Thirty-five weeks. Nine months of weekly fiddling and fixing. Almost two years of work. All for one silly Frozen fanfic. And it was silly. And fun. And, knowing me, deliberately sexy. I enjoyed every minute of trying to write a three-act story with rising tension, lots (and lots and lots) of Chekhov's Pistols, varying levels of angst.
It was okay as a novel. At 98,675 words it more than qualifies. (The "unused" directory contains an additional 52,758 words-- that's what got thrown away!). The big villains of Acts I and Acts II are much more serious than the villain of Act III, but this is a romance so of course the main thing going on in Act III is whether or not the two characters will finally get their stuff together and tie the knot.
It was okay as a fanfic. It did not have the classic angst and anguish that seems to be endemic to all Elsanna stories; in classic fanfic "bang" fashion I did things to the characters that pushed them a bit outside canon; I tried to have much more plot, with strong points to the source material that were not just duplicating it, but actually going off and being its own thing, than what I usually find in fanfic.
It was fun as an exercise. Callbacks to eariel in the work, pulling the shades off and showing the readers what I'd built-- the kind of stuff Lois McMaster Bujold does so effortlessly-- was absolutely thrilling, and my fans really seemed to enjoy it.
I'm not sure what I'm going to do next. I may put a hold on writing for a few months while I catch my breath and work on some software-related stuff; my github is languishing.
But goodness, it was fun.