livelycolorfulworld

Hello:) Cannot believe my first dreamwidth post is a reflection on 2020 but. I want a handy place to keep all of my thoughts on writing as a whole this year!!This is also formatted badly but I cannot bring myself to care<3

Overall Stats:

fics: 11
ships: 7
fandoms: NCT (quick, act surprised)
word count: 133k

I am not Shakti and do not have the energy to list out all of my fics so if you'd like to check them out then:
archiveofourown.org/users/LivelyColorfulWorld/works


Strengths + Weaknesses as of Jan 1, 2021:

Strengths:

• Symbolism + figurative language! Kind of a surprise, honestly, but I think I had a breakthrough with Dolce et Cedez and realized hey I'm actually pretty good at writing figurative language in a compelling manner! I have not looked back since hehe
• I think I'm actually quite good at establishing tone/mood! I think my best examples of this would be Sweater Weather and Starlight, Remembered, but those have a very clear tone to them that I was able to convey:)
• I'm good at humor! 
• I think overall, I'm a pretty versatile writer. I've written fics with several different topics and settings and they all seemed to go pretty well! For example, the contrast between Doing Gucci and Starlight, Remembered is huge, but I think I wrote both really well:)
• Foreshadowing! Mystery stories have always been my favorite, so foreshadowing has always come fairly naturally to me
• I'd like to think my dialogue is overall really natural:) 
• I often write multi-layered stories!!

Weaknesses:

• Pacing... I need my fics to feel more settled, but also pacing in terms of writing itself... I have to spread out writing more
• Exposition oh lord I feel like a fish out of water with exposition I never know when I'm giving too little or too much, and usually end up not giving enough because I forget that I know a lot more than the reader (which is why having a beta is always amazing [blows kiss])
• Worldbuilding! Honestly, I dislike worldbuilding. A lot. But I need to learn how to better worldbuild within the story 
• I need to make settings clearer. I don't set fics in Korea too often, but when I do, they're too Americanized :,) I think I'll be able to fix this through more research and just being more aware of the differences in general!
• So even through I write multi-layered stories, sometimes the surface layer suffers in favor of the extended metaphors and symbolism... I need to make sure that's established more solidly before paying so much attention to everything else
• Character voices; I feel like I don't distinguish characters enough in terms of the way they speak, their body language, etc. There's a lot of potential there
• My kissing scenes are too similar I feel T__T 
• My summaries tend to be really weak... I have to make them more engaging

What I've improved on in 2020:

• Showing and not telling as much! I was coming out of a 1.5+ year hiatus from writing, so I was pretty rusty at the beginning, but I'm glad I'm now able to use descriptions so effectively 
• Going off of that, I really love how my prose has developed to be more fluid
• Writing for myself! While I'll always struggle with validation, I think I've learned to write what I want to see. I've written a lot of niche fics since that realization that no one's going to do it for me, so I might as well do it myself
• I outline more! I think it helps sorting out my thoughts which is great
• I like how I bounce between dialogue and action, if that makes sense? Like if I have my characters interact for a long period of time, I try to include them doing actions during it as well, so it doesn't seem stagnant

Goals for 2021:

• Of course, improve on everything in my weakness category:)
• Stop seeking validation! This includes from stats, from people, etc. Being proud of myself and what I've created is really important, and while wanting validation is natural, I think I've been putting too much emphasis on it
• Finish my two ongoing fics, A Game for Two and Blurred Lines
• I really really want to explore more implementation of music concepts in writing! Like pedal points, musical forms (e.g. sonata form), idk I feel like it would be a really cool study into the intersections of different types of art
• I need to be consistently nicer to myself lol... I flip-flop between "I am so good at writing!" and "I am the worst writer in the world!" and I just need to. be more objective about it and realize that sometimes it's just my brain and I, in fact, am not the worst writer in the world (gasp)
• Trust myself and don't be so scared of first drafts! So many wips get stopped half-way through because I feel like it sucks and, well, what's the point of writing something if it'll be bad? But I feel like when I let myself go and just write, I end up surprising myself
• Limiting the fests I sign up for. I'm awful with deadlines and it creates such a huge stress on me hhhh
• Leave the fandom/write for a different fandom in addition to nct. While everyone is lovely, I've found myself pretty unhappy in the ficdom... idk we will see where this one goes! Maybe I just need a break ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 
• Overall stop putting so much pressure on myself to write... quarantine was great to get back into writing because I didn't have much to do, but honestly now that the world is slowly going back to normal, fic needs to take the back burner <3

Final Thoughts:

2020 has been interesting! Definitely never thought I'd be getting back into fanfic writing again, but I wholly blame Shakti's nomin scioly fic, the unhealthy about of nomin hp fics I read, and quarantine/lockdown with not much to do. Am I glad I got back into writing? Sort of ...? It's time consuming and sometimes distracts from other things I need to do, but it's also pretty fun; I missed writing stories and getting feedback for them! Plus, I've been able to see improvement with each fic, and that's been super exciting. I'm honestly proud of myself for writing so much after coming out of such a long writing hiatus (according to the definition of a novella, I've finished four novella length fics this year? Which is crazy to me, but yeah).
A year with ups and downs, but it's done:) 2021 time baby I hope this year treats us all kinder<3