2012: A Year in Review

I promised greater transparency, so here it is: I’m working on That Which is Greater. I’m not very far, but I have ideas. I’ll keep you posted as to when chapters are finished/will go up. I don’t know if I’m going to finish Greater: Winter Break. I don’t know if I’m going to write anything else in the Greaterverse. I’m not open to suggestions for more stories, either (I wasn’t for Fates or W11, if you’ll remember, and I don’t intend to start). If you want to know about Curtain Call, ask mxpw. If you want another unfinished story finished, please be patient and let me cross one hurdle at a time. Thank you.

Now on to the meat of the post: I didn’t make resolutions for 2013. Resolutions, I feel, should be between you and your conscience, so I was disgusted to have mine from 2011 thrown in my face by a total stranger. I’d love to see some great things happen this year to people I love and people I know, I’d love to watch some awesome movies, read some wonderful stories, and make fantastic memories. But that’s as far as I’ll go with resolutions.

Now, a look at the year 2012 in writing and other stuff, as best my memory goes:


In January, I wrote That Which is Greater: New Year’s Eve, which is, I think, the longest Greater story. It was the first in the “Too Long Curse” of the year, as every story I planned went over the allotted chapters in 2012. Chuck ended in such a polarizing, disheartening way that fans are still arguing over whether Sarah got her memories back. On the one hand, I liked the finale because it didn’t end with the picket fence and the dog. On the other hand, Chuck in its latter seasons had been so inconsistently mediocre that I didn’t feel it earned any other ending but the picket fence, so the finale was a big middle finger to the fans. But in happier news, I got to start writing with quistie64.

In February, Fates celebrated its second birthday, with 56 of its full 68 chapters posted. That’s 76 chapters total for the universe at the time. I was actually busy celebrating Mardi Gras down in New Orleans and getting to meet the wonderful BDaddyDL, which was one of the coolest things I’ve ever done in fandom. Spies and Nerds went up on ff-net, and Greater: New Year’s Eve finished up. I won a bunch of Awesome Awards, both as Frea and as Moonlight Pilot (and I outed myself as MP, too).

I can’t tell you much about what happened in March because I don’t remember. The Muppets movie came out and I wrote a bunch of Fates. Thanks to my awesome friend sabra_n", I learned of the joys of f_march_madness" instead. I’m totally stanning for Mary Crawley again this year.

April passed in a Fates haze. Unbeknownst to anybody but myself and mxpw, I was trying to finish it as a birthday gift to Crumby. It led to a lot of sleepless nights and a lot of doubt. Readers were thrilled because it meant a lot of chapters very quickly.

In May, I posted the final chapters of Fates. The ending wasn’t as polarizing as canon, but it had its dissenters. I was burned out and exhausted and fed up with everything. I owe at least a dozen people apologies for this time, as I’m sure I was the opposite of fun. If you’re one of those people, please let me know.

June had me switching fandoms (well, late May). I got obsessed with Matthew and Mary Crawley from Downton Abbey and decided to try my hand at an Edwardian love story. Unfortunately, my nature got the better of me and at prompting from a friend, I took the characters and turned them into modern-day spies (I also wrote a short where Matthew and Mary are nightclub dancers). Like I didn’t have enough works in the process. Pretty sure this is when I also discovered The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, but I could be wrong.

July was interesting. I went to Disneyland and a reunion up in Solvang. It was an enjoyable week where I turned off most of my electronic devices (except for apps on my phone to navigate Disneyland) and had a blast. Tragedy struck in the worst possible way, cancer taking a young man (we got the news when our plane landed in St. Louis), and it messed me up for awhile. A friend got married. I started writing a Chuck story again, even though I’d thought myself burned out.

In August, I unleashed Set, Spike, Dive! and had a couple of weeks reliving Olympics joy through characters I thought myself finished with. It startled people by being completed within two weeks of the initial posting, and how much romance was actually in it. And contrary to catrogue’s belief, I didn’t do it just for the Speedos.

September brought on a determination to finish an old story, The Bank Job, which had been gathering dust for two years. I didn’t actually finish it then, but I did get started. Nor did I seem to post anything writing-wise, but if I’ve got my timeline right, I started reading a lot of Avengers.

October is when things really started clicking back into place with writing. I joined writerverse", which meant there were lots of opportunities for short stories again, so I returned to the Greaterverse once more and wrote about pumpkin patches, and a few Avengers fics to test the water. This meant getting more involved with others and the awesome be-compromised" community, which was a good decision that led to lots of fun on my part. I got my assignment for their Secret Santa exchange, which I worried over a great deal before striking the mother lode of inspiration.

And then came November. I hate November. I love November. November is the Worst. Nanowrimo is just an accountability thing. I used it to finish up The Bank Job, The Abbey, and the bulk of my Secret Santa. It started out with a cold and ended with sleep deprivation, though I made some new friends and had a blast going to writing events like I always do.

In December, I stuck to short stories or drabbles. I watched Once Upon a Time (which was marvelous from the second season on), The Hour (still trying to sort out how I feel), and got a lot of end of the year things done. Yet another Greater story got dropped on everybody, this time as a celebration of BDaddyDL’s birthday. And I finished my Secret Santa story, which I will reveal after the authors have been listed. I spent Christmas with family, New Year’s with friends.

Looking back on 2012, I made so many good friendships, met so many awesome people, got the chance to write some fun stories, and experienced some wonderful things. It had its down moments, but it had its good times, too. And I think I’ll choose to remember more of the good than the bad this year.

And because I wouldn’t be Frea without some statistics, here we go:

Number of stories started in 2012: 27
By fandom: Avengers - 14, Chuck - 9, Downton Abbey - 5
Number of stories finished in 2012: 22
Number of stories abandoned in 2012: 2
Words written in 2012*: 361,708

*Not including drabbles written on Tumblr or Spies and Nerds.

What a good year. Here’s to 2013! And another 1k a day year, I guess!

- Frea