How to Post Your Yuletide Fic (2016)
Assignments have been out for two weeks. It’s okay if you haven’t started writing yet! Here, however, is a guide to posting your story, when you are ready. The procedure for posting hasn’t changed since last Yuletide, though we have clarified some guidelines on what should be put in Yuletide Madness and what should be put in the main collection.
This is also covered in the Posting section of the Yuletide FAQ.
Posting Your Assignment
First, log in to the Archive of Our Own.
You can find your assignment on your personal Assignments page, at http://archiveofourown.org/users/YOUR-NAME/assignments.
You can also get to your assignment through the Yuletide 2016 collection: http://archiveofourown.org/collections/Yuletide2016. Once you are at the collection, look at the left-hand list and click on “My Assignment”.
Click the “Fulfill” button at the right of your assignment, and you will be taken to a Post New Work page with your recipient’s name and the collection name filled in. You will also see a field that says “Does this fulfill a challenge assignment?” (in the “Associations” section of the form) and the name of the challenge and your recipient will appear there, with a tick in the box.
You can fill in the rest of the details and post from here.
Your assignment must be complete and posted before 9am UTC on December 18.
Posting a Treat
Anyone can write a story for someone’s Yuletide prompts and post it to the collection.
Once logged in to AO3, go to the main Yuletide 2016 collection or to the Yuletide Madness 2016 collection and click the Post to Collection button on the right side.
This will take you to the Archive’s Post New Work page, with the name of the collection already filled in for you. You will need to add your recipient’s name, as well as all the other details of the work. It’s a good idea to check the spelling of your recipient’s name - all signed-up participants are listed on the Yuletide 2016 profile page.
It is important that any work you post has the collection’s name filled in first. Otherwise, you may accidentally post a work that is not anonymous.
To find a prompt to treat, we suggest you look at the Dear Yuletide Writers post (also linked in the sidebar). We will also make all prompts visible on AO3 at the same time as we open the Madness collection (November 1).
Madness vs. Main Collection
Treats can be posted in either the main Yuletide 2016 collection or to the Yuletide Madness 2016 collection.
If deciding which collection to put your treat in, here are some guidelines:
Main collection
Madness collection
If your story is not complete by December 26, you will not be able to post it in a Yuletide collection in 2016. We suggest you hold it until the New Year’s Resolution 2017 collection opens on January 1.
There is more information on Treats in the Yuletide FAQ on AO3.
Drafts
If you click ‘Preview’, and ‘Save Without Posting’, your work will be saved as a draft. Drafts do not show up as a complete assignment. Also, the archive only holds drafts for a month. So, if you save your work in draft form, please be careful to check back and publish your draft before the Yuletide deadline. This is not a secure way to store your work - we do not recommend you leave your work in draft form for any length of time.
If your story is a draft, there will be a warning at the top of the work that says, This work is a draft and has not been posted. The draft will be automatically deleted on [date].
If you are not sure whether or not you have uploaded a draft, contact yuletideadmin@gmail.com and we will check for you.
Placeholders
Please don’t upload a placeholder to the collection. It’s okay if the story that you upload is a bit rough, and you plan to edit it, but it should be a complete story. Otherwise, if your internet access is somehow compromised or something happens to you, your recipient may be very disappointed on December 25, and we will have to scramble to find a last-minute pinch hit.
At the December 18 deadline, we will do a check for placeholders. If we find any at that time, their authors’ further participation will be restricted. A New Year’s Resolution fic will be required if the offending author wishes to sign up again; and we may impose further penalties.
Deadlines
This year’s default deadline is 09:00 UTC on December 11. What time is that where I am? That means that if you default after this time, you will generally need to write a 1,000-word story for New Year’s Resolution 2016 in order to sign up to Yuletide in 2016.
This year’s posting deadline is 09:00 UTC on December 18. What time is that where I am? Please get your story in by then!
Note that those times are in UTC, not EST or similar (it may be at a very odd hour for you! Please check).
Other Questions and Issues
Can I edit my work after I’ve posted it? Yes! Absolutely.
I posted my work to the collection, but now I can’t find it. Have a look in http://archiveofourown.org/users/YOUR-NAME/works/collected - you’ll need to be signed in. You can also get there by going to your Works and clicking on Works in Collections at the right. Or, check your Statistics page.
Can I upload a story without a fandom or without a recipient, to hide who’s getting what? No. We’d prefer you label your work accurately when you upload it. If you’re not sure how to tag your work, email yuletideadmin@gmail.com for advice.
Is it true my Treat might become someone’s main assignment? Yes, in the following circumstances.
I wrote a treat for someone. I think they’ll like it, but it doesn’t use all of their characters/ is kind of experimental/ I wouldn’t feel comfortable if it were the only gift they got. Please put it in the Yuletide Madness 2016 collection.
The fandom I wrote for isn’t showing up in the collection’s fandoms list. This fandom may need to be made canonical by the AO3 tag wranglers. Or it may be there by another name - Yuletide fandoms don't always map exactly to canonical AO3 fandoms. If you go to your story and click on the fandom tag you've entered, you can see if it has a different canonical form (for example if it is synned to a wider tag or has a different format). If it’s getting close to story reveals, drop us a line and we’ll see if we can help.
I still have a question…
Other useful links
The Yuletide Admin sticky post on LiveJournal and on Dreamwidth contains several useful links, as does the sidebar to this community. For example, there’s a post for finding beta readers, a guide to using the Yuletide IRC chat room, and a post for letting your author know you’ll be away around the end of December.
This is also covered in the Posting section of the Yuletide FAQ.
Posting Your Assignment
First, log in to the Archive of Our Own.
You can find your assignment on your personal Assignments page, at http://archiveofourown.org/users/YOUR-NAME/assignments.
You can also get to your assignment through the Yuletide 2016 collection: http://archiveofourown.org/collections/Yuletide2016. Once you are at the collection, look at the left-hand list and click on “My Assignment”.
Click the “Fulfill” button at the right of your assignment, and you will be taken to a Post New Work page with your recipient’s name and the collection name filled in. You will also see a field that says “Does this fulfill a challenge assignment?” (in the “Associations” section of the form) and the name of the challenge and your recipient will appear there, with a tick in the box.
You can fill in the rest of the details and post from here.
Your assignment must be complete and posted before 9am UTC on December 18.
Posting a Treat
Anyone can write a story for someone’s Yuletide prompts and post it to the collection.
Once logged in to AO3, go to the main Yuletide 2016 collection or to the Yuletide Madness 2016 collection and click the Post to Collection button on the right side.
This will take you to the Archive’s Post New Work page, with the name of the collection already filled in for you. You will need to add your recipient’s name, as well as all the other details of the work. It’s a good idea to check the spelling of your recipient’s name - all signed-up participants are listed on the Yuletide 2016 profile page.
It is important that any work you post has the collection’s name filled in first. Otherwise, you may accidentally post a work that is not anonymous.
To find a prompt to treat, we suggest you look at the Dear Yuletide Writers post (also linked in the sidebar). We will also make all prompts visible on AO3 at the same time as we open the Madness collection (November 1).
Madness vs. Main Collection
Treats can be posted in either the main Yuletide 2016 collection or to the Yuletide Madness 2016 collection.
If deciding which collection to put your treat in, here are some guidelines:
Main collection
- The Main collection is open for posting between now and (early) December 25.
- A story in the main collection must have over 1,000 words of text.
- A story in the main collection must have 1 Yuletide participant as the recipient.
- A story in the main collection must match a fandom and character set requested by the recipient in 2016.
- It is possible for a treat in the Main collection to become the recipient’s only gift for that year. This happens rarely (see fuller explanation below).
Madness collection
- The Madness collection is open for posting between November 1 and (early) December 26.
- Works in Madness can be any length, and do not have to be text-based (though we suggest you check whether your recipient is open to art or other treats).
- Works in Madness will not be taken as a substitute for main gifts. They may be a person’s only gift if that person defaulted.
- Works in Madness do not have to precisely fit the fandoms and characters requested by a person in 2016. However, each work must be a gift for a specific person (or people).
If your story is not complete by December 26, you will not be able to post it in a Yuletide collection in 2016. We suggest you hold it until the New Year’s Resolution 2017 collection opens on January 1.
There is more information on Treats in the Yuletide FAQ on AO3.
Drafts
If you click ‘Preview’, and ‘Save Without Posting’, your work will be saved as a draft. Drafts do not show up as a complete assignment. Also, the archive only holds drafts for a month. So, if you save your work in draft form, please be careful to check back and publish your draft before the Yuletide deadline. This is not a secure way to store your work - we do not recommend you leave your work in draft form for any length of time.
If your story is a draft, there will be a warning at the top of the work that says, This work is a draft and has not been posted. The draft will be automatically deleted on [date].
If you are not sure whether or not you have uploaded a draft, contact yuletideadmin@gmail.com and we will check for you.
Placeholders
Please don’t upload a placeholder to the collection. It’s okay if the story that you upload is a bit rough, and you plan to edit it, but it should be a complete story. Otherwise, if your internet access is somehow compromised or something happens to you, your recipient may be very disappointed on December 25, and we will have to scramble to find a last-minute pinch hit.
At the December 18 deadline, we will do a check for placeholders. If we find any at that time, their authors’ further participation will be restricted. A New Year’s Resolution fic will be required if the offending author wishes to sign up again; and we may impose further penalties.
Deadlines
This year’s default deadline is 09:00 UTC on December 11. What time is that where I am? That means that if you default after this time, you will generally need to write a 1,000-word story for New Year’s Resolution 2016 in order to sign up to Yuletide in 2016.
This year’s posting deadline is 09:00 UTC on December 18. What time is that where I am? Please get your story in by then!
Note that those times are in UTC, not EST or similar (it may be at a very odd hour for you! Please check).
Other Questions and Issues
Can I edit my work after I’ve posted it? Yes! Absolutely.
I posted my work to the collection, but now I can’t find it. Have a look in http://archiveofourown.org/users/YOUR-NAME/works/collected - you’ll need to be signed in. You can also get there by going to your Works and clicking on Works in Collections at the right. Or, check your Statistics page.
Can I upload a story without a fandom or without a recipient, to hide who’s getting what? No. We’d prefer you label your work accurately when you upload it. If you’re not sure how to tag your work, email yuletideadmin@gmail.com for advice.
Is it true my Treat might become someone’s main assignment? Yes, in the following circumstances.
- If the person who was officially assigned to your recipient defaults at the December 18 deadline, we may check to see if they have a treat in the archive instead of sending them out to the pinch hit list. That is because of the very high volume of pinch hits late in the Yuletide season.
- If we send someone out to pinch hit after the default deadline (December 11) and several days go by without a pinch hitter volunteering to write for them, we may check to see if they have a treat in the archive. (This has not happened before, as far as we know.)
- If Person A defaults, and then their assigned writer defaults, we don’t send Person A out to the pinch hit list - their default means they are no longer guaranteed a gift. That means that a treat you write for Person A may be their only gift.
I wrote a treat for someone. I think they’ll like it, but it doesn’t use all of their characters/ is kind of experimental/ I wouldn’t feel comfortable if it were the only gift they got. Please put it in the Yuletide Madness 2016 collection.
The fandom I wrote for isn’t showing up in the collection’s fandoms list. This fandom may need to be made canonical by the AO3 tag wranglers. Or it may be there by another name - Yuletide fandoms don't always map exactly to canonical AO3 fandoms. If you go to your story and click on the fandom tag you've entered, you can see if it has a different canonical form (for example if it is synned to a wider tag or has a different format). If it’s getting close to story reveals, drop us a line and we’ll see if we can help.
I still have a question…
- If it’s a general question, ask in the DW or LJ comments; or in the #yuletide IRC channel.
- If it might give away your assignment, send us an email (yuletideadmin@gmail.com) and we’ll do our best to sort you out.
- If it’s about how to post complicated works (e.g., unusual formatting), then it is probably best for you to ask AO3 Support.
Other useful links
The Yuletide Admin sticky post on LiveJournal and on Dreamwidth contains several useful links, as does the sidebar to this community. For example, there’s a post for finding beta readers, a guide to using the Yuletide IRC chat room, and a post for letting your author know you’ll be away around the end of December.