Posting Guide
We hope you are having a great time writing your story.
Since assignments have gone out, people have also made a post for finding beta readers, a write-in post to help you meet up with other Yuletide writers in your area, and a post for letting your writer know you will be significantly delayed in responding to your story when it goes live on December 25. There is also a guide to joining the Yuletide IRC channel. The IRC channel is a place for participating writers to encourage each other, use Hippos to get anonymous plot help, and use Hippos to find beta readers - read more at the link.
As assignments have been out for a month, we expect that many people are getting ready to post their stories - and congratulations to those who have already posted! Instructions are below. The procedure for posting your story hasn’t changed since last Yuletide.
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 2015 collection: http://archiveofourown.org/collections/Yuletide2015. 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?’ 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.
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 Yuletide 2015 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 2015 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.
Stories in the main collection must be over 1,000 words.
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 around the same time as we open the Madness collection (mid/late December).
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.
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 fill.
At the December 20 deadline, we will do a check for placeholders. If we find any at that time, their authors will be banned from further participation.
Madness Collection
The 2015 Yuletide Madness collection is not yet open. We will open it in mid-December.
This is where anyone can post stories shorter than 1k words. The Madness collection stays open one day longer than the main collection, and is revealed on December 26, so you can use it for longer stories that weren’t quite completed in time. Other stories should wait for the 2016 New Year’s Resolution collection.
Deadlines
This year’s default deadline is 09:00 UTC on December 13. 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 20. 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.
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.
Can I upload a story without a fandom or without a recipient, to hide who’s getting what? 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: if the person who was officially assigned to your recipient defaults very close to the 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.
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. We suggest you upload it between December 20 and December 24. Or, you can check to see if they have a gift first at http://archiveofourown.org/users/THEIR-NAME/gifts - if they have a Yuletide gift, you will see a Mystery Work that is “part of Yuletide 2015”.
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 the deadline, drop us a line and we’ll see if we can help.
I still have a question…
Since assignments have gone out, people have also made a post for finding beta readers, a write-in post to help you meet up with other Yuletide writers in your area, and a post for letting your writer know you will be significantly delayed in responding to your story when it goes live on December 25. There is also a guide to joining the Yuletide IRC channel. The IRC channel is a place for participating writers to encourage each other, use Hippos to get anonymous plot help, and use Hippos to find beta readers - read more at the link.
As assignments have been out for a month, we expect that many people are getting ready to post their stories - and congratulations to those who have already posted! Instructions are below. The procedure for posting your story hasn’t changed since last Yuletide.
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 2015 collection: http://archiveofourown.org/collections/Yuletide2015. 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?’ 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.
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 Yuletide 2015 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 2015 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.
Stories in the main collection must be over 1,000 words.
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 around the same time as we open the Madness collection (mid/late December).
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.
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 fill.
At the December 20 deadline, we will do a check for placeholders. If we find any at that time, their authors will be banned from further participation.
Madness Collection
The 2015 Yuletide Madness collection is not yet open. We will open it in mid-December.
This is where anyone can post stories shorter than 1k words. The Madness collection stays open one day longer than the main collection, and is revealed on December 26, so you can use it for longer stories that weren’t quite completed in time. Other stories should wait for the 2016 New Year’s Resolution collection.
Deadlines
This year’s default deadline is 09:00 UTC on December 13. 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 20. 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.
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.
Can I upload a story without a fandom or without a recipient, to hide who’s getting what? 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: if the person who was officially assigned to your recipient defaults very close to the 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.
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. We suggest you upload it between December 20 and December 24. Or, you can check to see if they have a gift first at http://archiveofourown.org/users/THEIR-NAME/gifts - if they have a Yuletide gift, you will see a Mystery Work that is “part of Yuletide 2015”.
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 the deadline, 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 and we’ll do our best to sort you out.
- If it is regarding how to post complicated works (e.g., unusual formatting), then it is probably best for you to ask AO3 Support.