Slightly Off Center

Cheers to the new year! I've been waiting for Yuletide author reveals so that I could officially make this brag: I've posted over 150k words to AO3 this past year, trouncing my previous record of 120k in 2019. 2025 has been so intense for me creatively. This has been a year not only of prolific writing, but of pushing my boundaries, expanding my storytelling ambitions, and just straight-up enjoying my own imagination without angsting over feedback or popularity. I won't attempt to look back at all 41 (!) fics here, but I'd like to talk about a few of the big projects/moments and what I've taken from them.

Prisons of Our Making (Reylo, post-TROS Ben Solo Lives AU, 35k): I know it's small change to a lot of authors, but this is the longest fic I've ever finished. (My longest fic full stop is 66k, but it's a nearly-finished perma-WIP from years ago that I hate and no one is allowed to talk to me about it.) This was me experimenting with a whole new writing process. I've historically always been both a plan-as-you-go and edit-as-you-go writer; for this fic I forced myself to outline the whole thing before I started writing, then write the whole thing before I edited anything, and not post a single word until I was satisfied that the structure was sound and only copyedits on later chapters remained to be done. I found this process less fun in the short term but significantly less frustrating in the long - I have a well established habit of writing myself into corners and introducing late-stage twists that require major rewrites to earlier material, and this method avoided all of that.

I should note that, unusually for me, I have not actually reread a word of this fic since posting it. I'm a bit scared to. Like, what if it's rubbish? What if I am just fundamentally a shortfic author who should stick to writing oneshots? I'll probably revisit it sometime this year once the emotions have calmed down a bit, but whether or not I end up being thrilled with the final product, it definitely feels like a milestone that I got this out into the world.

It Takes a Village to Raise the Dead (Poe/Finn/Rey/Ben/Jacen resurrection bodyswap, 20k) was an exchange assignment that got stupidly out of control, and an example of what happens when I try to write long(er)fic using the as-you-go method instead of the one discussed above. It wasn't actually meant to be longfic at all - it started its life as fairly modest bodyswap shenanigans using the Force as a wafer-thin excuse - but then it bred with several other prompts and grew a plot, and the whole thing was just absolute chaos. Multiple rewrites, at least one of which was literally from scratch while others involved POV changes that completely changed what information I could or couldn't include in that scene. If it weren't for an exchange I would probably have given up. But hey, this is part of why I got so into exchanges to begin with - deadline pressure really works for me. This is another fic I'm still waiting to get enough distance from before I can reread it, but at minimum I'm proud of myself for getting it done! It involved a lot more balls in the air at once than I usually even attempt to juggle.

I Can Save Myself (Kylo/Rose superhero AU, 10k) is the "shorter", "easier" exchange assignment I wrote when I DID actually have to give up on a fic that had gotten too complicated. My first idea was for the same ship but a much more serious take on it, heavy on both plot and emotional trauma, and I wrote thousands of words and did oodles of comics canon review and Wookieepedia research before realising that it just wasn't going to come together the way I wanted it to in the time I had left. I was right on the brink of defaulting so that my soon-to-be-ex-recip could get a gift that didn't suck, but I took one last look at their request to see if there was anything I could salvage, and the words "superhero AU" jumped out at me from their likes list. I'd just recently read Hench. Suddenly, I was off and running. It was still way more than I really had time to write before deadline, but it was too much in the fun way instead of the despair-inducing way, and I bashed the whole fic out in a blur of joy and the recip ended up making fanart for it!!! So that was a fantastic experience.

Rose Tico's Charity Home for Wayward First Order Scum (post-TROS Reylo, Finnpoe, Phasma/Rose, Phasma/Kylo, Everyone Lives with bonus drinking games, 1.6k): There is nothing technically ambitious about this fic, but it's the direct product of the exact moment early on this year when I looked at the word doc in front of me and said "fuck it, I can do what I want". Some people just like to write about their favourite enemy space wizards inexplicably all being friends and acting like teenagers together, and that's valid! In the end a double-digit number of people liked this fic enough to kudos it, but I put it out in the world fully expecting silence and was okay with that because I loved (still love) what I wrote and would have continued to love it even if no one else did.

All seven of my Love Hypothesis fics: Look at me, diving headlong into a whole new fandom without dropping out of my old one in the process! This has never actually happened before; usually my head only has room for one (1) primary blorbo, with all other fannish interests restricted to dabblings and day trips. It's been really fun noodling around with Adam and Olive as characters. Despite the fact that The Love Hypothesis started its life as Reylo fic, the vibes are completely different, and it's scratching a different creative itch for me than any star war I've written. Right now I'm working on a new multichapter fic for this fandom (*puts on galaxy-brain hat* it's a fake dating AU...for the fake dating AU...) and just having so, so much fun with it in a way that feels really chill and low-pressure.

On a slightly less satisfying note, as the year progressed my writing has been feeling more and more like...you know when a kid has a growth spurt, and overnight they acquire about 20% more limb than before but don't yet know how to control it? Yeah, it's like that. It's frustrating, because while the new sense of freedom and reach is amazing, I used to feel much more in control of my prose and overall technique. I imagine that'll come back as I adjust to my new limb length, but man, I wish I could have brought all the creative energy I've had this year and felt like I was putting it into my best work yet, instead of the constant nagging awareness that even my most carefully controlled works aren't quite coming out exactly the way I want them to. It's been years since I last felt that gap between my vision and my skills, and I did not miss it.

I'm including that last bit in the post for my own posterity, but honestly, I don't want to sound like I'm ending on a sour note because my overwhelming experience this year has been that writing is FUN and I LOVE it and I WANT TO BE DOING IT ALL THE TIME. I'm deliberately not setting myself any writing goals for 2026 because I want to just keep going with the flow of whatever the fuck my brain is doing these days. Whether the energy lasts or whether I end up going fallow again for a while, I'm going to resist the urge to force things and just trust that whatever output I manage this year will be exactly what I need it to be.