Daily Check-In Post: May 19, 2011

[jagnikjen]

This is your daily check-in post!

Tell us how your day has gone, writing wise:

Awesome!
Pretty good.
On schedule.
Okay.
Like crap.
I took the day off.

Discussion questions:

How many words was the longest fan fic you ever wrote?

How long did it take you to write?

When you choose fan fic to read, is the length (if known) a factor?

Comments

[glitteryv]

Today I feel like (writing wise) I'm back on schedule. 810 new words.

The longest fic I've written is 26k words and some change. I wrote it in about a month and a half. The editing period took much longer (about 3 months) because it was a crossover (due South/Slings & Arrows) that involved Shakespearean tidbits mixed in with a casefic. It's one of the favourite stories I've written.

In truth, I've always liked looooooong, i.e. epic length, fics. I got a taste for them circa Xena "alt" fics (that is, AUs in the modern parlance) since the bulk of the writing for that fandom consisted of novel-length stories. I've been lucky enough that the fandoms I have been involved in or presently am a part of tend to have Big Bangs as well as fellow long fic writers. :)

Once I got a nook (ebook ereader), my taste for long fic has only solidified. Most of what I read on my computer is between <1k and 8k words. Anything over that I tend to dl into my nook. The only downside of not reading it all in my laptop is that I have to remember to leave feedback/kudos/snaps to the authors.

[jagnikjen]

YAY for being back on schedule and kudos for those 810 words.

[linaewen]

I took the day off today (yesterday, too, come to think of it). I kept writing in mind, however, and wrote down on my calendar those fics that have due dates -- and I was encouraged to realize I have some time yet. If am careful not to take too many days off, that is. ;-)

My longest fic ever written is 112,355 words -- at the moment. That comes to some 46 chapters as I break them up. It's one I'm still working on, and I'm probably only halfway done, if that. One of my May goals is to get Chapter 47 written, which has been sitting in draft form for almost a year. :-/

I started it sometime around July 2003. Definitely an epic! I worked on it pretty steadily until about 3 years ago, when life changed rather drastically and I couldn't really seem to write much for some time. I feel like I'm beginning to get back into it properly again now, though. Yay!

Length is not a factor for me when reading fan fic. I am careful to look and see if it is completed or ongoing before I commit myself wholeheartedly, though. It's disappointing to be following a great work and have it stall or never be finished!

Oops, just heard an ominous echo when I wrote that, hehe! I think I should be practicing what I preach there with my slower-than-molasses-in-January progress on my epic...

[linaewen]

Make that word count for my long fic more like 120K -- I forgot about some chapters that haven't been posted yet, and one of them was really longwinded... ;-)

[bay_alexison]

Bleh, didn't get any writing done yesterday because I realized I made a huge mistake with one of the help_japan prompts I was given, so I'll pretty much have to go back to square one. D: I'm okay with that though because the original plot I was going for wasn't working for me. Hopefully any new ideas I can come up with will be much easier for me to write. Today, though, I was able to get a 500 word story done for a writing community at LJ. I'm going to give it a quick read through in a couple of days and then have a friend of mine look over it before I post it.

The word count for my longest fic was a little over 100K. I actually wrote a rushed draft of the whole story in three months and then while in university I slowly edited it and changed quite a lot of things while posting the chapters on a regular basis, which took another year and a half. Overall, around two years until I was finally finished with the story.

As for length being a factor when reading fanfic, it's not a factor to me. I like reading longfic because I enjoy keeping up where the story will head next. :3

[jagnikjen]

So sorry to hear about the issue. I hope that a wonderful new idea sparks quickly and that you are so excited about it that the story practically writes itself.

[jagnikjen]

I took the day off from writing yesterday. Well, mostly, I think. I piddled with my fic then sent it off to my beta reader because I was tired of looking at it. Then I did all kinds of other fandom things. But I am still on track with my challenge for the month. So it's all good.

The longest fic I ever wrote was 41+K. It was a challenge to myself to see if I could write a book-length story by a deadline. And I did. It took me about five months. My second longest fic, on the other hand, was 32+K words and took me a year and half to complete. That was another experiment to see if I could post my story as I wrote it. There was a lot of time between chapters in the beginning, but then I made myself go no longer than two or three weeks between updates.

When I read fic, length can often be a factor. If the story is like a bazillion chapters, I'll pass even if it may have been the best thing I ever read. If it's an author I've read previously, then of course, I may check it out.

[curuchamion]

I got taken away to go shopping, didn't get home till half past ten, then spent the next hour lengthening the arm strap on my new Captain America shield (aka specialty Frisbee) so I can wear it to go see Thor at work today. So, no wordcount.

On the other hand, I HAVE A CAPTAIN AMERICA SHIELD. :D *bounces*

(This may or may not be a good thing, as my long-stalled AU!Cap origin epic is now wanting to be worked on again, but I can do that after May. Right now, Mort and James still have 23k+ words to go. *I said I would do this and I am doing this*)

[jagnikjen]

WOO HOO for CAPTAIN AMERICA shield!!!!! (fic, what??)