Fanfic Goals 2025

[Negrek]

Happy new year, everyone! Or... happy two weeks past the new year, anyway. Perhaps a goal for me can be to be more on top of this sort of thread next year.

Anyway, feel free to discuss your fanfic goals for the upcoming year, or simply post them here for a bit of public accountability. I have some big ones this year:

- First, I want to finally finish my big chapterfic, Salvage! I've been working on it, in one form or another, for around seventeen years now. I love it dearly, but it's time to let it go and move on to other things! There are a lot of big moments in store for this last section of the fic, so I hope readers will enjoy the run-up to the big finale.

- Second, I want to get at least 150k words written on the original story I've been picking away at. I got a solid start on it during NaNoWriMo, but I'm letting it rest a little bit while trying to get a better sense of the direction I'd like to go with it. An unusual case where I have the world and characters down pretty well but am not sure what story I'd like to tell with them yet.

- Supporting those first two goals, I'd like to write at least five days a week for at least half an hour. I was good about doing this during the first half of last year, and what do you know, it had a huge impact on my productivity. I definitely fell off at the end of 2024, though, so I'd like to try to get back into the habit now. Going well so far!

- I'd also like to try and comment on at least two stories a month/write a comment at least once every couple of weeks. That isn't really a lot of work, and it's shameful that I don't show some of my favorite fics much love outside of Blitz.

 

[SparklingEspeon]

I think those are great goals (and this is a great thread)!! Wish you good luck...

For my own goals... I'd like to get the first three books of my main fic, Psychic Sheep, done! The first is already complete, and it should be perfectly doable to get the other two (out of six total) finished this year. I've been working on Sheep in some form ever since 2019 and think it's for the most part where I want it to be; I just need to get it out the door and done with.

I'd also like to do a final draft of my original fic, which has a rough draft sitting around. It's probably going to be about 70K in total when I finish polishing it, so the road is still a bit lengthy, but the ending is within sight.

Similar to Negrek, I also want to pick up the reviewing pace a little... I used to do them semi-regularly, but my free time and productivity got a little slammed these last two years. I want to make a little bit more time for keeping up with others' fics this year!

 

[Ambyssin]

The goal is to finish drafting Path of Valor or get within five chapters of doing so. My chapter queue is around 21-22 chapters and I'd like to think around 50 are left. So at one chapter a week pace it might be doable.

 

[Spiteful Murkrow]

I'm admittedly a bit about setting goals since mine for 2024 were kinda a swing and a miss, but whatever, I'm a glutton for punishment. This year's goals are:

• To update Fledglings offsite at least one more time in 2025 than in 2024 (kinda a low bar since it bumped a total of 5 times in 2024 and there's already one bump out on the road to 6+ updates, but it's nice to make upward progress)
• To have released at least one chapter of Fledglings day and date on TR by the end of the year
• To update Once a Thief at least one more time in 2025 than in 2024 (it bumped a total of 7 times in 2024, so aiming to get 8+ updates)
• To update Grounded at least 8 times (which will complete the story if no further chapters are added or split due to length during development, or else get it within 4 chapters of completion for my internal "max run length" route)
• To start publishing the serial version of my contest entry last year once TR's zine drops
• To take part in at least one of Drabble Bingo or the yearly writing contest here on TR
• To have a total of 12 titles potholed on my forum signature (so +1 after including the above, TBD what it'll be)

 

[Nekodatta]

That's a great idea for a thread! Let's see if setting some goals will help...

- Similarly, I want to try to pick up my pace with Timeslip and return to the one I had at the start. Maybe not a chapter a week like I did at the very beginning (then again, they were definitely shorter there), but I want to aim to around two chapters a month, even if it means they get a bit shorter individually... In general, find a better balance between updates and chapter length.

- Slowly respond to all reviews I've received during Blitz

- Try to write around 3000 words a week as the absolute minimum, which if kept should allow me to post a 6k chapter every two weeks, on average.

(With blitz taking up half of January, let's say I will start holding myself accountable from next week ^^')

 

[canisaries]

Well, I know that I certainly want to:

- Finish the originalized Hunter, Haunted extras and upload them to Royal Road. They've had to wait quite a long while by now, and I hear they don't like that over there. But it will still be at my own pace.
- Continue writing The Bringer. I'd previously left it on the back burner for months because of a really stupid minor mistake in the story that would take a lot of coordination to fix. I am, however, going to decide that it simply is NOT as important as my goblins tell me and just finish the damn thing instead. Or just continue. It has some themes that are a bit touchy for me after something I went through, so I'll forgive myself if I don't get it all written even this year.

If possible, I'd like to:

- Finish Cor Daemonis. Its general structure is already outlined and I expect it to be under 20 chapters, so it should be doable.
- Write an Auramon story! It would be useful for fleshing out the game's setting and the monster species, and I'd at least like to think that there'd already be people interested in reading about it. It would also scratch the old PMD itch that I've had, which has gone unscratched for a long time due to simply running out of ideas.
- Write some new Pokémon story, even if it's a oneshot. This will probably be facilitated by the yearly oneshot contest. I've been focusing on original stuff a lot, but I still think part of me really enjoys writing pokéfic specifically, especially the unique setting of the HHverse.

 

[Dragonfree]

I'm hoping to get more properly going on the Morphic rewrite this year. Lots of plans and thoughts slowly coalescing, and with no other writing projects in the way (at least right now), I can focus on that. I've got other stuff going on as always, but I expect to be making more steady progress on that, and that'll be nice to get flowing more.

It would be nice to do more reading, but I'm not sure I can actually commit to that in practice at this stage. Too many things at all times.