandering away when the going gets tough. (I'll have to call this one success beyond my dreams!)
2) Read fic, when I read, like a member of a community and not a 'next fic' zombie (success mostly)
3) Read one book per month (fail--I think I managed five in the year--but that's still a massive increase on last year)
4) Finish Futureproof (fail)
5) Finish NaNoWriMo (fail)
All in all, I'm happyish. I'd have to say, I'm doing great as long as I stay in fanfiction. As soon as I head off into original, I fall apart, and I need to prioritise my mental health. I'm pretty pleased with the sheer quantity of new stories I've written. In the pretty much exactly 18 months since I came back to fandom again, to today, I've written 72% of my lifetime posted work. But only 31% of my total words written. It's the result of an incredible concerted effort to follow through, and I'm very proud of myself for acheiving it. Given my trouble last year with original, and the way it did my mental health in, I'm not as certain anymore that my eventual path is to transition to original fic. I'd still like to try, but I think I'm happier with the idea that perhaps it's not for me and I'll be okay if that's the case.
My goals for 2017 are:
1) Write and post like the wind as the new season of Sherlock was coming out and increase my fandom visibility.
Very much acheived. I wrote and posted 16 new stories in January, and I've got a number of new followers as well as a number of new fandom friends. :)
2) Keep writing for fan_flashworks every challenge
Going well so far. I've even started properly claiming my badges, which is very satisfying, and I'm (given the mods asked me to only claim three or so at once) two or three challenges off being completely up to date. Keeping up my challenges-in-a-row streak most motivational for keeping writing, and a couple of times having to pull myself up and write something to post has really saved me from disappearing into an anxious huddle. (Although given the nature of my deadline-driven motivation and the time offset in Australia, I've woken up in cold sweats quite a few times in the horrified conviction that I've accidentally missed the deadline.) The streak currently stands at 30.
3) Keep trying out writing different things: female characters, descriptive pieces, different genres, different fandoms.
Doing pretty well, I've got two pieces from female POV so far, and I think they worked well, and a couple of metas. And I wrote my longest humorous story ever, which was in a bit of a different format breaking the fourth wall, which was absolutely tremendous fun and has been very well received. Most different of all, I've accepted a position for at most one day per week as a research assistant for my best friend the university lecturer, writing up her papers for her. We'll have to see how that goes.
4) Try out writing some original short fics, rather than staying all in on fandom all the time, to stretch and build up the original fic muscles without launching straight into a novel and hitting the trigger for a nervous breakdown.
Mmmm, sort of. I've written two biographical short stories for fan_flashworks, which is a start. And I have avoided giving myself a nervous breakdown thinking about it. I've done a bit of research for short story competitions that seem doable. Deadlines, prompts, etc. Which made me realise the Vogel awards deadline is at the end of May and--it occurs to me that given I'll turn 35 in October, this is the last year I'm eligible to submit. I'd always thought I might submit Futureproof for that when I finished it, but... less than two months away. Hello, nervous breakdown. I keep thinking... I could try. But I'm pretty sure at this point I could only fail, and that would be very much not good for me. I'm also pretty sure that what I write isn't really the right genre, so... let it go. Let it go. Focussing on some short stuff is, I think, very much the way to go.
There's a couple of competitions coming up--one I'm thinking of in particular which is for maximum 1500 words on the theme of "light" open only to Australian residents and a first prize of $5000, due in in two weeks. It seems like an extremely attractive competition and should be well within my capabilities to finish something to submit, and best of all the winning entries available from previous years seem like my style. I'm going to give it my best shot.
5) Don't obsess and have fun
Yeah, going pretty well! I've been having anxiety issues touching a couple of other things--but I've been writing mostly freely and without too much obsessing. Fingers crossed I can keep it that way.
Final numbers for 2016 are:
Words written: 142,266
Words posted: 125,089
New posted stories: 41
% posted: 87.9%
Lifetime words written: 803,446
Lifetime words posted: 348,018
Lifetime % posted: 43% (up from 33% at beginning of the year)
Lifetime posted stories: 58 (counting an old drabble series as a single story)
My goals for 2016 were:
1) Write and increase my portfolio, posting at least one work every month, and working on fluency and finishing things rather than half writing and wandering away when the going gets tough. (I'll have to call this one success beyond my dreams!)
2) Read fic, when I read, like a member of a community and not a 'next fic' zombie (success mostly)
3) Read one book per month (fail--I think I managed five in the year--but that's still a massive increase on last year)
4) Finish Futureproof (fail)
5) Finish NaNoWriMo (fail)
All in all, I'm happyish. I'd have to say, I'm doing great as long as I stay in fanfiction. As soon as I head off into original, I fall apart, and I need to prioritise my mental health. I'm pretty pleased with the sheer quantity of new stories I've written. In the pretty much exactly 18 months since I came back to fandom again, to today, I've written 72% of my lifetime posted work. But only 31% of my total words written. It's the result of an incredible concerted effort to follow through, and I'm very proud of myself for acheiving it. Given my trouble last year with original, and the way it did my mental health in, I'm not as certain anymore that my eventual path is to transition to original fic. I'd still like to try, but I think I'm happier with the idea that perhaps it's not for me and I'll be okay if that's the case.
My goals for 2017 are:
1) Write and post like the wind as the new season of Sherlock was coming out and increase my fandom visibility.
Very much acheived. I wrote and posted 16 new stories in January, and I've got a number of new followers as well as a number of new fandom friends. :)
2) Keep writing for fan_flashworks every challenge
Going well so far. I've even started properly claiming my badges, which is very satisfying, and I'm (given the mods asked me to only claim three or so at once) two or three challenges off being completely up to date. Keeping up my challenges-in-a-row streak most motivational for keeping writing, and a couple of times having to pull myself up and write something to post has really saved me from disappearing into an anxious huddle. (Although given the nature of my deadline-driven motivation and the time offset in Australia, I've woken up in cold sweats quite a few times in the horrified conviction that I've accidentally missed the deadline.) The streak currently stands at 30.
3) Keep trying out writing different things: female characters, descriptive pieces, different genres, different fandoms.
Doing pretty well, I've got two pieces from female POV so far, and I think they worked well, and a couple of metas. And I wrote my longest humorous story ever, which was in a bit of a different format breaking the fourth wall, which was absolutely tremendous fun and has been very well received. Most different of all, I've accepted a position for at most one day per week as a research assistant for my best friend the university lecturer, writing up her papers for her. We'll have to see how that goes.
4) Try out writing some original short fics, rather than staying all in on fandom all the time, to stretch and build up the original fic muscles without launching straight into a novel and hitting the trigger for a nervous breakdown.
Mmmm, sort of. I've written two biographical short stories for fan_flashworks, which is a start. And I have avoided giving myself a nervous breakdown thinking about it. I've done a bit of research for short story competitions that seem doable. Deadlines, prompts, etc. Which made me realise the Vogel awards deadline is at the end of May and--it occurs to me that given I'll turn 35 in October, this is the last year I'm eligible to submit. I'd always thought I might submit Futureproof for that when I finished it, but... less than two months away. Hello, nervous breakdown. I keep thinking... I could try. But I'm pretty sure at this point I could only fail, and that would be very much not good for me. I'm also pretty sure that what I write isn't really the right genre, so... let it go. Let it go. Focussing on some short stuff is, I think, very much the way to go.
There's a couple of competitions coming up--one I'm thinking of in particular which is for maximum 1500 words on the theme of "light" open only to Australian residents and a first prize of $5000, due in in two weeks. It seems like an extremely attractive competition and should be well within my capabilities to finish something to submit, and best of all the winning entries available from previous years seem like my style. I'm going to give it my best shot.
5) Don't obsess and have fun
Yeah, going pretty well! I've been having anxiety issues touching a couple of other things--but I've been writing mostly freely and without too much obsessing. Fingers crossed I can keep it that way.
no subject
Will you migrate your journal over to DW given the appalling new TOS?
no subject
Yes, I saw your post actually. I wasn't sure what the big deal was with the new TOS, to be honest. They can obviously be abused, but no more so and perhaps less than any "behave nicely, mods decision is final" disclaimer that is part of the Ts and Cs of any community. Are there known cases of unwarranted banning etc?
Edit: By which I mean Trump is an incompetent, racist, pussy-grabbing arsehole who would be a joke if anyone was still laughing, and I'll feel an extremely urgent need to shift platform the moment someone tries to censor the right to say so--but if no one actually tries to stop me or anyone else doing so and the worst consequence of said ToS being abused is suspension or banning of my account, I don't necessarily see the problem with it saying the platform is not intended for political mobilisation and that users are not allowed to use it to break the law. To me, those both seem to be very standard elements of a user agreement.
no subject
The new TOS are subject to Russian Federation law, not US law. Russia makes "homosexual propaganda" illegal, so your journal could be deleted without notice simply for having favorable discussion of a same-sex relationship. Also, the remarks you just made in response to my comment about bailing fall under the heading of "political agitation" in Russia these days so, again, deletable. There are also clauses in the TOS that appear to give LJ's owners the right to edit your posts without your permission.
You are correct that there's not technically a First Amendment problem since LJ is a company and not itself a government, to say nothing of the fact that it's Russian, but I'm not so interested in a blogging platform whose TOS are expressly anti-free expression. Sure, LJ as a corporate-owned space is free to bar political expression, but it didn't use to. (And do you really want a blog where you can't express your political opinions or urge your friends to vote or attend a demonstration without violating the TOS?)
In addition, the change in what laws LJ is subject to directly endangers Russian bloggers, of course especially LGBTQ bloggers and political activists. The Russian government likes to put a veneer of legality on its political repression, and consider this scenario. We couldn't enter the site without agreeing to the TOS (and how shady is it that the English translation, such as it was, was expressly not warranted to be exact, so that we were signing on to a contract that few of us could even read?). Same applies to a Russian who's had an LJ account for the last decade, discussing politics, or gay rights. They can't sign in without agreeing to the TOS. Now they are in violation of the TOS. Hey presto, veneer of legality for prosecution in Putin's Russia.
I imported my journal to DW yesterday and started deleting my entries from here. I'm keeping the account for a little while in case I need to do anything with any comms I'm part of, and then I'm deleting the whole megillah.
no subject
I think it would have been remarkably foolish for any Russian activist blogger to remain on livejournal once the servers moved to Russia, or indeed once the company moved into Russian hands. It's a dangerous thing to be open about in the first place, and I hope the political activists there would have the sense to do it in the safest ways possible rather than be caught by the trap you mention.
The remarks I made were made explicitly for the purpose you mention. I would never change the things I say or do on my journal. But there's a difference to me between having something as part of the ToS and actually acting on it. I don't see the blogs of anyone outside Russia as any real concern of the Russian Federation. Like, seriously, why would they care? Maybe they do. But if they want to read anything that I've written online they will anyway. If they want to stop me from writing it then fuck them, I'll find a new home, but for the moment the whole thing feels a bit cold war red-under-the-bed to me. It's abuse that bothers me, not the potential for it.
*shrug* I don't know. I might import my journal over to my DW account and do the whole crossposting thing, just in case it all goes south, but I've got a few communities that I really like over on LJ and a number of friends I've collected along the way and I'm already feeling a bit widely scattered in my social media, so... As I said, I don't know.
no subject
Otherwise I'm assuming I'm of little interest to the Russians and if GCHQ over here are concerned by what I'm doing they'll be watching anyway. So business as usual. And I prefer LJ to DW.
no subject