It’s Hard Out There For A Fangirl.

[redbrunja]

I really wish that I could tell beforehand if my own interest and/or the largesse of fandom is going to make a pairing-specific tag needed.

Also, I've been thinking about Yuletide, about I desperately in my heart-of-heart want, versus the fics I want less but which would be more likely to be decently written. Every year, my strategy gets more and more complex.

Comments

[ancarett]

Yuletide is a real guessing game, yes - I am already working on my request list and plotting out strategies to try and get what I want. . . .

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

What are your strategies?

[ancarett]

First is to talk up the fandom I hope to get in my own journal as well as on the Yuletide brainstorming thread, seeking out comms and authors who share the interest. Second is to write a really kick-ass request with lots of accessible info about the fandom and fun elements that hopefully will draw other fans in.

Third? Beg. Beg shamelessly!

[ladymercury-10.livejournal.com]

Sometimes I go back and add tags when one becomes necessary and I know I have older entries that would fit it. But then sometimes I get confused by my own tagging systems. >_<

Do you have any general Yuletide strategy advice? Last year was my first year and I had no idea what I was doing.

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

I’ll sometimes go back as well. My LJ and diigo tags are pretty logical, and I can always look at every tag I’ve ever used. My tumblr tags, though, are kind of a mess, even though I don’t use tags for commentary, largely because there is no way for me to look at all my tags and edit them on tumblr. (Or if there is, I haven’t figured it out.)

My first piece of Yuletide advice is to isolate what you are 100% unwilling to write and make sure they’re no way it can be requested of you. For example, I don’t want to write slash, so when I offer a fandom, I make sure that there is only one dude in the list of characters that I say I’m willing to write, and make sure that I would be okay with any combination of characters I offer to write.

After a couple of years, I’ve started to get a sense (or at least, I think I do) of which fandoms are likely to have good writers offering to write them. Like, for example, I’d probably have good luck requesting Hawkeye comic fic but very bad lucky requesting Kate Daniels-verse Julie/Derek (I might try my luck anyway).

[ladymercury-10.livejournal.com]

Ugh, yeah, Tumblr tags are the worst, especially when you're trying to change a tag you've used on a lot of posts.

That is helpful, thank you!

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

Glad I could help!

And yeah, I’m in the process of reorganizing my ‘comics’ tag on tumblr (for several reasons) and I have to manually change each entry.