The Three Sentence Ficathon Dreamwidth community isn't afraid of Friday the 13th. Today marks the opening of the 2023 writing challenge, which I look forward to after participating last year. In celebration, here are some stats I collected based on my published writing from 2022. Word counts were calculated via QuillBot.
First, my published fiction output as a whole for the year, both in series and one shots, was 22,565 words. I don't have statistics for past years so I can't compare it exactly, but it's certainly more than anything I've done in a while in terms of consistent postings. Out of that total, Trifles Light as Air made up 14,915 words in its 53 chapters. There were two isolated one shots of medium length ("Softening Fortune's Frown" at 1,014 words and "Past is Prologue" at 1,220). Then there were my contributions to the 2022 Three Sentence Ficathon: 65 total postings for 60 independent stories at 5,416 words total.
I've never written to a sentence rather than word count, and found there's a lot of variety that may be found within that limit. They ranged from the shortest at 39 words to the longest at 188, averaging at approximate 83 words. Below is a graph showing how that word count broke out by fandom.
In total, Jane Austen fan fiction (JAFF) made up 41.5% of the stories, with 2,177 total words (40.2% of the total word count). But even though I only wrote eight Sherlock Holmes stories they were made up of 711 words total, 13.1% of the total word count. When it comes to genre, I wrote seven dramatic scenes based on the works of Oscar Wilde (four at 391 words) and William Shakespeare (three at 246 words), and not counting the poetic meter of the Bard, I wrote one poem of 40 words.
I'm actually very proud of that one, based on Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess." I recognized it would probably receive the least attention of the series; I know of very little poetic fan fiction that isn't bound to bigger media like a movie or show. But the ficathon writing challenge is such a diverse collection of prompts and ideas that it necessarily inspired me to stretch into new fandoms, genres, and formats beyond what I'd previously attempted.
Posting so regularly also helped me make connections with other readers and writers, and discover potential writing challenges in other fandoms I may like to participate in as well. My goal this year is to continue broadening my writing chops with the new round of prompts, and maybe get a few of my own filled by others. To that end, I'm reserving Fridays here on the blog to 3SF posts; they'll be posted on Dreamwidth and AO3 the next day. I may post as soon as this afternoon. Also, Come back tomorrow for Chapter Three of Estancia Aldea Norteña.
Are there any specific prompts you'd like to see written in 2023, or fandoms further explored, maybe one I haven't explored yet? Let me know in the comments.
