An attempt to go to bed early last night backfired spectacularly, with me waking up in the wee hours of the morning and spending god knows how long attempting to go back to sleep, before giving up around 7 a.m.

Remember, folks, my usual schedule has bedtime around 3 a.m. and waking up at maybe 11 or so.

I suspect this afternoon will feature a sizeable nap. At least if I want to make it through kobudo and karate tonight without falling over.

On the bright side, the utter screwing up of my sleep schedule has produced the impossible, namely, me getting some writing done in the morning. Since my sleepless brain decided to entertain itself with my Yuletide story, I knocked out just shy of two thousand words when I got up. I probably have another thousand or so to go, putting it pretty near the average for Yuletide fics, if maybe a bit longish. Feels about right to me.

It’s an interesting challenge, writing this thing, trying to match the characters’ voices: the perennial difficulty of fanfiction, and not one I deal with much as a professional writer. And I have an extra challenge in that I’m trying to get one of the characters wrong in a deliberate fashion — but even that is proving complicated, because the manner of the wrongness also has to arise from the source. (I hope that’s sufficiently vague as to not give things away that I shouldn’t.) Suffice it to say, I made it through that part of the story, and we’ll see what I think of the result when I’ve slept. Hopefully by then I’ll have figured out how to do the next bit, too.

They really must put something in the water, because shower-time packs more story inspiration per minute than any other thing I do, and that includes driving.

Which is by way of saying I figured out the entire plot of my Yuletide story while washing my hair, and I am very pleased with it. Hopefully my recipient will be, too. I think I’m managing to play to the ideas they floated in their request letter, while also incorporating some nifty ideas of my own. (And best of all, it’s unlikely to balloon up to a ten thousand word monstrosity. Which is good, since this has to be done by the twentieth.)

Now, do I start work on the story, or spend more time reviewing the source? Decisions, decisions . . . .

No, I can’t talk publicly about what I’m writing — as they said, anonymous Yuletiders are anonymous! — but I want the record to show that I totally called it.

(Okay, I called, like, three different possibilities, based on what I’d heard about the matching algorithm pairing the rarest things first. But I kept thinking I’d end up with this one, because there is potential for tasty irony in me writing it.)

Anyway, the extra-fun part is that once I get back from Thanksgiving and have the book off my desk, I get to revisit the source for my assignment! kurayami_hime, you should totally ping me for details. 🙂

Yuletide matches will be going out soon, so if you’re the person who’s been matched with me, look below the cut for further details on my requests.

Cut to spare those who aren’t interested in Yuletide.

So, I signed up for Yuletide.

In a few years, I have gone from “what’s this ‘Yuletide’ thing so-and-so posted about?” to “wtf, half my friends list is talking about this ‘Yuletide’ thing” to “now I’m the one posting about Yuletide.” If you’re like a me a few years ago, and have no idea what I’m talking about, here’s a quick rundown: it’s a fanfic gift exchange, where participants list types of stories they’d really like to get (source, characters, and some non-binding suggestions as to the nature of the story) and types of stories they’d be willing to write. Everybody gets matched up, and on Christmas Day the stories go live, anonymously; on New Years’ Day the authors are revealed.

What makes this interesting to me is that Yuletide is specifically intended to be for “rare” fandoms — sources for which there isn’t a lot of fanfic already out there. In other words, not your Harry Potters and so on. Some participants take this notion of rarity and run with it, clear off the edge of the map: the list of nominated fandoms includes things like, oh, Plato’s Dialogues. Or the song “Devil Went Down to Georgia.” Or Polynesian mythology. There is a section for twelfth-century historical figures; also ones for 13th-14th, 14th-15th, the 15th century itself, 16th-17th, and the Reformation. Reading the list sends me cycling through bafflement and squee: “I’ve never heard of that” alternating with “I’m not the only person who’s seen K-20: The Fiend with Twenty Faces!”

I signed up because on the shuttle back from Sirens, I mentioned the Nightmare Before Christmas/Hogfather crossover fic I’m convinced the world really needs, and rachelmanija told me I should sign up for Yuletide and ask somebody to write it for me. I’d never really considered participating before then, because calling my involvement with the fanfic scene “minimal” would probably be overstating the case — but in a world where Francis James Child’s English and Scottish Popular Ballads can be listed as a fandom, why the hell not?

Aside from being curious to see what I receive, it’s going to be an interesting exercise from a writing standpoint. I haven’t often written to a prompt of any kind, and in this instance, I have very little notion what I’ll be asked to write. It isn’t completely an open field; I control what I’ve offered, in terms of fandoms and characters, and this year they added a functionality for additional tags, though that last one isn’t binding. The only requirement is that I produce a minimum of one thousand words about X people in Y setting. The recipient may ask for a particular kind of story, but I’m not obligated to produce it. I’ll probably try, though; the point is to make the reader happy, and that means giving them what they’re looking for, if I can. So this may be an enlightening challenge for me, depending on what my assignment turns out to be.

I have more to say on that front, actually, but we’re supposed to keep mum about what we’ve offered to write, so it will have to wait until Yuletide is over.

Anyway, lately my brain has been craving playtime with stories that cannot possibly be construed as any form of work. This fits the bill pretty well. I’m very curious to see what I’ll be assigned to write . . . .