Rather a Story

Goodbye, 2014, I will not miss you. Here's to kicking ass and taking names in 2015.

I hope the year is treating everyone well so far!

Things are finally starting to settle into a semblance of normalcy over here at casa ratherastory. I still haven't unpacked all my boxes from when I moved from Montreal to Ottawa back in November, but all the important things are unpacked. Work is calming down, the dog is calming down, and the kitten is never calm anyway. ;)

2014 was really rough on me physically, emotionally and financially. Between the end of my relationship, the death of my cats within a week of each other (one of them highly traumatic), the renovations on my old house, the sale of my house, the move to another city, having the dog and my new kitten each have a bunch of health issues, and then needing repairs on my car, I'm kind of glad the year is over. That's only my personal problems, not even counting the murders of the RCMP officers in June, the terrible events of Ferguson and everywhere else, the honour guard murdered in Ottawa in October, and the summer of constant, unrelenting online misogyny and violence against women and trans people and people of colour. Almost everyone I know suffered personal losses and crises, one after the other. In short, 2014 sucked. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

I have a number of things I would like to get accomplished in 2015, some of them writing-related, and all of them designed to make my overall quality of life infinitely better. I won't bore you with the personal goals, but since this is my fic journal, I will list the few but important goals I have for my writing this year.

Writing Goals:

• Figure out how to write for the sheer, unadulterated joy of it again


• Update some of my 'verses. In particular Fusion, because I love that 'verse, and the Garden 'verse, because I know where I want that 'verse to end, and I'm not there yet.


• Write, edit and submit a novel for publication


• Outline all my current novel projects (I have four in various stages of conception and writing)


• Write every day in my "Morning Pages" journal, which is the best creative tool I've found for myself thus far


• Write 300,000 words by the end of the year (I signed up for gywo with this goal in mind)

I've also given myself a moratorium on signing up for challenges and exchanges this year. They used to be a great source of motivation for me, but this year I found that, because I was already pretty burned out, all they did was ramp up my anxiety issues and make me hate myself and my writing. So this year will be devoted to writing things only when they bring me joy.

If you would like, you may leave me prompts for any of my existing 'verses in any fandom (not that I have that many), or request time stamps/whatever for anything I've already written**.

**I am going to be SUPER picky about which prompts I accept for Fusion, so don't take it personally if I don't end up writing your prompt specifically. I get a lot of "Sam freaks out and Dean comforts him" prompts for that 'verse which, well, is not a useful prompt, since it basically describes over half the stories in the 'verse. ;) But if you have things you'd like to see, themes you'd like to have me explore, then please toss your hat in the ring! I have a big old playground and everyone is welcome!

Okay. Before I head out on hiatus, I figured I would make another much-overdue list of projects I have going on. Partly for my own reference (I plan to keep a copy of this offline until July) and partly because I seem to recall others enjoying watching me lose my mind over my excessive commitments. ;)

( Projects & Due Dates Under the Cut )

Right. Haven't done this in a while. I need to get my ducks in a row.

( Projects & deadlines behind the cut )

Okay, time to update the list.

( Writing Projects Behind the Cut )

Okay. Putting my list up to date. Here's the current list of commitments/dates.


( Projects behind the cut )

Okay, the revised schedule, now that I've dropped a couple of challenges.

( Projects behind the cut )

Okay! There is writing to be done. Watch me go!

( Projects behind the cut! )

Real Life has become overly complicated. It's mostly a good complicated, but right now I don't have the mental energy to complete most of the writing I want to do.

So I'm going to drop out of the two remaining Bangs I'm in (Sam/Dean Mini Bang and the Dean/Cas Big Bang). I am giving myself amnesty and I'll just write those stories at my own pace and give them the attention they're due.

I'll stay in the Sassy OTP challenge (my contribution is mostly written) and the Summer of Sam challenge (I have it mostly done as well), since those have no wordcount limitations and thus aren't going to make me stress out unduly.

I am also declaring the rest of 2011 a challenge-free zone for ratherastory. I'm going to write all the stories I want to write, when I want to write them, and not fuss with deadlines and minimum wordcounts. So there. There is one exception to this rule, a BB I signed up for that's due in November.

( Story plans behind the cut )

This is actually turning out to be a really useful way of keeping on top of things. The list is slowly shrinking, which is a heck of a relief.

I'm behind on my overall wordcount for my year-end goal, but hopefully the next few days will let me get in a lot more writing for that. I'm not *that* far behind that I can't catch up thus far.

Bizarrely, I'm looking forward to when all my deadlines will be past, because I have all these non-deadline bunnies that I want to write as well.

I am also taking part in Round 10 of gsd_rtfn, because it's turning out to be a really useful tool for actually getting shit done. Who knew?




( Lists behind the cut )

I should have put this in my last post, but oh well.

I have come to a decision. I have all these plot bunnies dancing around in the back of my head, mostly for SPN and H50, and in the whole BB and challenge madness I have been neglecting the sad bunnies.

So once my current BB obligations are filled, I'm not going to sign up for any BBs until 2012. I think having a restrained list of BBs I would really like to participate in is a good plan. So, tentatively, here are the BBs I'd like to do next year:

- spn_j2_bigbang: it's my first love, and I can't imagine not doing it

- deancasbigbang: hopefully I won't crash and burn this year, but I had such a wonderful time with last year's BB that I want to keep doing it.

- sncross_bigbang: I never managed it this year, but I'd like to give it a shot next year.

- Whichever one of the existing H50 Big Bangs survives into next year. I somehow doubt it'll be the one I'm in this year, but you never know. :)

And that's it. All my other writing I'm going to do on my own time, just for the sheer joy of it. No pressure, only stories.