Coal Rivalry

[coalcube]

All the things Coal said, running through my head.

Thursday 25 December: Madness collection works reveals (9pm UTC)
Thursday 1 January: Author reveals, end of event (9pm UTC)

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Comments

Dear author

[(Anonymous)]

I saw that you added 400 words after the collection had already opened. Not cool.

Re: Dear author

[(Anonymous)]

And you're mad enough to post about it twice?

Re: Dear author

[(Anonymous)]

DC

I mean I would be annoyed enough for that. Depending on the quality before and after.

Re: Dear author

[(Anonymous)]

Not sure I follow. Is the implication that it was under 1k when the collection opened and they added the words fast to cover for a fuckup?

Re: Dear author

[(Anonymous)]

No they just don’t like that they edited it. So much that they posted this whine in two places that I’ve seen

Re: Dear author

[(Anonymous)]

NA is baffled. Obviously it would have been ideal if they’d gotten their edits in on time, but since that didn’t work out, what would OP have preferred - for their author to just leave them with the inferior, unedited version of the gift forever just to save face on having run late?

Re: Dear author

[(Anonymous)]

Different NA is also baffled. Obviously you just don't edit fics after reveals! Once it's out there it's done.

Re: Dear author

[(Anonymous)]

They'd have preferred that the author edited before reveals. Which is not an unreasonable thing to expect.

Re: Dear author

[(Anonymous)]

I kind of get the annoyance of something written for you being edited after you'd read it, but as someone who double edits and has my fic beta read and still finds mistakes in my work when rereading it after reveals, I feel for your writer here. Sometimes things just need fixing, coalie.

Re: Dear author

[(Anonymous)]

+100

Re: Dear author

[(Anonymous)]

nc

I think it's fine fixing little mistakes. But a typo here and there and even an awkward phase are unlikely going to amount to 400 words unless your fic is 50k.

If you're fixing 400 words of 'mistakes' after reveals, that's the kind of rewrites that should have happened in the almost two month long creation period. Unless it was a very very late PH, I really don't think there's an excuse for this.

Re: Dear author

[(Anonymous)]

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Re: Dear author

[(Anonymous)]

cyrt

I mean, it also depends on who you're making those adjustments for. If it's just because you're the type who can never leave their fic alone and you have to keep fiddling with it and try to fix things because otherwise it'll bother you, that's one thing.

But the recipient got their gift with the gift notification email, and there's a good chance that they read that fic as it was, so the fic at reveals should be a good gift - anything you change later is not really part of the gift, IMO. I've been in OP's position a few years ago. I initially got a really shitty gift (double paragraphs that pushed it over the minimum wordcount, in my case) that the author edited on Christmas Day after reveals. The edits technically made it less shitty, but it didn't change how I felt about either the gift or the author.

Re: Dear author

[(Anonymous)]

400 words of mistakes sounds like "fuck that was the wrong draft" not "I am literally writing these after reveals"

Re: Dear author

[(Anonymous)]

CYRT

I don't write like this (like, I have one single file that I edit until it's the finished version which I then copy and upload to AO3), so I honestly can't wrap my head around this. Do you really save your old, discarded drafts (and why?)? And you save them under such a similar name as the finished file that you might confuse them (again, why?!?)? And you don't read the fic again on AO3 once you uploaded it?

Re: Dear author

[(Anonymous)]

I've had this happen, and unfortunately the single typo was a > at the end of "close italics" tag that I typed as a <, causing the three paragraphs until the next > to vanish from the fic. Poof, 400 words gone.

It was towards the end of a fairly long fic so it wasn't immediately obvious in the uploaded version, and of course it wasn't visible in my draft. I only noticed at the end of my final editing pass, which begin a hour before reveals but which I didn't complete (and discover the html coding error) until like twenty minutes afterwards, by which time my recip had already opened the fic. /o\

Re: Dear author

[(Anonymous)]

I would assume they got confused with the reveals time and thought they had more time to upload their polished version. It's cutting it close to the wire but I was getting my final edits in fifteen minutes before reveals so I can't judge.

Re: Dear author

[(Anonymous)]

Dear Author,

Cut the goddamn italics down or so help me.

Re: Dear author

[(Anonymous)]

This could be about my author too. I haven’t finished reading my fic yet because it’s ~50% italics (and one of the non italics paragraphs reads like AI).

Re: Dear author

[(Anonymous)]

It looks like more people should put that as a dnw

Re: Dear author

[(Anonymous)]

I don't mind 1-2 italicized words per 1000 words of text. You want to use it as emphasis, emphasize what's important. If you have to emphasize a word in every other sentence, or entire blocks of text, or literally multiple words in every sentence? I shouldn't have to DNW that.

Re: Dear author

[(Anonymous)]

That's just bad writing. You can try DNWing individual manifestations of it but it won't turn the fic into good writing, either...

Re: Dear author

[(Anonymous)]

+1

Re: Dear author

[(Anonymous)]

I think there should be a happy medium between "1 word per 1000 words of text" and "a word in every sentence". I don't want either of those.

Re: Dear author

[(Anonymous)]

Dear author, please don't put in your A/n that you don't usually get a beta for Yuletide, ask your recipient to "excuse any errors", and post what is actually a cute little fic that people will be negatively predisposed towards from the beginning because of the A/n?

Why wouldn't you usually get a beta for Yuletide? I would think it's even more important to get a beta when it's a gift??