Round 23, Hour 20

[dbskyler.livejournal.com]

Hello, fic_rush! Welcome to Hour 20. The Time Chicken lurks, basting nicely. The Writerly Pasta sticks to the wall, indicating that words are done and ready to be covered in Awesomesauce. The glowsticks are baking to a nice golden brown. It's time to write! (Or possibly eat. One or the other.)

Comments

[lolmac]

I need to stop procrastinating and messing around with spreadsheets and actually write. Right?

[http://users.livejournal.com/idlewild_/]

Right!

[dbskyler.livejournal.com]

Or you could write in the spreadsheets. Put one sentence in each cell, then have Excel add them together and you've got a paragraph! Just don't ask for the average by mistake, as that's bound to lead to trouble.

[lolmac]

This is a job for the CONCATENATE function!

I totally need to remember that the next time I do "Whose Line Is It Anyway".

[dbskyler.livejournal.com]

LOL, concatenate would actually work, wouldn't it? On the other hand, you might get much more interesting results if you tried some of the other functions. I wonder what the standard deviation of a paragraph is?

[lolmac]

Some of my paragraphs deviate more than others. I don't think I have a standard.

*raises the standard* Deviation, ho!!

[welfycat.livejournal.com]

Time chicken...yum. Now I want chocolate. And a blanket. brrr.

At least I have my document open now?

[dbskyler.livejournal.com]

Opening the document is a great first step! It's especially nice when the document shows up, and opening it does not in fact lead to the computer exploding. You still want to be cautious, though, as old documents are scary beasts. Add a word, hit "return," and see if the document is still there or if you've startled it away. If the document stays and the word shows up, you've come across a friendly WIP, and you can proceed with confidence!

[welfycat.livejournal.com]

Hmm, *carefully lures the words with the piece of toast she just made*

Well, the previous section shows up, but the words seem a little skittish. I'll see if I can coax some out. It's probably all the talk of kidnapping a main character that's making them nervous, no matter how many times I tell them that I don't write character death.

[dbskyler.livejournal.com]

*nods* Skittish words are known to respond well to toast.

[lolmac]

I love kidnapping characters! Tell your words that mine always come back okay, albeit whumped. But whumped is good!

[a-q.livejournal.com]

Yes, finally writing! I always forget that when I get stuck with the story, I need to write by hand, that is the magic. Pen and paper, that is it!

[dbskyler.livejournal.com]

There's something satisfying about writing on paper that you just don't get with a keyboard. I'm glad you've found a method that works for you when you get stuck. Fill those pages with ink! Smudge your hand! Go, go, go!

[a-q.livejournal.com]

It's the scribbling in the margins that does it, I think. When you type, all the mistakes and corrections just vanish but on paper you can see the actual process of the story shaping up.
*suddenly deep thoughts about the nature of time and chickens*

[dbskyler.livejournal.com]

You can also use "track changes" in MS Word, but it's not nearly as exciting as putting a big "x" through something, or circling it and drawing an arrow to its new place.

[thisbluespirit]

I almost always have to at least start on paper - and anything plotty needs the majority down that way. It feels safer and more secretive, and I like it. Even if I have to deal with my inability to read my own handwriting later.

So, yay! :-)

[thisbluespirit]

Hello fic_rush! Hope things are going well, although I see that we have timey-wimeyness already! I am here, but unsure what I'm doing because, as usual, fic_rush is happening while stuff has made me tired. Fic_rush is Cursed. :-)

But over the weekend, I have to: sign up for Yuletide and tidy up my Dear Writer letter so it isn't an epic love song to my four fandoms that will send my poor writer round the bend. Also I want to post some Things I Made Earlier in places, and possibly make some more The Mummy icons for every20in20. (I am planning for 5 of them to have 1 word on each, so it counts, right?)

There is something I hope to write a little more of. I am contemplating actually writing a sentence, but I may just go and do one of the posts instead, because who knows what such a rash action could lead to? My brain might hit the ceiling and not come down again.

But HAI FIC_RUSH! I hope to be around nowish and tomorrow to cheerlead and pull people's hair as required, anyway. :-)

[dbskyler.livejournal.com]

Yay, we're doing fic_rush at the same time! I usually never overlap you, so this must be a special round that is going to lead to Great Things.

There's nothing wrong with an epic love song Dear Writer letter. Remember that your Yuletide writer also loves at least one of your fandoms, or they wouldn't have been assigned to you. : )

[thisbluespirit]

:-)

Yes, but they may be a person who gets distracted by too many details and tangents. Actually, it is mostly fine, it's just Blake's 7 that gets ridiculous. I had the same problem with it last year and the truth is that I want ALL THE FIC FOR IT EVER. *cough*

[lolmac]

Words on icons count! Especially your icons, because the words are awesome.

Are you sure your Dear Writer isn't already around the bend, and might enjoy a letter that makes the same trip?

[thisbluespirit]

Aw. Thanks. I just posted some Tough Guide ones yesterday (in justice_turtle's honour. I think I was making them last round. :-)

They would be a good match in that case, but it's probably nice to try and not send them there. (It's really B7 that causes me the problem! I can be coherent on the other fandoms. When it comes to B7, I wind a up with a wibbly mass of confused text about how much I love it and how much I would like any random fic they could think of for it. I think I have thought of a better way to put things now!)

[lolmac]

I can entirely understand going incoherent on B7 and its overall amazingness. I'm still trying to finish up a meme that got sidetracked into glee over season-ending cliffhangers and B7's trailblazing awesomeness.

ETA: Which Yuletide thingy is this (to use the formal term)?

[thisbluespirit]

O where is this meme about B7 being awesome? It;'s cliffhangers are the very best, because most of them they don't get out of. :-D

And, actually, I just looked at my letter, and it's remarkably more coherent than I thought it was. *is shocked* (I think it's actually Sapphire & Steel I'm going to need to tweak a little before I unlock it.)

Um, it's the main Yuletide? Where people request rare fics, up to and including fanfic about bathroom cleaner, breakfast cereals, crossword puzzles, songs, British universities, and sometimes actual TV, books and stuff. And, apparently, as I stalk people's Dear Yuletide Letters, a fic idea I've been wanting to write since I was 13...

But: I AM SIGNED UP. \0/ (It seems like a reasonable goal at the moment - I am pretty sure I can do a fic for somebody over the next few weeks.)

[lolmac]

Um, not being sufficiently 'main' (I guess), I still don't know what the main Yuletide is. Link pls? I've never done a Yuletide, you see. I don't suppose anyone there has asked for MacGyver . . . ?

The meme isn't about B7, or wasn't originally. It was an interview meme, and one of the questions was about really great cliffhangers. Single step to B7, as far as it goes for me!

I picked up the meme on a friend's journal, and as soon as I finally have all my answers done I'll post them to my own bethinexile blog. I'm horribly slow at doing memes, though.

[thisbluespirit]

Oh, I'm sorry! You see, I always assume you know everything there is to know about stuff. This generally seems to be a true thing. ;-)

Yuletide is the biggest fanfic exchange I know of, and it's been going for quite a few years now. Sign-ups are still open till Sunday - MacGyver is on the nominations list!

It's run via AO3 these days, although up till 2008, it had its own website for the exchange.

You can find out all you need to know about it at yuletide_admin but there's also a member comm: yuletide.

Basically, if you've ever found a fic for a fandom you thought would never have anything, it's usually a Yuletide fic!

You can request 3-4 fandoms, and you need to be able to offer to write 4-6 (although there is a way to offer more if you wish). Most people tend to write a 'Dear Yuletide Letter' to help out their writer, and also many people have got into the habit of stalking these and writing extra treats for people - I got an extra story and a drabble last year that way! (I was v lucky).

After it's all over, the prompts stay open for the New Year's Resolution challenge and can be written by any kind stranger up until the next Yuletide.

It's kind of a mammoth thing, but quite amazing. I stalked it in awe and wonder for about two and half years before finally managing to join last year. And being ill have sworn all year that I would get myself at least well enough to do Yuletide!! (So I like it, just a bit, yes. *cough*)

[lolmac]

Thank you so much! I think lurking is the most I'm likely to do . . . although I did sign up there to beta MacGyver.

[thisbluespirit]

Lurking is the appropriate response to first learning of Yuletide - especially at this late date in the year! It is huge fun to watch from the sidelines and pick up on the weirdness (as a Yuletide beta you have now become a hippo. Also Yuletide writers are often called Yulegoats. I have only the vaguest idea why even now.)

If you spot any shiny prompts and things, though, as well as what dbskyler said about pinch hitting, there are two other ways you can actually write something without signing up. You can simply write any prompt you see in someone's letter, and provided your story is over 1000 words, you can post it to the 2011 Yuletide Collection on AO3, marked as a gift for the recipient. (This is known as a treat.) If you write something under 1000 words, you can post it to the Yuletide Madness collection, which is only open at some crazy time like Dec 24th. I think it opens as soon as everyone has a proper story.

Probably more realistically, once the show is over and the author reveals are up, the full list of prompts is made public (somewhere) and from then until sign-ups start for the next Yuletide, anyone can write a prompt of any length for someone and post it to the NYR 2012 collection.

Lurking and reading the FAQ on the comms etc will tell you all this anyway. But just in case you see a shiny prompt for a thing you thought nobody would ever ask for, do not fear, you can snaffle it if you want it!

Otherwise, welcome to watching the world of super-rare fandoms, crazy anthroporphic fic that goes viral outside of fandom, and come 25th Dec-New Year, lots and lots of recs of marvellous new stories on yuletide. (Lurkers have fun too.)

(Edited because I'm suddenly not at all sure you can post to the main collection without being signed up. You definitely can to Madness and NYR, though.)

[justice-turtle.livejournal.com]

What lost_spook said... and also, here is their AO3 front-page (http://archiveofourown.org/collections/yuletide2011), where you can stalk the complete lists of fandoms and characters that you could offer/request.

(It's worth stalking the nearly-complete Yuletide fic collection (http://archiveofourown.org/collections/yuletide/works) even if you don't sign up for the exchange; they've been running for, hm, nine or ten years now, and Things They Do Best include crackfic, writing for fandoms with no canon (there is, I kid you not, a breakfast cereal on the list this year), and really incredible reinterpretations of fairy tales (http://archiveofourown.org/collections/yuletide/works?utf8=%E2%9C%93&selected_tags[tags][]=101463&language_id=&boolean_type=and&commit=Filter+Works). Dark, modern, feminist, femslashy, crossovers, what have you... the twisty minds of Yuletide writers never cease to amaze me. I mean, I just clicked over there to get the link, and what should I see but this summary:

'“Under what circumstances, then,” said Mrs. Tilney to herself, taking a seat upon the garden bench, “is one likely to encounter a giant bean-stalk?”' --Northanger Abbey / Jack & the Beanstalk crossover

So, yeah. XD It's a thing I've been stalking for years, because it is just that crazy, but this is the first year I've thought I could write for it. (We'll see how that goes, heh. It's got a 1000-word minimum and a Dec 22 due date.)

[lolmac]

Thank you! I may have to stalk it a bit. I've just signed up as a MacGyver beta for them, anyway.

[dbskyler.livejournal.com]

FYI, you can also sign up to be a pinch hitter. That way if a MacGyver prompt comes through in search of an author, you can volunteer to write it (and unlike regular Yuletide, you get to see the prompt ahead of time, so you can be sure you'd be able to write the story before taking the pinch hit). See more information here: http://yuletide-admin.livejournal.com/125346.html

Yuletide is incredibly fun to watch from the sidelines.

[a-q.livejournal.com]

Hello fellow Yuletider! I used my first fic rush hour doing exactly the same thing :D *is now all signed up and letter-written*

Good luck!

[thisbluespirit]

YAY YULETIDE! Hurrah! :-D

I might actually go try and sign up now - it would be less scary to change an offer in the morning and fail, then have some sort of net crisis and fail altogether...