Looking back to see whether or how I developed in terms of writing Yuletide tales.
2009:
My first year of writing, after being an avid annual reader of this ficathon. You had and have to offer several fandoms you can write in so you can be matched, and I threw in Ovid's Metamorphoses on impulse and as an afterthought. (Knowing my Greek myths and my Ovid, this was something I knew I didn't have to do much research for.) Wouldn't you know it, this was what I was assigned, and most satisfying it proved to write, too. Mind you, I was also initiated in the experience of Yuletide panic, when after the default date my recipient showed up as ungifted despite me having posted the story weeks before, but after some mails, this was cleared up. The recipient was happy and wrote lovely feedback, and so all in all, I had a great first time Yuletide experience.
Spinning Fate2010:
In that year, DS9 was allowed back as a Yuletide fandom, so I listed it among my offers and promptly got assigned to a DS9 request. Which challenged me to write a version of Dax I hadn't written before, Ezri, a pairing I hadn't written before (Worf/Jadzia Dax), and a pov I'd never written before (Worf, who in my previous DS9 stories had only shown up in cameos). Just goes to show you can get challenged out of your comfort zone even in a fandom you think you've done all in already. Experiences like this are exactly why I sign up for ficathons.
Let It Be2011:
Another year of a DS9 assignment. The lesson learned in this Yuletide was that even in a relatively big (for Yuletide) fandom, like DS9, popularity is by no means guaranteed. This story - about Odo and Quark, and the beginning of Odo's time on Terok Nor - got not as many readers as
Let it Be had done, and was somewhat overshadowed by the other DS9 stories posted this year. Readers, I experienced writerly jealousy in a fanfic context for the first time. Also a Yuletide rite of passage!
Collaborators2012:
The first year in which I wrote a treat in addition to my assignment. My assigned fandom was
Sunset Boulevard, and the new Yuletide experience that year was that the original prompt had been very general, and by the time the recipient's letter was up, she'd forgotten she had requested
Sunset Boulevard and wrote more detailed thoughts only to fandoms I had zero ideas about. Panic! However, contacting the mods resulted in
Sunset Boulevard being talked about in her letter, which allowed me to write the Norma and Max backstory I'd been wondering about for eons, which in turn to my great relief resulted in a happy recipient who wrote lovely comments to every chapter of the story:
LebenswerkBy now, I had enough of a certainty of how long it would take me to write a Yuletide story to write a treat as well, and even write it first. It was a story
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naraht and self had been daring each other to write for eons, about Alma Cogan. I still feel a bit guilty about writing RPF (though not guilty enough not to do it, obviously), but Alma Cogan has been dead for decades, which was liberating enough for me to this for Yuletide. I had been a bit concerned
narah and I would be the only ones interested in the result, but this turned out not to be the case, which made me a happy writer.
Such an easy game2013:
The year of the siblings! I ended up to write both my assignment and my treat about sibling relationships, which I was aware of, though I only noticed during the beta process I even had both pairs of siblings drink hot chocolate together in the comfort part of h/c. What can I say? It seemed to fit them. The assignment was in
Breaking Bad, and in addition to everything else told me another Yuletide lesson, which was: better not request exactly the story you want to write yourself, or it will be a really weird emotional experience later. In this case, I had asked for a story about Skyler and her sister Marie for
Breaking Bad, which I got, and had offered
Breaking Bad with Skyler and Marie as characters, and guess which prompt I got.
Blood Ties My other siblings tale of the year was another classic movie fanfiction, this time for
The Godfather, and allowed me to explore the female pov of this very male-heavy tale, and a character whom both canon and fandom seemed to dislike a lot, Connie Corleone. This resulted in what is so far my most widely read Yuletide story, which I certainly hadn't expected. Cue beaming author!
Fuit Quondam2014:
I had a new fandom to offer this year,
The Americans, which I did get assigned to. Which was also the first time I offered to write for an unfinished canon. Now obviously I've done this often before, but not for Yuletide. It's one thing to dash off a story inspired by an episode which might not even be beta-read because it feels that urgent, and another to write for the most attention-getting of ficathons with months of preparation. The shared risk is that you could get jossed completely within said months. Luckily, this hasn't happened to me (yet); also, I got a prompt that allowed me to explore a guest character and his relationship to one of our main characters I had been wondering about for a while. Result:
Like the Fellow saysMeanwhile, doing shared Mary Renault book readings and debating with other readers had resulted in joking about possible film versions for some of the novels in question. This was also the year Disney released
Saving Mr. Banks, their take on the clash between P.L Travers, author of the Mary Poppins novels, and Walt Disney, who between clashes bond a bit over Daddy issues. All of which led me to kid around with
naraht about Hitchcock filming Renault, and them bonding over Mommy issues. Some jokes remain jokes; some just refuse to go away and want to be turned into actual stories. And thus I ended up writing the tale of Mary Renault clashing with not one but both Hitchcocks, Alfred and Alma, and reluctanctly bonding over mother issues:
Saving Mrs. Fleming2015:
As with DS9, I ended up writing in the same fandom for two years in a row, which is why I haven't offered to write
The Americans this year. (As opposed to DS9, nobody else wrote any
Americans stories in the last two Yuletides, which, woe, because I do love the show a lot, and it's not Star Trek, it needs a building audience.) My 2015 prompt was a general one about the two main characters ("just fuck me up in the feels"), and thus I ended up writing casefic for Philip and Elizabeth, a story that I hoped would feel like a missing episode and tackle various s3 issues - the Soviet war in Afghanistan, our antiheroes' stressed relationship with each other and with their handler. The
Americans reading Yuletiders responded very posivitely -
except for the recipient, who didn't respond at all. Which was when I realised how lucky I'd been with my recipients from various ficathons, including Yuletide, until then. It's very frustrating if a person you've written a story for can't even be bothered with a "thanks for writing for me" note.
Zinc ManThe treat I wrote in 2015 was for my first book Yuletide fandom since Ovid, Ancient history as interpreted in Jo Graham's novel
Hand of Isis. Which is slightly different than writing historical fiction based on whatever your own research has produced; you work with already established interpretations of characters, though of course there's still room for additional interpretation, especially since the novel is a first person pov, which means another character from their own pov can see things differently. Moreover, it was a chance to tackle Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, who, depending on whether the work of fiction is pro-Augustus or pro-Cleopatra, usually ends up in a minor supporting role as either Sam Gamgee in the wrong canon or a soulless minion, despite having been the Empire's second most powerful man in his lifetime.
And I could write Julia, Augustus' daughter, in what was arguably the happiest time of her life instead of filtered through her later tragedy. It turned out to be a very satisfying writing experience indeed.
Alexandria LeavingThis year: three stories in three different fandoms, though two of them are sort of related, about which I'll chatter on post reveal.
