Yuletide unofficial chat

Yes, I know we haven't even gotten assignments for Yuletide 2012, yet, but if I don't do it now I will forget.

I love Yuletide.  I've loved Yuletide for years.  But one thing I have noticed: when it comes time to nominate fandoms and do signups, I always am left wracking my brains, knowing that there are stories in small fandoms that it has occurred to me to want over the last year, but I can't remember them.  This has a couple of times led to me throwing together a signup and only after assignments are out figuring out what I really should have requested instead.

This is especially important now that we can only nominate three fandoms but we can request fic in four.  I participated in the nomination trading this year, and made appeals on my journal, but nobody nominated either of the fourth fandoms I asked for.  Which then meant that I had to browse through the fandoms that were nominated and do some hard thinking about which ones I might want fic in.

So this year I am being smart.  While I am thinking about Yuletide, I have started a text file that is on my desktop and easily accessible.  In that text file I have requests from previous Yuletides that were not fulfilled, as well as space for any other ideas for future years.  I will be adding to it through the year, any ideas I have for small fandom fics.  I will be prepared for next year!  This file already has prompts/requests in seven fandoms.

Next year, when nominations roll around, I will nominate the three fandoms on that list I am most excited about or that are the most rare, and put requests for nomination for one or two of the others.  But whether or not somebody else nominates those fandoms for me, I will have a whole list of fandoms I would really like fic in, and therefore a much better chance of someone spontaneously nominating one of those fandoms.  I will have less scrambling to do, and a far lower chance of realizing the day after assignments are sent out that I requested a fic in x fandom, but what I really wanted was a fic in y fandom.


Another tip: Dear Yulegoat letters.  I do mine in two parts, general likes/dislikes, and fandom specific stuff.  Therefore I can take last year's general stuff, tweak it, and use it again, which makes DYG letters a lot easier to write.