#author stats

I decided it might be fun to do a recap of the year, so I compiled my stats and it actually turned out a little insane.

Before we get into it, this year has featured a lot of fun stuff for me in RL, there have been some up and downs but overall I’d say it was positive.

Here’s what we’re looking at:

I’ve been a guest on 6 podcast episodes, all discussing the business of writing.

I’ve published 3 x books, all with extremely positive reviews.

I’ve won 2 x awards for my editing and writing coaching business.

I was diagnosed with ADHD, which is turned out to be a bit of a super power and explains the next section of this post.

My tumblr stats for the year including fics written due to inbox asks:

Jan: 72 Fics/5500 Followers

Feb: 73 Fics/5871 Followers

March: 108 Fics/6000 Followers

April: 81 Fics/6500 Followers

May: 79 Fics/ 7000 Followers

June: 84 Fics

July: 63 Fics/ 7500 Followers

Aug: 67 Fics

Sept: 56 Fics

Oct: 59 Fics/ 8000 Followers

Nov: 35 Fics

Dec: 24 Fics/ 8321 Followers

Overall total: 801

someone asked what my draft situation looks like, and so i started looking through it, and then i wondered how much i've written and just kept scrolling down my page, completely shocked, and decided to tally up my word count bc i'm lacking creativity and needed to remind myself that i can, in fact, write, and have been writing for years

enjoy my stats as i get over my writing block lol

Hey! Alas, yeah, there aren't any tools I know of for that kind of author-filtering/data-gathering. But you can do it by hand if you have the patience.

You just sent me down a fun rabbit hole myself -- I started comparing a sample of the authors who posted in the Ted Lasso fandom during the week immediately following the S3 finale vs. a sample of authors who posted during the middle of the hiatus between S2 and S3 (when there hadn't been new canon in a while and there also wasn't much news about the new season yet). It tentatively looks like there's a big difference between the two groups in terms of both # of works they've contributed to the TL fandom and % of their total fanworks devoted to the TL fandom -- in the direction that you hypothesized; the people writing during a long period without new content tend to be more prolific and more mono-fandom.

Those numbers are relatively easy to collect (clicking on an author name shows you their total number of works and also how many are in each fandom). So if you want to hand-collect data like I just did, you can choose a few date ranges of interest within your fandom to compare, filter by those date ranges in the Sort & Filter sidebar, and then click on the authors of the resulting works (or a smaller sample of those works) and get those stats.

Tags tags tags! @alyssalenko tagged me for this, thank you!

And I’m tagging @lauraemoriarty, @highwayphantoms, @dafan7711, @pikapeppa, @varghaxa, @hawkeish, @ocean-in-my-rebel-soul​, @lucyrne​, @rpgwrites​, @cartadwarfwithaheartofgold, @asaara-writes, @blarrghe

Name

Fandoms

Where you post

Most popular oneshot

Most popular multichapter

Actual worst part of writing

Favorite story you wrote

Story you were nervous to post

How you choose your titles

Complete works

Incomplete works

Do you outline?

Coming soon ideas, maybe? Wouldn't that be nice?

Ask me anything

Best writing traits

Upcoming Story You Are Most Excited to Write

Spicy Tangential Opinion

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Name barbex, pretty much everywhere on the internet

Fandoms Dragon Age and Mass Effect. Recently only Dragon Age but I want to return to ME and possibly even add other fandoms (gasp!). I also love the Original Works section on AO3, if you haven’t seen that yet, do check it out. There’s amazing things there, with great tags and pairings, and I plan to write more for that.

Where you post AO3. The best site, really. I have a few WIP on fanfiction.net from before AO3 that I’m also updating when I update on AO3 (and remember to do it) but I’m not posting new things there

Most popular oneshot I’m only looking at the last two years for this because fandom interaction has changed so much. Back in the days of brandnew games, you got a million (exaggerated) kudos on everything and those fics will forever be the peaks in the statistic.  Most popular by kudos is Shepard and the Machine (Mass Effect, 241 Kudos). A little smut fic with Commander Shepard and Legion that is also about how Shepard feels like a machine herself and finds a connection with Legion. I love mixing deep questions with deep fucking.

Most popular multichapter Now look at that: In Service to the Inquisitor (Dragon Age, 232 Kudos), my loving femdom/kink/BDSM fic with Cullen on his knees. It was a joy to write, I discovered many things along the way, and I still like it a lot.

Actual worst part of writing Getting there. The whole scaffolding of character development, tone, pacing, tension, transitions, descriptions -- just to get to that damn idea that started this whole thing.

Favorite story you wrote I DON’T KNOWWWW! How can I choose?  You know how I pointed at the Original Works section up there? Let me promote an OW fic I wrote recently. It’s f/f in a vaguely steampunk with magic world and I’m proud of it: Vanish in Steam 

Story you were nervous to post Malleabile. A fenders fic with a side of mindcontrol and D/s. I have seen fenders things get vicious hate and adding D/s to that felt like pouring oil on a fire. But nothing happened, probably because the fandom has gotten more quiet.

How you choose your titles Random. Sometimes a line in a song fits really well, sometimes I just mash words together, sometimes I just make up words.

Complete works AO3 tells me that 77 of my 86 works are completed. Both of these numbers sound made up.

Incomplete works Which leaves us with nine WIP, which is also not a real number. I have at least twice as many unpublished in Gdocs and no, I’m not looking.

Do you outline? HAHAHAHAHA! 😂 No.

Coming soon ideas, maybe? Wouldn't that be nice? Finishing all the fics? Wouldn’t that be nice? Also, for my obsession with Fenris, I have written way too little with him so I want to do that. 

Ask me anything: Why are you still on tumblr? Have you seen the other sites? Twitter, the boiling pot of anger and three year old tumblr drama? Instagram, the hollow picture book?  I love tumblr, unironically. 

Best writing traits Dialogue. I’ve been told that my dialogue is pretty good.

Upcoming Story You Are Most Excited to Write (I have original fiction that I’m too afraid to work on...) Really, I just want to get through DA:I to fulfill Carver’s and Merrill’s story and finish Lost Templar in Skyhold before DA5 comes out.

I’ve been tagged by @tbehartoo, who is an all around awesome person and a great writer.

Ao3 name: Freedom_Shamrock

Fandoms: Avatar: the Last Airbender and Miraculous Ladybug.  I've toyed with expanding to Seven Deadly Sins (Nanatsu no Taizai) and Fullmetal Alchemist.

Tropes: Fluff, healthy relationships, communication

Number of fics: 135 (I'm assuming this is just the number posted to AO3)

Fic I spent the most time on: Probably A Familiar Story, which includes two perspectives of the same story (Something Familiar and It Sounds Familiar) that eventually I combined, modified and released as an original novel (e-book / trade paperback).

Fic I spent the least time on: Probably In Terra Pax Hominibus (ATLA) or Constructive Critique (ML).  I do a lot of my writing in 30 minute sprints so a lot of my serial stories were each done that way, so it's hard to be sure on this.

Longest fic: All parts of A Familiar Story together run just shy of 59k; the free-standing component It Sounds Familiar runs 25,700.

Shortest fic: Ladynoir Poetry Collection – it was a failed attempt to write poetry for all the ladynoir prompts.  I thought it would be good to get back into poetry.  I was so WRONG.

Most hits: Saltinette (30,869 hits); my reaction to the Chameleon trailer (well before I had access to the episode)

Most kudos: Also Saltinette (3,338 kudos)

Most comments: It Sounds Familiar (462 comment threads)

Most bookmarks: Saltinette (901 bookmarks)

Total word count: 433,880

Favorite fic you’ve written: Oh this is tough. I like a lot of my works for different reasons.

Bobbin Bug was the first one that I really planned

My big bang piece A Little Secret because it is structurally the most complicated thing I've ever planned out and completed – it has a rigidly mirrored structure and alternating POV

Catching Chances went somewhere darker than I had planned, but it was a realistic dark, an often overlooked narrative, and as a result I got several messages from people who shared that narrative and felt helped by seeing it

Independent Catractor gave me the opportunity to show off my erotica skills

The BAMF Mari series let me see that I actually can write funny (something I have been trying to do for DECADES)

And I like A Familiar Story because I was able to expand on it and take it out of fandom

Fic you want to rewrite/expand on: counter to my usual pattern, I have SEVERAL in the works:

Hero Cafe - Marinette sets up a safe space for the heroes on her balcony

Street Music – Lukadrienette with Adrien and Luka are buskers who change Marinette's life

Treading in the Brackish Pool – a companion to Saltinette

Two Are Better, But Three is Best – another Lukadrienette piece

Thanks for tagging me @tbehartoo!!! <3

Ao3 name: Alien_duck. Also dragoninthecloud for Miraculous Ladybug lovesquare centric stories

Fandoms:  Miraculous Ladybug and My Time at Portia. I know I haven’t written any MLB for a while, but I swear, I’m going to get back to them! I want to finish Surprise at the very least, and I’m still plotting out Following Crumbs in my head, though it’s going to be wildly ooc since I stilll haven’t seen most of seasons 2 or 3  <__<;;;

Tropes: I tend towards fluff and crack mostly, because the world needs more of them!!! But I dabble in angst too sometimes.

Number of fics: 19 currently up on AO3 over both pseuds. 12 for MLB, 7 MTaP. But I’ve got another 6 in various stages of completion I’m slowly poking at, along with updates on some of the others.

Fic I spent the most time on:  Finding You, but that’s a joint fic, and we’re still working on the prequel/sequel/extra bits, so I’m not sure if I should be counting it for this?  I guess it’d be Back in Town if it’s me only fics.

Fic I spent the least time on:  Showers. Even factoring in the drawing I did for it, it’s gotta be Showers XD

Longest fic:  Finding You + Finding You Extras (144,243+ 26,178 words) for joint, then Back in town (25,855) for MTap and Consequences of a thin suit in cold weather (10,815) for MLB

Shortest fic: Showers (384, plus a picture of Noroo being traumatised)

Most hits: Just Checking. Which is a little upsetting, since it’s a Chameleon salt fic, but eh

Most kudos: Just Checking again

Most comments: Finding You with 105 threads, and then Consequences with 47

Most bookmarks:  Just Checking

Total word count: 269,160. But taking off about half for FY brings it down to 197,118

Favorite fic you’ve written:  Fave MLB has to be Cold Front. It’s just so damn silly, and I had so much fun writing it, and Bronte said she smiled reading it which was what I wanted at the time. Fave MTaP fic is probably Getting Home, because of Mr Fuzzybutt and Doofus

Fic you want to rewrite/expand on: Even though I just said it’s my fave, I kinda wanna redo Cold Front, and then Consequences. I feel like I could probably do better now? I wouldn’t drop random ()’s in the middle of sentences at any rate >_<;;;