Author Reveals & Next Time

[morbane]

Authors are now visible for all stories. Here's the collection again: http://archiveofourown.org/collections/Jukebox2013

Thank you again for participating. I had a great time. I'm still reading through the collection.


I plan to run this challenge again, so I'd appreciate feedback, on what worked for you and didn't. (Anonymous comments are still enabled.)

Here are a couple of things I think I might change:

• The dates. This has run up closer to Yuletide than I was anticipating. I was also participating in hhertzof's Exchange at Fic Corner challenge, which hhertzof says she will run again next year in July-August-September. Because of this, I'm thinking of shifting Jukebox 2014 to February-March-April (ensuring the writing time doesn't overlap too much with Purimgifts) or April-May-June (though that overlaps a bit with Not Prime Time).


• The beta reading mailing list. I'm not sure that quite worked (thoughts, anyone?). Especially, it seems a bit silly for me to be playing relay like that when I'm in such a different time zone to most other people - I suspect it decreased, rather than increasing, efficiency. (I don't think this was a problem for pinch hitting, though, since I could decide when to send emails out.)


• What fanworks are included. Currently, I don't have a strong idea about how to include podcasts or fanvids - or whether these make sense to include. But I am interested in fanart. So, question: would other people be interested in either offering or requesting art fills for song prompts?


• The definition of a song. There are many discrete pieces of music without lyrics where the creators, performers, and audience can agree on the shape of the story being told. (Programmatic music being one branch of this.) Would you be interested in offering or requesting music of this type? And if you are, could you help me come up with an appropriate definition?



Other things I'd love to get discussion on: was writing for a song outside your comfort zone, or not? Did the song you wrote for remind you of other particular songs? (I ended up buying three songs in iTunes based on other people's nominations.) Are there un-filled prompts that you especially wish had been written as well?

Comments

[minutia_r]

1) This was a really fun fest and I'm glad you ran it and I participated in it; I would definitely participate again.

2) I did feel the conflict with fic corner; I was initially reluctant to sign up for both, and found myself scrambling towards the end. (I am not generally the world's fastest writer.) I'm satisfied with what I wrote for both fests, but there were a couple of times when I was seriously considering defaulting on jukebox. That being said rarewomen is probably my favorite fest of the year, so I wouldn't want a conflict with that either, and I wouldn't mind having deadlines like a week or two apart--it was the matter-of-hours difference that was stressing me out.

3) I feel that tagging song as characters would make the archive harder and less intuitive to navigate, not easier.

4) I'd love to get fanart! Or, indeed, fanvids for canons I'm familiar with, or ones using clips and stills to tell a story or establish a mood without requiring familiarity with or affection for the source(s) of those clips and images--sort of original-fiction fanvids. (I'm not a vidder so I don't know how plausible this is.) I have little interest in podfic in general and find it hard to see how it would work for jukebox, where this time around at least most of the canons had no fic written for them before the fest started.

5) That being said--since it would seem to be impractical especially for a relatively small fest to try to match both on fandom and type of fanwork--I see one of two ways including fanworks other than fic could work: either everyone who signs up would have to be okay with writing fic, but has the option of doing a different type of gift if their recipient indicates it would be welcome, or everyone who signs up would have to be okay with receiving any type of fanwork that's allowed. If you do it the latter way, restricting the types of allowed fanwork to fic and maybe art makes sense. If you do it the former way, I see no reason not to be as inclusive as possible. (If there is some third and better way to do it that I've overlooked, feel free to ignore me.)

6) I didn't use the beta-reader list, so I don't really have an opinion.

7) I would probably not request or offer fic for a song without lyrics.

[morbane]

Thank you! It's very heartening to see so many comments in which people indicate future interest.

If I do schedule it too close to Rarewomen, I'll check with prozacpark and aphrodite_mine about their likely dates and whether they intend to vary them much from their 2013 run of Feb-Mar-April-May. And I've checked with BridgetM about Not Prime Time dates. I agree that having two fests with deadlines a day apart was really unfortunate - hhertzof and I facepalmed a bit over that in Yuletide chat.

Thanks also for brainstorming a bit about fanart and fanvids. The type of fanvid you describe sounds gorgeous to me. But I suspect it could be a great deal of effort - maybe not equal to a 1,000-word fic (difficult as those are).

since it would seem to be impractical especially for a relatively small fest to try to match both on fandom and type of fanwork - Yes. I think it could work if there were lots of people who were willing to write and create graphics, or many people gave prompts that could be filled by art or fic. Response so far suggests there is not enough interest, but I will keep thinking about the strategies you've suggested as well as possible others.