Yuletide

[curuchamion]

Dear self,

No, you most emphatically may not sign up for Yuletide. You're a drabble/ficlet writer. It is quite unlikely that you could produce 1000 words of publishable fic in a minor fandom within 1 month, let alone having it all be the same story (or anything coherently resembling a Five Times fic, either).

Besides, you've been through last year's prompt list; you know most of the requests will be for things that make you reach for the brain-bleach. Even if you could write Wraith Squadron fic or Tommy & Tuppence fic or any of these other things in the abstract, the prompts would stop you dead. And Legend isn't on the list this year.

(Besides, aren't you working on a belated NYR fic for one of last year's prompts?)

Cordially,
The sensible one

Comments

[dbskyler.livejournal.com]

psst -- you don't have to write the prompts. The only thing you're obligated to write is the fandom and the characters. You get to choose the characters when you offer, too.

Not to tempt you or anything . . . ;)

[thisbluespirit]

Aw. I know the feeling of being tempted by the shiny ficathon - I want to sign up for nearly everything and have to remind myself that this is no good.

My problems usually relate to time or me being weird, rather than quantity, so only you can know what the wisdom would be. I find ficathons that are exchanges suit me best, because when I know someone asked for the fic, and is wanting to read it, I'm better than when I'm just assigned a prompt, or picked one up. But only you know where you sit on this.

After all, you can just go in for NYR.

The NYR prompts, mind, are what's left. And most people's 'Dear Yuletide' letters do show a consideration that some people won't want to write shippiness.

[curuchamion.livejournal.com]

(Sorry about this... I'm just thinking out loud, really. My family Do Not Get Fandom and insist on conflating my difficulties in composition class with whether I should sign up for a fic exchange! Two totally different sorts of writing, people.)

I'm especially tempted because I never get to do ficathons. They all have high wordcounts that brag about being low (Remix Redux has a passage in the rules that says "1000 words in two months is Quite Reasonable Really, so don't whine about it" or some such.) I only get fic written for me when people on my flist randomly do drabble-prompt memes, and I barely ever get to have an external deadline for a piece of writing (which usually forces me to finish in time. It didn't for Help_Haiti, but that was a special case: awesome cracktastic prompt + actor death the next week = not so good, really. Also my recipient was someone I knew, who would not hit me with the banhammer; this is always bad for my productivity, unfortunately.)

OTOH, I tend to panic about "it is not good enough!", which would be accentuated by the unaccustomed word minimum, and is (I know) accentuated by writing in Fandoms Nobody Knows. On the other other hand, having an Actual Person waiting to read is always more helpful than just releasing a story of dubious quality into the ether...

NYRs lack most of these helpful qualities. I'm not getting a fic in return; there isn't a rigid deadline; there's still a word minimum; it's like an afterthought, so there's an element of "will the recipient even care?" and also "but nobody will see it!" (These are why I didn't finish the NYR I started this year. Well, that and I only picked the prompt around, um, Halloween.)

The reason I wouldn't do Yuletide, though, is that I think slowly and sometimes a story idea needs a couple of months to percolate before achieving its final form. Especially a story that long. Why aren't there more two-month or three-month ficathons? :-(

*sigh* All in all, I probably shouldn't do it. But I want to do ficathons like all the Good Writers, dangit! XP

(Which... is another reason I'm scared to sign up. Even if my story was Good Enough and the recipient liked it - I'm not brilliant. I am not unpredictable. I'm just a plodding little writer who loves a lot of small fandoms.)

Oy.

[thisbluespirit]

Aw. Again, only you can decide these things. And with Yuletide, if you're unsure, maybe it is best to wait - but, oh my goodness, isn't it shiny and tempting with that list of unlikely fandoms? I know! I so wanted to do it before, but until my job changed recently, November was the worst month of the year for me, so it would have been silly to sign up for it & I had to watch it go by.

Mind, as to the NYR prompts - having written 3 in 2009: 1 was loved by a lot of people, none of whom was the recipient (but then I did realise belatedly they had expressed a preference for slash); the other two the recipients both found late, but they were both really happy over, and both gave me some lovely comments - going out of their way to comment on LJ in case I didn't see their response on Yuletide, too.

Maybe in the new year, then I'll host a dw_straybunnies ficathon with the prompts, and have only a 100+ word requirement. And be v strict about the deadline!! I toy with the idea from time to time... :-D

And, hey, I wroted you three fics!! ;-)