Amy (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
brightknightie) wrote2024-06-06 06:07 am
brightknightie) wrote2024-06-06 06:07 am
Entry tags:
FKFicFest '24 nearing finish line
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
fkficfest continues revealing. After today's, we have three stories left. Friday will have two shorter stories, Saturday a long story, and Sunday will have the round-up/index and "closing ceremonies" post.I've posted promos to all the relevant DW communities that I know of, and to ForKni-L after every fourth story. A person on the email list replied there to say, "Thank you all." (I do encourage people there to share comments and kudos on the stories; I'm not sure that registers.) Please consider promoting the fest as appropriate on whatever platforms you like.
The story I wrote, myself, posted a week ago today. It's Nick-centric, historical, and pro-virtue; you know me. You'll find a wide variety of stories in the rest of the fest, so hopefully approaches to appeal to many assorted tastes. It's okay that not every story is for every reader, of course!
(I still don't know what to make of the unusually high percentage of multiple stories by single authors this year. Of the remaining three stories, two more are coming. Was it the calendar? The prompts? Coincidence?)
I hope people have had fun, both writing and reading.
no subject
Can't speak for anyone else, but multiples for me was a function of having ideas AND *time* to execute them. Last year was the first time I learned about the fest, having been inactive in any fandom for many, many years, and not active in this one this one since... late 90s/early 00s? Something like that.
While I had ideas last year, I lacked time, and did not participate (though quite some time after the fest ended, I still went back and read most of the stories, and even later finished a story based on an idea I had from a prompt). This year just shook out differently. I knew I could likely hit three once I finished the first two by the end of April. That I hit a 4th was more luck than anything else. The 4th (and remaining to be posted) story just kind of popped into my head one day last month and was very short so not difficult to execute.
So the biggest factor for me was the availability of time in my life. Followed by ideas. Followed by luck. Having a bit more confidence in myself at this point also helped, I am sure.
no subject
From a macro level, for fest planning, it sounds like your happy experience falls under "coincidence," that is, as not anything directly replicable to help scale enthusiasm for the community at large. So I will try to stop worrying that there's something I should do here. :-)
no subject
This year I submitted two stories only because a stray idea came up like ten days before the deadline and I just had to write it. This year's prompts were just resonating with me. I hope that next year's (assuming that there will be another FKFicFest) will too. :)
no subject
At this time, I intend to offer another game next year, if enough folks are interested, and if I can make time in my schedule. We've managed to do this every year for fifteen years now, though it has been as early as early May and as late as late August, as many as 23 stories and as few as 6, as many as 20 authors and as few as 5 (including me).
I have wondered whether we should switch to every second year, instead of every year, to maintain freshness and enthusiasm.
no subject
Please no. I have seen other smallish exchanges/fests do this, and it seems to be a fatal move. Rather than maintaining enthusiasm, it has the opposite effect. People who have "written it into their calendar" for years drift off to doing other things and a lot of them never return.
no subject
no subject
no subject
I have to admit that the information that other writers were planning more than one story prompted me to think about doing it as well. That, and the time. I finished my primary story with a month to go and figured I could get something else written as well. I do have a third story floating around in my head which I may still write in the coming months.
The simplicity of the prompts probably helped too. All four are so broad that you could make almost any story fit one, or more, of them.
I do fear that if you move to every other year more inertia might be lost. Hard to say.
no subject
While it's nice to have more stories, I'm afraid that I have worried that the proliferation of multiple submissions could intimidate or marginalize writers who have time for "only" one. What if they feel pushed out and overlooked? And I worry that it could also affect readers, who may choose to read fewer total authors but the same number of stories in their available time, so that fewer authors get the pleasure of comments.
>"I do fear that if you move to every other year more inertia might be lost. Hard to say."
Hard to say, for sure!
In the years where we had conspicuously, progressively fewer writers -- from 20 down to 5, as I told TheFruitBat, above -- some people who had dropped away told me that if we changed to playing every second year, they would feel more inclined to participate again. I don't know whether that would have proved out at the time, never mind now that we're back up to 10, but it's something I still wonder about.
no subject
Not in my case, I assure you. I marvel at their enthusiasm and thoroughly enjoy the extra stories to read.