I'm NUTS!

I've signed up for both Yuletide and NaNoWriMo! I tried (and failed) at NaNoWriMo once before, during my dry period, but I've never done Yuletide before -- last year I completely spaced on the signup.

My NaNoWriMo project is an SGA novel. During the last few weeks I was torn between pursuing an emo hurt-comfort alternate ending to The Hive where Rodney essentially has a stroke; the one where the mermaids (genetically engineered by the Ancients) kidnap Rodney from Atlantis and John has to pursue; the one with the cool magic-using AU concept where all magic is based on the four fundamental forces and most people learn at least a little bit of electr-magnetic manipulation in school; and the AU sequel to Cross Product. Number four won, and now I'm working on getting Alt-John and Alt-Rodney together so they can go off and have adventures. Whee! Oh, and it's also a Sentinel crossover, just because. But AU Sentinel, of course.

My Yuletide assignment is . . . wait, why did I say I could write that? With all the the fandoms I marked off thinking 'Oh boy, I hope I get assigned to write that one,' why did I include a fandom I only half-know and am not that interested in, and why did the computer have to pick that one?! Hmm, but some of these other requests look interesting even though I don't know anything about them. Maybe I'll acquire a new fandom in my copious spare time. My bosses don't actually expect me to work while I'm at work, do they?

My rule (so far) is that I can work on other fic after I finish my 2000 words for the day. So far it's working, but it's only been a couple of days.

Dear Secret Santa

I like almost every Yuletide story I've read in any fandom that I know and love, so I'll probably be happy with pretty much anything that matches my request. But you can try to include some of this other stuff if you feel like it:

I love action/adventure and plotty stories best of all. And I realize that's almost impossible to do in a short story. But I can also get lots of enjoyment from a vignette that just hints at adventure happening all around; they're on the run from off-screen enemies, or they're searching for an important thing for reasons not included in the story, that sort of thing. Missing scenes from canon are also a good way of implying plot and action in a story that's too short to show it in full.

I don't need a lot of detailed smut to make me happy. Good affectionate friendship fic, love stories with no sex at all, or implied sex where the bedroom door closes before the clothes come off . . . those can all be very satisfying. But smut, when appropriate and well-written, is like spackle that can fill in any number of plot holes. So I won't have a problem with pretty much any rating, so long as the characters have some genuine feeling for each other.

And . . . maybe I should have left it at three requests. That fourth request I don't care about quite as much as the others. But I couldn't think of anything else to ask for (until after I'd finished signup and couldn't face the thought of going through it again, of course). If the fourth request is the only one you can fill, I'll still be happy with it. But if you have a choice to make, just add a little weight to the first three requests, okay?