Nominations are what you want to read? What you want to write? Are there prompts? WHAT?

[amanuensis1]

For some reason, I am incapable of understanding the way yuletide works.

Every year I mutter, "Maybe I should sign up for that," and every year I share my mutterings with people and am met with, "Oh, it doesn't work that way." So is there someone out there who, rather than saying, "The rules are distributed over these nineteen pages" can summarize the process in, say, something like three long bullet points of text stating, "Go here, do this, be sure not to do this, and your obligation will then be to do this by this time in this way"?

HELP MY TINY BRAIN.

Comments

[exbentley]

When requesting;

You pick a fandom. The main characters for the fandom you choose from the list which appears by holding "ctrl" when you click them. Then there is a text box to give extra details; it's actually ENTIRELY OPTIONAL for the writer, but people are so thorough as to go to the person they're writing for's LiveJournal and check for extra detail, so feel free to be spare; pairings, scenarios, prompts, kinks, etc. This is all fairly standard. You do this four times, preferably for four different fandoms.

When telling them what you will write for, once again you go through and select fandoms. Once again, the list of characters is available for you to pick (who appears there is all decided during nominations)

Picking the "Any" option available in a fandom with only say, Harry, Draco & Snape, would mean you're saying, I don't mind writing requests for Harry/Draco, Harry/Snape, Draco/Snape, Harry/Draco/Snape or fic about any of those three alone. If you just want to say you'll write for Harry/Draco and Harry/Snape, you would select Harry Potter, then Harry and Draco. Then select Harry Potter again and select Harry and Snape.

Offering is a long tedious process, and it's often better just to go through and look for minor fandoms you know than scroll through waiting for ones you're willing to write for. Also, Murphy's Law states that the fandom you are most concerned about selecting (Did I really just click 'Enid Blyton'? Oh well, I've read all the books and no-one will want fic anyway...) is one of the fandoms you will end up with.

You have to select more than four fandoms. In return, you get someone else's request; the four you filled out go on to someone else. You may have requested fic in say (pretend it's not Yuletide and major fandoms are allowed) SGA, Death Note, Harry Potter and Loveless. However, your writer has only offered to write SGA and doesn't know any of those other fandoms. There only needs to be one match, there's no guarantee the other three requests will be fandoms you even recognize.

But then, that's the fun of Yuletide; trying new things, discovering new canon, writing for characters you would barely think about otherwise, scrambling for the deadline, discovering virtue in new pairings and always the joy of giving someone something they could have received nowhere else.

If it really does seem like way too much hassle for you, there is usually a pinch-hit mailing list to cover dropouts, and unfilled requests are thrown out to anyone and everyone over Christmas in "Yuletide Madness".

Some final things:
- Everything's anonymous until the Christmas deadline.
- Failing to produce a fic can get you banninated from future Yuletides.
- There are a lot of people available for hand-holding, walking through uploading a story, or anonymous beta-reading over at yuletide; make use of them!


...I hope this didn't tell you anything you didn't already know.

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

Oh, it's AWESOME. Thank you. No, this is exactly the level of tailored-to-me detail I needed. Thank you so much!

One other thing: Must one request? Can one decide to offer only? That is, say, "I'll write in any of these; no one has to write anything for me, thanks"?

[exbentley]

You're welcome!

I don't know; it's not really covered in the FAQ. I think, because the actual sorting is done by some strange and marvellous code/program which matches everyone up, the answer might be 'no'. You'd definitely have to ask. Though I do know if you join the pinch-hit list, you get to reply and say "hey, I'd like to write that one" without having anything written for you.

[ishafel.livejournal.com]

I think that would probably cause something to self-destruct. BUT, you could sign up to pinch-hit (there's a Yahoo group, IIRC) and then volunteer if you can write any of the pinch-hits. They are posted to the Yahoo group as they occur, so one at a time until the deadline when there are like a hundred. And the first person to reply to the email gets the pinch hit.

[adina-atl.livejournal.com]

As others have said, you can join the pinch-hit list and offer to write stories where the original assignee defaulted. The downside of this is that 1) you have less time to write, sometimes as little as three days, and 2) you might not get assigned a pinch-hit. In the oddness and wonder that is Yuletide, there is actually competition to get pinch-hit assignments. Assignments can be snapped up in less than five minutes.

[franzeska]

Also, after this year's yuletide is over and author names are revealed (they're hidden Christmas-New Year's or so), you can write New Year's Resolutions fic, which means you write a story for an unfilled prompt (each participant makes 3-4 requests and gets 1, leaving 2-3 per person). So if you just want some interesting prompts, you could always check back in January.