I love ficathons and fanfic exchanges. The challenge of writing to another person’s specific prompt and trying to come up with a story she likes is big fun for me. The Marvel Movies Crossover Ficathon is the current one I’m involved in and as usual, I’ve enjoyed the process a lot. Maybe even moreso than usual because I’m out of my comfort zone and typical fandoms.
The sign-ups were finished before the end of June, and stories were due on August 15th. Right before the deadline, it was extended for about two days because some people asked. And not everyone came through. Hey, stuff happens. I volunteered to pinch hit last Thursday, and the hope was then to make the stories live today, the following Wednesday, 5 days after the original “live” date. But another pinch hit is needed because there’s still someone without a story, so now the hope is for everything to go live on Monday, about 9 days late.
I emailed the mod and said I could post my pinch hit story today, this afternoon sometime, but if there were still stories outstanding I’d prefer to hang on to it and try to tighten and tinker with the time, because there’s no point in me rushing it in when we’re waiting on another pinch hit, I figure. So I’ll play with it some more and post over the weekend in the hopes that the stories really are going to go live on Monday.
I was involved in a ficathon sometime over the last year, I can’t remember which one did this, but you had a date where you had to turn in a first draft of your story at the very least. I think that’s a pretty good solution to the no-show problem, especially in very small ficathons. I’ve been in a few that had 12-20 people participating and a heavy number of no-shows is pretty difficult, as it seems like the problem is right now.
Stuff happens, and fan fiction certainly isn’t and shouldn’t be a priority for someone who’s sick, dealing with a suddenly too-heavy workload, in a crisis or emergency, or whatever the reasons are for not getting a story in. And I’m in no way completely about the Marvel Crossing thing, but I wish all exchanges had some sort of built-in way to manage pinch hits.
Take Yuletide for instance. I pinch hit the first year I played, and had just a day to write a story–someone got overlooked and ended up with nothing. I’d been tinkering with the story for a few days because I was going to write it as a Treat and ended up having no time. So when the last-minute pinch hit appeared in my email box in that fandom and the recipient hadn’t requested a specific story line, I knew I could write it overnight and get it in on time.
But even ordinary pinch hits only get a few days, while everyone else gets stories that the writers have had several weeks to work on. In small exchanges, people get a month to 6 weeks or so, and sometimes even more than that, and the pinch hits usually get a few days to a week. And I guess it’s bad form to point out that you pinch hit a story, which I think is a shame. If you had a few days to get something together, it makes sense that it’s not going to be as layered or loved on as a story that’s had a month to gel.
Even if I don’t actually start writing a story until a few days before it’s due (which, honestly, is sometimes the case), I’ve been working on it the whole time. I get an idea almost immediately and start working on it in my head, when I’m waiting on hold, when I’m just sitting around with a moment to do nothing. Obviously, stories started earlier, even if only in thought, have the potential to be better (and longer) than those started fresh a few days earlier.
I’m actually pretty happy with my pinch hit story this time. It involves a fandom that I have written a little in, and one I’ve never considered writing in. The fandom I’ve written in required me to write a character I’ve never written, and the other involves a character that really didn’t stand out to me before. I didn’t have to revisit my familiar fandom, but I did rewatch the other movie to make sure I wasn’t going to misrepresent the character. There’s not really much info in the movie and I don’t know his comic history, so I just went with what felt right.
And the recipient asked for a bond between these two characters, preferably more than friendship, so it’s a slash story at its heart and it’s a pairing that would have never considered. But I think I pulled it off realistically. Of course, I might be optimistic and overly rosy about it in the blur of creation and later think it’s an ugly baby. But I’ve enjoyed it. And since there’s another story still due, I’m going to take more time on it and hopefully made it read like something that wasn’t started a few days ago.
By the way, have you ever agonized over something and posted it to an exchange like this one that puts the story into a blind queue, and later realized you left an incredibly stupid mistake in? I did that with my originally assigned story, and while I really like the story I came up with (and hope the recipient likes it!) I feel like those two words that I forgot to delete when I made a change make me look like the stupidest person on the face of the planet. I’m not, but wow. As SOON as the stories go live, I’ll be in there editing that out and hoping that no one read it first. 
Continue reading Marvel Crossing and General Fanfic Exchanges — Pinch Hitting