jocundasykes

No pie chart, sadly, as I haven’t been tracking word counts, but I can tell you that my writing was 100% Snarry.

I posted the Somnambulist, a charming 15k Snarry, which I translated. I adapted Light’s So Quite New a Thing into a memefic, which is harder than it looks. Does this count as "writing"? Well, it's certainly not a podfic. I also posted 15k (and have a few more thousand up my sleeve) of Glass Heart, a lovely and dark slavery AU.

I posted 20 podfics, totalling 28 hours. My goal was to ”record 20 podfic hours”, whoops.

I am particularly proud of:

Lush Life and Home Again, Home Again, both by pir8fancier, because they were long multivoices, which is a ridiculous amount of work, and it completes the series. I’d podficced the first story in the trilogy near the beginning of my podfic journey and never considered carrying on with the series. I’m a completionist!

The Politician’s Wife. ALSO by pir8fancier. I’m picking this one because I think I did a really good job of Hermione, and the cover is my favourite to date.

Not counted in my total, obviously, but I also released two audiobooks in 2022 which were 6.5hr and 9.5hrs long. So I haven’t really dropped in terms of audio productivity. It was nerve wracking putting myself out there to be reviewed not only by the public, but by the paying public, customers! Was everyone on AO3 just being nice??? I had nothing to be worried about as audiobook reviewers are very kind. I was shortlisted for an award for one of them, and they have absolutely pushed me into learning new accents. I am certain these new skills will improve my future pods!

I find my rating pie chart amusing:

- I have signed up for another 200k Get Your Words Out challenge I was too blindsided to do this, and to be honest I completely forgot that I signed up and must’ve missed every check in

- Translate at least 1 story. Thanks to Bailou I have a shortlist, in order of preference I posted one translation in 2022, I’m so glad Bailou got to read it before she left fandom

- Spend most of my year working on my time travel Snarry Sadly not. I had 0 mojo for this but have been making little notes on my phone for years now.

- Write at least 1 podfic guide YES! I did this. It has 43 kudos!

- Record 20 podfic hours (much less than this year) LOLno

- Sign up for ZERO fests. Except perhaps Voiceteam and Voiceteam Mystery Box. How else is this time travel ever gonna get done?? I have continued to not sign up to fests. Sadly I did not get to do one Voiceteam because I forgot about signups, but I have done all the other Voiceteams. 0 regrets because I’ve thoroughly enjoyed them, made new friends, and learnt new skills/got out of a rut.

- I am only going to podfic authors with blanket permission statements going forwards An interesting goal! In 2022, I did this! Except for perhaps rexluscus? In 2023, I podficced 1 by dracofiend who is super podfic friendly but doesn’t have a statement, and Phantomato, who doesn’t have BP, but TomxEdmund is like a barge-sized ship, so I don’t have the luxury of excluding non-BP authors. No regrets cos it’s a fantastic listen.

I did not make any goals for 2023, which you can probably gather from the fact I wrote this blog post a whole year too late.

Audio:

• I recorded 3 more chapters of Unrestrained. The tension is ratcheting up
• I podficced Final Examination by asecretchord. Thanks to asecretchord for having a podfic permission statement on AO3! 
• I recorded Two Men In a Bar by Nabielka, it’s a fic I’ve recced many times on Discord. Tom Riddle/Edmund Pevensie. I am dying for more of this ship. As a general rule, I dislike crossovers, because I’m unfamiliar with so many other canon universes, and love the HP world and characters so much. BUT I do love Narnia, I remember my dad reading them to me as a child. And Edmund is deliciously flawed. The fact that he’s a Muggle who can resist the Imperius Curse is so damn exciting.

Words:

• 600 words for an alternative ending for Noughts and Crosses. I’m working on this for Voiceteam Mystery Box, a podfic scavenger hunt challenge.
• 1.5k for In the Web. Still working on the themes.
• I finished in time for AUctoberfest! So here I am, claiming my translation of All You Need Is Love by the great TreggiDi. Loved writing this. Big thanks to avioleta and space_wingding for the Americanpicking assistance. It’s the 60s, Snape is a Vietnam War veteran, Harry is a peace-loving hippie.
• AND I finally finished my Secret Snarry Swap fic. This is my first time writing for Swap. It took ages. Necessitated a painstaking HBP and DH re-read. Endgame. 49,362 words in this 3-month period, and MANY hours spent agonising over word choices, cutting naff lines. I finished editing it several days after it posted… eek. Probably only made it about 2% better though haha. I’ve been blown away by its reception! 

My year-long Get Your Words Out goal was 200k, and I wrote 286,987! NOICE! 

I’ve signed up again for next year, but will be off to another slow January because I’m in the thick of Voiceteam.

The wind has gone out my sails for my Choose Your Own Adventure, because space_wingding was beta reading it and seems to have disappeared from the planet. If you’re reading this: I hope you’re well, and hope to see you again in my inbox. Whether it’s soon or years from now. 

• I recorded 1 more chapter of Unrestrained. Slow progress 

Words:

• Still chipping away at the Choose Your Own Adventure
• 15k for In the Web. Outline is finished, and a decent amount of act 1 is drafted. The themes for the sequels are coming together nicely
• 19k for the House of Snarry AUctoberfest. I thought I’d ‘start early’ then had a bit of a shock when calculating how many days remained! The first quarter is beta read, and first half drafted. 27 days til the due date. I need to do 530 a day to be finished in time. I’m kicking myself for not starting sooner.

My goal for August was 16,986 and I wrote 34,181. And I achieved my year-end goal of writing 200,000! Can't believe it! I assumed I'd crash and burn at this challenge. I don’t know if I’ll take my foot off the pedal. Still a lot to be finished this year. And I’ve outlined something for the Secret Snarry Swap—fingers crossed I can claim that prompt!

Audio progress:

• I recorded Leave your dignity at the tone, a delightful 10 min answerphone fic.
• Marks which is a university AU Snarry
• I recorded 2 more chapters of Unrestrained. My pace will slow now I’m no longer on Discord. I will miss our “book club”.
• Early, another short Drarry
• I Can See Clearly by peachpety (there’s a theme here with how I’m recording stuff with interesting editing potential!)
• I recorded all of the Singing Astronaut and did all the music this week, so I’ll be editing and posting that in July. I had fun with the effects in this one too. Harry sings as he dies in space and it’s broadcast, a bit like the Truman Show, all over the world.

Needless to say, I had much fewer writing days than normal – 10. Compared to 30 last month and an average of 21 days for the first three months of the year.

Words progress:

• I translated, proof read and posted the final 13k of The World Ends Over His Shoulder and its short sequel/epilogue The World Begins Over His Shoulder.
• I wrote 2k of notes for a fic idea – Harry and Draco have to meet every year at a crumbling house. I think I’m gonna kill Astoria again.
• I am now 19/52 chapters through my proofreading of the Choose Your Own Adventure and wrote 1400 in the process.
• I translated 17k, proofread and posted the Singing Astronaut.

My goal for June was 16,438 and I wrote 32,931. All in all, a very good month for writing

• I recorded 4 more chapters of Unrestrained. I’m now 50% of the way through!
• I recorded 5 more chapters of Heaven Through a Window too. 35% recorded. I think I’m going to post it in one go when it’s done.
• And I recorded for the babble challenge.

Words progress:

• 800 for H/D Owlery Exchange 
• 39k on my Choose Your Own Adventure – the bulk of my writing this month. I’ve pretty much drafted every chapter, just got a couple that have inconsistencies. I proofed 9 chapters. This has been so fun to write. I’ll want a couple of testers, and someone from Australia to read through that section. I’ve family in Oz (she’s a massive Potterhead, to boot) but needless to say I don’t want them reading my “how many ways can Draco bone Harry” fiction.
• 800 for the Snarry mystery, done the final editing, and submitted this to Thon! This fest starts posting in a couple of days. Yay!
• 200 for the Snarry time travel (the road is well and truly blocked here) The draft for this is 27k overall and the outline is decent so I’m not gonna give up
• 3k for a new Snarry WIP idea, involving the Deluminator and sporadic time travel. Send help
• 50 on the AU dream world Snarry idea
• I did the ficlet challenge for the Drarry server. I dunno that I'll do these in future because I don't have time to commit to commenting on the submissions, so I might hold out until the word counts are drabble-sized. 
• 1.5k on translating another Muggle AU. This one’s gorgeous. I might abandon the one I started at the beginning of the year because Harry was written in a rude/mean way, I keep feeling guilty for his house-elf and mates
• I didn’t have any ‘zero days’ though I did have three sub-100 days.

My goal for April according to the magic spreadsheet was 16,438 and I wrote 45,840. I’ve officially clawed back my earlier deficit. Huzzah!

I binge read Cambiare Podentes, recorded another 7 chapters of Unrestrained and 2 chapters of Heaven Through a Window. I really want to keep my momentum up with Unrestrained cos it's so sodding long and will be 15-16 hours once completed.

In terms of words, however:

·       4.4k of the Snarry mystery

·       7.5 of the Snarry time travel

I've also read a lot more about writing which will fundamentally change my plot. In particular, scene structure and making sure the scenes have goals, and that they link up logically to the overall plot. THIS IS SO HARD

My goal for February according to the all-knowing spreadsheet was 15,342 and I wrote 12,254. I am still on track cos I wrote extra words in January. And I’m not bummed cos I recorded podfic and did a lot more thinking about writing.

Things I did in 2020

I joined AO3 on 3^rd January 2020. It’s satisfying that there’s an entire year to take stock on!

Here is a pie chart of my Harry Potter words! YAY SPREADSHEETS:

It's mental really to see it like that. A year ago I googled myself and saw that someone imported my fics to AO3 when an archive shut down. The punctuation was horrid, so I claimed them and fixed everything as soon as I could.

It started off a lot like this:

Reading Of Love Notes and Bottle Caps was a bit disturbing – beyond the premise, I remembered very little of the fic I abandoned in 2007. I changed the tense, got rid of lengthy internal monologues, stopped the head-hopping POV issues, made it Deathly Hallows compliant (no quick task), axed sections with no conflict, and gave my OCs names that were appropriate to 1977. I wrote this in defiance of Lily's representation in the books, annoyed that she was just a martyr and a mother (Yes I'm quoting Serving Penance here) with no specific friends. I hope some of her mates will crop up in some 2021 fics!

Aside from self-editing that fic, I edited Her Favourite Songs to be less cringe. Another 2007 oneshot, it had fewer errors but the character development wasn’t quite right. I'm now proud of this oneshot focussing on Blaise Zabini's mum.

I podficced Miles to Go Before I Sleep  after reading a ton of podficcing guides and thinking "This is achievable and sounds fun". Then Andrew 38,  Fall,  The Once and Future Headmaster (a timetravel Dumblepot), Capitulation (a Rodolphus character study), Soulmate Flowers, The Dreaming Spires and I podficced the 2^nd half of the Boy Who Died a Lot.  I wrote a Drarry ficlet called Fuck You and podficced another couple for the Drarry Babble Challenge, which was good craic (Intent and She Was Like Me).

I wrote a Drarry PWP, A Question of Inevitability, which was kind of a big deal for me cos I'd not considered Drarry at all for the last....... many years of fic reading. 

I wrote my first finished fic, Serving Penance,  and recorded it. It's not a literary masterpiece but it said what I wanted it to, and (I believe) it was in character and best of all it was FINISHED! YAY

I wrote 31 AU Snarry Drabbles for AUgust, Thirty-One First Kisses.

I finished my second fic, The Space Between Failing and Falling and recorded it. It was my first time writing non-Harry POV and it was such fun! It was so nice to have some Snarry friends cheer me along (big up to Light!) and it was very well-received by the AO3 masses (mind-boggling, really).

I translated Something I’ll Never Have into English  and recorded it I LOVE THIS FIC! basically anything I podfic I'm reccing. In fact, have a meme:

I took part in Awesome Ladies Podfic Anthology, Snarry a Thon, took a prompt from Kinkfest, wrote for AUgust, A Very Harry Birthday, the House of Snarry AUctoberfest, and H/D Erised. I have also babbled a ficlet on the Drarry discord. I’m doing a secret something for the Snape Birthday Swap in January. I'm having fun right now doing Voiceteams Mystery Box.

And finally, I spent 3 months writing my first proper Drarry, and it is unrevealed so I will edit this later. I’m very proud of this fic and hope to record it next year.

This is why I haven’t read a tremendous amount in the last 6 months!

I recorded 34 hours!!!!! WHAT! Here is a pie chart of the split in ratings. Heh. Not really surprised:

And the pairing split reveals my true colours. I REALLY like Snarry:

Miscellaneous 2020 stats

- I broke two Kindles
- I did not read as much fic as I'd like this year, it sometimes felt like jumping from one fest to another. And a big part of fests is the community atmosphere, commenting on each other's work, and I felt rotten not to do that properly
- I got 1000 Kudos on my Snarry soulmate fic!! WOW
- I got 7 Kudos on my Lily fic! YESSSS 

- I beta read about 10-15 things 
- I read Self-Editing for Fiction Writers twice
- I've sort of worked out how to use Reddit, Discord and Dreamwidth. It's been so nice to come back to fandom after 13 years. Everyone has been so friendly (and generous with their time!)
- I recorded 7 or so songs for podfic purposes. Here is Loch Lomond

What are my goals for 2021? 

- I have signed up to Get Your Words Out (gulp) here on Dreamwidth. I have signed up to write 200k (less than this year) (I hope to be doing other hobbies in 2021, pandemic permitting! and uh... my PhD.... ideally) I'd like 20k of these words to be from translation
- I would like to improve my podficcing set up by building some sort of soundproofing frame thingamabob 
- I would like to record 30 podfic hours (less than this year)
- I would like to finish a dialogue project with Lee - we are compiling canon dialogue of each character, to help with writers on characterisation and voice/diction/contractions/vocabulary for that character
- I would like to co-write a Snarry
- I MUST finish Of Love Notes and Bottles Caps oh my gosh it's been on my to do list for 14 years
- I would like to finish my time travel Snarry
- I would like to take part in Snarry-a-Thon and Secret Snarry Swap as a minimum, but don't plan to sign up to many fests