Jooster Stories as Birthday Gifts

[amethystaura.livejournal.com]

Tally ho! I have a suggestion about how this nifty little community can make its members' birthdays really memorable. Provided the moderators have no objection.

Birthday boys/girls: All those whose birthdays are coming up should each formulate a wishlist of the stories you crave as birthday gifts. Since disappointment is the last thing you want, these wishlists should be posted to the community at least a fortnight before your big day, so as to give other writers sufficient time to select the stories they wish to write, and then write them. And again, to avoid disappointment, try not to wish for stories you know can't be completed in two weeks. Your posts should be titled "All I Want for my Birthday is..."
Don't forget to state your birth date!!!

Writers: Select the story/stories you're willing to write. Since it's marvellous for someone to receive multiple gifts from many members of the community, please aim to fulfill as many requests as you can. You can even discuss among yourselves to decide who'll wite what. But stories must be written wholeheartedly and posted latest by a couple of days after the recipient's birthday. Promises should be kept, and you needn't be on someone's friends' list to write for them. In fact, you may even reply to the wishlist post, stating in the affirmative that you will write, and if you've decided, what you will wite. The recipient would then have something to look forward to. Your posts should be titled "Happy Birthday *recipient's screen name*".

Nobody will be allowed to judge or criticise a birthday boy/girl for the kind of stories he/she requests, provided they're essentially Jeeves and Wooster. And nobody will judge or criticise a writer for what he/she chooses to write. It's called birthday indulgence.

And please stick to titling your posts as directed. The reason is that many busy members only find time to check their e-mail notifications rather than actually visit the community to see what's new. So only the titles get their attention.

Lastly, nobody who posts his/her birthday wishlist in time (and stating the date) should go without atleast one story as a gift on his/her big day. We must ensure that.

So do you think that this is a good idea?

Comments

[iugularemortuos.livejournal.com]

Can artists fill requests too?

[amethystaura.livejournal.com]

Why not? I'm sorry I didn't mention it. It's just that I've had experiences with fandom artists wanting to be paid. Cynical me.

Go ahead.

[iugularemortuos.livejournal.com]

Fandom is for fun, work is for payment.

[amethystaura.livejournal.com]

*sigh* I know... I just didn't want to take a risk, that's all. I've had a bad experience. Anyhow, let's forget this and add art to the list.

[thedamnraven.livejournal.com]

This is a good idea. To bad my birthday was just 4 days ago. *sigh*

[nox-candida.livejournal.com]

lol, I hear you on that, except mine was last month.

[laughinggas13.livejournal.com]

Brilliant idea!

[niektete.livejournal.com]

Big round of YAY for this suggestion ^^ And may I add, should we try to make it as many stories as there are years, if possible? We did this in the Prison Break fandom for chanchito's 40eth birthday; she got 40 stories :)

[hephaistia.livejournal.com]

Oh, too bad my birthday was in May. But all the same, great idea!

[lady529.livejournal.com]

Love the idea, even though my birthday was last month : )

The Lady 529

[blackletter]

Lastly, nobody who posts his/her birthday wishlist in time (and stating the date) should go without atleast one story as a gift on his/her big day. We must ensure that.

Although I like the idea in theory (anything that incites the production of fic!), how would we go about ensuring that everyone gets fic? I also fear the possibility of disappointment, envy, and sadness arising if, say, one person got 50 birthday fics and another person got only 1 or 2.

[blackletter]

(I'm sorry for being a bit of a kill-joy; I just think that there are a lot of practicalities that should be hammered out and considerations taken into account before this idea goes into practice.)

[triedunture.livejournal.com]

Hmmm, good point. That's a tricky thing!

[soul-bonnie.livejournal.com]

Yeah... what about we establish a limit of fics to wish for? Let's say, every birthday girl/boy writes down 3 or 4 wishes tops and then the writers can work out who does what. (And if a few people on b-day girl's/boy's flist want to write them a fic anyway and keep it down a litte, well, no harm done.)

[princesshannah4.livejournal.com]

I agree. I love this idea, though.

[mxdp.livejournal.com]

Weeeeelll... My Birthday is the 3th of July... I'll be 20 :)

[ancilla100.livejournal.com]

I'd love it but I'm a reader of fic not a writer and i don't do art or anything. I just absorb everyone else's talents to make me happy and amused. Taking that into account is it fair that i should get stories written for me but not be contributing anything really?

You won't get any complaints from me if i can have that but some people might not be happy with that arrangement.

[storyfan.livejournal.com]

You know, I find one of the greatest gifts to be constructive feedback from readers. Many of the people who comment on my work don't necessarily write or produce art (at least not yet). But they help me a lot by telling me works and what doesn't. So you could consider your reading to be a gift. That doesn't really fit this idea, but believe me, feedback is a wonderful present.

[pantropia.livejournal.com]

*Oh* hell yes. I don't tend to work with a beta because of the way I work - I tend to hammer at something, making little tweaks, and occasionally going back and *completely* rewriting something, or bunging a line in somewhere several chapters back, and I will be working on it pretty much the whole time I'm awake. I looked into it, and I think I've vomited out about 50,000 words in the last two weeks. By the time I got the thing back from a beta's readthrough, it would have changed. Sometimes I think I ought to be checking what I write into CVS, it goes through so many revisions. The other reason is that if I take too many suggestions from someone else while I'm working on a piece, I'll either get completely disillusioned with the piece and not finish it, thereby having wasted someone's time and effort, which makes me feel bad, or end up feeling that it's not really *mine* any more.
HOWEVER, I *love* getting feedback once I'm done. Especially when it's telling me what I've got wrong, or just could have improved. Once it's done and out there, I just don't feel the same way about suggested changes, I don't know why. I often will read a piece through after getting a comment, and go 'hmm, yep, they're right' and change it. If not, I'll try to bear it in mind for the next piece. Ego-inflating comments are great, but there's not a lot I like better than a good detailed comment telling me what worked and what didn't. The crit is of lasting use. A "Squee!" is a passing thrill.

[storyfan.livejournal.com]

I wish I could work like you do. My beta works with me throughout the story, offering advice and ideas and letting me know when Jeeves or Bertie are stripping out of too many waistcoats (3 extra ones were found in one story). I fear that if I didn't have one I'd make grievous errors. The stories that I post only on my LJ are usually unbeta'd. They're usually just little gifts for my flist.

I'm sorry if I hijacked this thread. I still like the idea of birthday fics!

[storyfan.livejournal.com]

This is a good idea as long as we work out any bugs so that disappointment can be avoided. Here are a few things to consider: A wishlist limit, word limit (only in that few people would be willing to write an epic so these shouldn't be asked for, probably), type (drabble, full fic, dialogue only or anything goes), how long the program will last (those who just celebrated birthdays might still want them a year from now - will everyone be keen to go that long?). I'll say right now that I'd write a story for someone, but I'd want to limit it to about 2,000 words.

[peak-in-darien.livejournal.com]

You could try doing batched posts with multiple birthdays - maybe three posts for the year, each covering 4 months of members' birthdays. That way it would be like three birthday fic fests, instead of a constant number of new birthdays and fic requests. It might be easier to make sure everyone gets a fic that way.

Just a thought. :) Like a poster above I think we could all discuss practicalities, but I don't want to knock the idea down - I think it's great when people get up ideas like this!

[peak-in-darien.livejournal.com]

Also agree with storyfan's point about word limit - a minimum word limit usually works well because then people can choose to expand to something longer or not, but at least nobody gets a drabble.

[amethystaura.livejournal.com]

PROBLEM 1: Disappointment at someone getting 40 stories & another getting too few.
SOLUTION 1: I think we should drop the idea of writing as many stories as there are years. It's a tempting prospect for some birthday recipients, but let's be frank, it's unfair to some others. Above all, writers struggle to finish writing stories they have already promised, let alone write such huge amounts of other stories. Goals will not be met. Unless they're drabbles, in which case it won't be too hard to give every birthday recipient a good number of drabbles. But then again it might lead to information overload.

PROBLEM 2: Limiting the no. of requests a birthday recipient can make.
SOLUTION: Let the birthday boy/girl pour out his/her heart. If you must impose a limit, make it something like 10 stories at the most. What I said was to try and write as many stories as possible, not all.

PROBLEM 3: Disparity in word limit, such as drabbles and epics.
SOLUTION: The standard is a story of 2000 to 5000 words. It may exceed that, or may fall short. If a birthday recipient requests something much longer, writers can flock together and write it as a joint enterprise, and not focus too much on the other requests. That way the possibility of it getting written is more, and the writers' burdens fall. We'll impose a restriction, such that if the recipients at all wants a story that exceeds 5000 words by a really wide margin (like something that has chapters), he/she can only issue one such request.

Anything else? Is someone willing to re-post the birthday announcement with these changes? And with a link to the original post?

[storyfan.livejournal.com]

How and where will we keep a list of birthday requests and the writers who take them on? The one problem I can foresee is when the birthday post drops behind the first Indeed Sir page (am I clear about that? I don't want to be confusing). And people are contributing so much now that the birthday post could get buried in less than a week. Some people might not see it unless they go back which I don't know if people always do (Right now this post is just 10 away from being pushed to the next page). That means newer writers and readers might not find out about the project. I know this because I only went back to the beginning of this comm just the other day and I've been a member for months. I usually just click on tags to find what I want.

Anyone besides me willing to write a fic for someone's birthday?

[amethystaura.livejournal.com]

Exactly, the information overload is something that most definitely pushes most posts into oblivion. You're right about the fact that many may not get to see this announcement, if they're the sort who don't scan the pages beyond the first in order to see if they've missed out on something. But then there have been many announcements in the past which have been viewed and welcomed by multitudes, such as the sex!fail challenge and other challenges from time to time. So I'm daring to hope...

I just hate the thought that an idea like this from which everyone may benefit, may sink into oblivion because little factors such as these.

[storyfan.livejournal.com]

Where would people sign up to give and/or receive? On this thread? I Haven't checked to see what's on it this morning, but so far people seem to like the idea. So far I'm the only who has signed up to write. It seems like there should be a spot to add your name to give and another to receive. A couple of LJ comms (I wish I could remember their names have this - slashfest maybe?) Perhaps this has to be hosted somewhere else and linked to Indeed Sir. But I'm not versed in how you do that.

[mllesatine.livejournal.com]

And nobody will judge or criticise a writer for what he/she chooses to write.
What?

I don't state the date of my birth in my profile and I'm not planning on changing that.

I like the idea of a basic holiday exchange but I wouldn't tie it to birthdays.

[amethystaura.livejournal.com]

What I had meant by that statement is that many may find a birthday recipient's requests whimsical or wierd, and may even find it absurd for anyone to write those requests. I wanted to clear this up, because as you can already very well see, there are other questions to be answered.

The writers here aren't exactly going to visit a birthday recipient's profile to check the birth date, so I suggested, just to simplify things tremendously, that the birthday recipient states the birth date (obviously exclusive of the year) in the post itself, so as to give writers a basic deadline for completing the stories.

I really don't know what you're getting at. If you don't want to tell anyone your birth date, don't post a wishlist for your birthday . Nobody's gain, nobody's loss.

There are people here who want to link one of the most special days in their life to a favourite fandom, and there are members who would love to bond among themselves and give eachother fandom stories as birthday gifts, to make it more memorable. Holiday exchanges and birthday celebrations can co-exist.

[mllesatine.livejournal.com]

What I had meant by that statement is that many may find a birthday recipient's requests whimsical or weird, and may even find it absurd for anyone to write those requests. I wanted to clear this up, because as you can already very well see, there are other questions to be answered.

I misunderstood. I thought you were talking about not criticising the fanfics being writtin in your second sentence.

I should have been clearer here. I'm not against the idea of writing fic for specific people. It can be wonderful. Other people have pointed out that there are a lot of kinks to be worked out to make sure that one requester gets at least one fic.

I wanted to inform you that some people like to keep their RL identity separate from their fandom identity. For me, that's also not stating my birth date. So yeah, this kind of birthday gift thing isn't for me.

Since the comments here are open, I thought I'd let you know. I'm sure there are other people who won't participate for the same reason.

Anyway, I wish you the best of luck.

[feanix.livejournal.com]

Damn...Mine's tomorrow, lol. Aw.