Welcome to the first annual Winter/Summer Solstice Swap. Similar to Secret Santa, participants will be gifting stories. Please review last year's Secret Santa to get a feel for what's involved.
Similar to last year, but with some changes:
1) Signing up to RECEIVE a gift means signing up to GIVE a gift. No exceptions. We had some issues with this last year and a great deal of holiday stress was had by several. There was public shaming as well. These exchanges require full participation and giving!
2) When you sign up, you put up a prompt of what you would like to receive in your gift. This can be anything, a word, a quote, an author name, an idea, a theme, whatever. Just give your gifter a direction to run in. Also specify things such as, are you okay with violence, sex, swearing, gore, and whatever-all-else censors tell us we should not enjoy so much. Unless otherwise specified, gifter will be able to assume all bets are off.
If you need ideas, themes of rebirth, winter, summer, rituals, time, whatever might interest you. Keep in mind that broad/vague prompts are better.
3) However, signing up to GIVE a gift does not necessarily mean signing up to RECEIVE a gift. We had some great extra stories the last few years. Let me know if you want to give in general or for a specific prompt that inspires you.
4) Stories around 2K are good. Longer is okay. Some industrious folks have done novels!
5) If there is someone/something you don't want to write for, for whatever reason, please rep me with your request. I will do my steady-best to honor it.
6) Avoid PMing me. I am dire at cleaning my inbox.
7) To ensure you have read to 7, please rep me (on this post) a statement that you swear to give a gift by the deadline or inform me if something dire occurs in your life. Please provide an email so I can send you your gift.
8) It is often asked who owns the story. The writer does of course. The gift is to read a story based on your prompt.
Timeline:
December 31st: Signups close (tell your friends!)
January 1st: Assignments are given
February 10th: Stories due
February 11th or 12th: Stories given out, guessing threads open.
Beta volunteers are welcome, particularly since if you ask your friend to swap and they are writing for you, this is a problem (there are tricky ways around this, but try to request betas from a group rather than asking a participant individually)
The secret story swaps are awesome and I hope everyone will enjoy it fully this year.
Similar to last year, but with some changes:
1) Signing up to RECEIVE a gift means signing up to GIVE a gift. No exceptions. We had some issues with this last year and a great deal of holiday stress was had by several. There was public shaming as well. These exchanges require full participation and giving!
2) When you sign up, you put up a prompt of what you would like to receive in your gift. This can be anything, a word, a quote, an author name, an idea, a theme, whatever. Just give your gifter a direction to run in. Also specify things such as, are you okay with violence, sex, swearing, gore, and whatever-all-else censors tell us we should not enjoy so much. Unless otherwise specified, gifter will be able to assume all bets are off.
If you need ideas, themes of rebirth, winter, summer, rituals, time, whatever might interest you. Keep in mind that broad/vague prompts are better.
3) However, signing up to GIVE a gift does not necessarily mean signing up to RECEIVE a gift. We had some great extra stories the last few years. Let me know if you want to give in general or for a specific prompt that inspires you.
4) Stories around 2K are good. Longer is okay. Some industrious folks have done novels!
5) If there is someone/something you don't want to write for, for whatever reason, please rep me with your request. I will do my steady-best to honor it.
6) Avoid PMing me. I am dire at cleaning my inbox.
7) To ensure you have read to 7, please rep me (on this post) a statement that you swear to give a gift by the deadline or inform me if something dire occurs in your life. Please provide an email so I can send you your gift.
8) It is often asked who owns the story. The writer does of course. The gift is to read a story based on your prompt.
Timeline:
December 31st: Signups close (tell your friends!)
January 1st: Assignments are given
February 10th: Stories due
February 11th or 12th: Stories given out, guessing threads open.
Beta volunteers are welcome, particularly since if you ask your friend to swap and they are writing for you, this is a problem (there are tricky ways around this, but try to request betas from a group rather than asking a participant individually)
The secret story swaps are awesome and I hope everyone will enjoy it fully this year.
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I guess it's good I can rig this so I'm not tempted to write you Chicken Quest 
