One Wank After Another

[coalcube]

A blank assignment is a funny thing, isn't it? When you have it, you don't appreciate it, and when you miss it, it's gone.

Wednesday 10 December: Default deadline (9pm UTC)
Wednesday 17 December: Assignment deadline (9pm UTC)
Wednesday 24 December: Main collection works reveals (9pm UTC)
Thursday 25 December: Madness collection works reveals (9pm UTC)
Thursday 1 January: Author reveals, end of event (9pm UTC)

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Comments

Re: how to reign yourself in without selling yourself short

[(Anonymous)]

How confident are you that you can accurately estimate how long a short fic will take?

What I have done is start the long fic, but set myself a deadline that if I don't have a reasonable bus pass by X date, I pause the long fic and start the short fic. I set that date early enough to be sure I'll still have time to do a a good job on the short fic. Then I'm racing myself to get the long fic done before the deadline but I know if I fail I won't have to default.

I've done that ... three times I think? Once I finished the long fic in time and let the short ideas go, once I didn't make it, wrote the short fic and then had time after to keep working on the long one and post it as a treat not much after yt, and once I got stuck on the long fic and had to make do with the short one.

The other option is to pick a long fic but structure it so that it has multiple bailout points, which I have also done a lot. Ideally this fic would be a brick-sized fantasy trilogy, but is there a long scene or a small subplot that would work well enough for a yuletide fic? Is there a mini-climax only 5,000 words into the outline where you can stop there if needed and it will still feel like an ending? Get past the first bailout point, and then any checkpoints you cross after that are just a bonus.

Re: how to reign yourself in without selling yourself short

[(Anonymous)]

I was thinking of this, in the long fic i have mentally sketched out there's a few parts which would probably work fine as a 3-5k story by themselves