this is a yuletide post

[fahye]

EIGHT DAYS LEFT, EVERYONE.

I am more or less certain that I'll finish on time, but I am nervous about whether it'll be polished to the standard I want. Dear self, you KNOW what happens to the wordcount when you decide that what a story needs is 'plot'.

How about you, fellow yuletiders?

Comments

[agonistes]

Yeahhhhh, the big problem with a big canon and a wonderful and well-meaning "I will seriously be happy with anything, I mean it, please go nuts and have fun" letter is that we're eight days out and I literally have no idea what I am going to do. I don't want to put out 1000 words of crap. But I have no direction, so right now the 1000 words of crap is where we are headed! UGH.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

I have 300 words and a plot outline and NOTHING ELSE. WHY DON'T YOU WRITE, SELF. WHY.

[fahye.livejournal.com]

Augh, lack of directing instructions can be a pain D: My letter, while at least LONG, was very short on fandom-specific details, so they're getting the story that I want to write for this fandom and...I hope they don't hate it?

[fahye.livejournal.com]

Hahaha outlines are deadly, you make them and then you feel like ALL THE WORK HAS BEEN DONE. Surely if we just laze around our stories will crystallise spontaneously around the outlines, right?

[sainfoin-fields.livejournal.com]

I have... played mental handpuppets with the characters I'm going to write about and watched a lot of my canon. Writing? WHAT IS WRITING?

Also, now that Yuletide is on AO3 you can keep editing your story right up until the reveal, if you so desire.

[agonistes]

Pssh, they totally won't hate it. :DDD

[fahye.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's right! I'd forgotten. Still, I'd love to have it done-finished-done by the 22nd so that I can free my mind up and write some treats in the interim.

[fahye.livejournal.com]

I swear, every successive year of YT I inflict a larger dialogue:description ratio upon myself. What am I think, I HATE WRITING DIALOGUE. Grump grump grump.

[sabrina-il.livejournal.com]

Ugh, I sort of have a tentative outline? UGH I NEED A FIRST DRAFT. I feel like the idea isn't finished percolating in my brain yet, but GODDAMN SELF THERE'S ONLY A WEEK LEFT and I want to get it beta'd and things /o\

[fahye.livejournal.com]

You and I are at exactly the same place, I think. Outline yes. Draft, hell to the no. I have one scene and a plethora of vague dot points, and every time I try to turn a dot point into Actual Words my brain just wails that the details aren't theeeeeere yet.

My first draft is going to be full of completely useless paragraphs where I wrote firmly over the top of my utter lack of narrative direction.

[themis.livejournal.com]

I have 0 words and a vague idea. IDK, I'm postponing it until this weekend, a decision I was totally fine with until you posted the countdown. So ... thanks and I hate you.

[fahye.livejournal.com]

...I live to inspire you through panic, what can I say.

Everyone's got a fair idea of how much they can write in what period of time; I know that my wordcount is only going to creep along, and that my weekend is going to be full of RL events, so eight days doesn't sound long at all. But it might be for other people!

[ariastar.livejournal.com]

Um I have about 2000 of 5000 words done (and I am so excited that it is SHORT, because I have apparently resigned myself to the fact that anything under 10,000 words is now "short" when it's my writing) and ... they are okay words? I know everything else that's supposed to happen? But none of the 3000 remaining words want to come into being.

[oxoniensis.livejournal.com]

I have plot too, oodles of plot! It's the sort of story that wants to be 25,000 words, so I'm having to curb it before it runs away with itself! I think I should be able to finish it over the weekend, at the rate I'm writing, but I'm not sure I have time to do my idea justice. Which is a shame, because my request made me bounce with glee.

[fahye.livejournal.com]

:O That is SHORT indeed!

[fahye.livejournal.com]

Ooh, wow! Mine thankfully doesn't want to be THAT long, although I suspect it could if I hadn't tied it up firmly with a scene-by-scene outline.

[oxoniensis.livejournal.com]

Oh, I have a scene by scene outline too - I just had to keep cutting potential scenes along the way with a vicious 'no, no time for that'!

[bcgphoenix]

I'm at 830 words currently, with the goal of breaking 1k before doing anything else tonight. (...including the mountain of dishes in the sink. er.) Things seem to be chugging along okay! No imminent danger of explosion into epic territory yet, only one major voice problem that I think I can fix by shifting the character to a later appearance, and overall the words are rough but not irredeemably so.

My only big fear right now is the fact that I'm going out of town this weekend, which is another two days of writing down the tubes (unless me and the folks I'm visiting have our own mini Yuletide write-in or something!) I am such a slow writer that even if things are going pretty well, I worry I won't have enough time to write AND edit before the 22nd. Seriously, I keep looking at the calendar and saying, "...I know it's not that late yet. We can't be two weeks into December already. ES IMPOSIBLE. D: D: D:"

[apiphile.livejournal.com]

Written, beta'd, posted. A healthy but not too daunting 5.7k.

[minkhollow]

I... may have broken the minimum word count the night I got the assignment. And I may have finished it the next day. (I got inspired by what Yulestalking I could do on a locked-other-than-letters LJ, and had nothing but laundry to do the next day, so.)
Now I am in treat mode! I tried to grab a pinch hit and failed, but the prompt is so far up my alley it has a parking space, so I am corralling my thoughts for it.

[wakeupnew]

I have 0 words and haven't even decided yet which prompt/fandom I'm going to try to tackle. IS IT SERIOUSLY ONLY EIGHT DAYS?!

[skygiants]

SO MUCH PLOT

SO MANY WORDS LEFT TO WRITE

SO LITTLE TIME LEFT

so many papers to finish first ;______;

[fahye.livejournal.com]

As Tris pointed out above, as long as the whole story is UPLOADED by the 22nd, you can then keep editing it for two days.

[fahye.livejournal.com]

DAMN YOUR PROLIFICITY.

[fahye.livejournal.com]

Watching pinch hits go by is so much fun! I have already tucked away a couple of prompts for possible treating.

[fahye.livejournal.com]

LEXIE WINS.

(I'm...I'm sorry?)

[fahye.livejournal.com]

Ewwww :( Trying to do YT and academic stuff at the same time does NOT sound ideal.

[bcgphoenix]

This is true! Except...there was also this post in yuletide_admin today that's making me all kinds of paranoid, so. *frets* Yeah.

[fahye.livejournal.com]

I think there's a difference between 'incomplete' and 'could do with a polish' :)

[sainfoin-fields.livejournal.com]

That post's comments made me grumpy. I've posted stories that needed a LOT of work on deadline day two years in a row, and always had the finished product ready for the reveal. (In one case I actually wrote an entire new story on Christmas Eve.) These experiences weren't ideal and I don't recommend it for shits and giggles, but I did what I needed to do and I think my stories were better for it. *shrug*

[apiphile.livejournal.com]

Well unlike everyone else I really do have nothing better to do. ;)

[fahye.livejournal.com]

Oh, I don't know, I am pretty much bumming around the house thinking about how I SHOULD BE WRITING.

[apiphile.livejournal.com]

Pro-tip from NaNo: take your laptop somewhere with no internet connection and nothing particularly interesting (and preferably somewhere you don't really want to stay). Decide you are not allowed to leave until you have written X amount of words. Watch in surprise as you complete your Yuletide in two days.

(I got into the habit of going to our library, where the wireless doesn't connect to my netbook, and just sitting there listening to screaming children and swearing drunks until I'd absorbed sufficient misery to write something).

[fahye.livejournal.com]

Excellent tip! I do like libraries. This weekend is useless timewise, but I'm sure I can escape from social & family commitments during the first three days of next week.

[apiphile.livejournal.com]

It depresses me how little self-discipline I have without that particular method but it wooooorks so who cares. ;)