Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Fanfic Related Eligible Stories 2013

I'm not part of K-Comm, Morgana, so I have no clue. I'm not sure if a story can be added after nominations have been opened, but you'd have to ask Tricia.

LabRat :-)

Sadly, our experience over the last few years suggests otherwise. Which is my entire point. None of the reasons now being given for stories not turning up on the Archive are new. Authors have always cared about getting their stories just right before submitting. Real life has always been a bear. Free time has always been tight. All valid reasons and I wouldn't ever suggest they weren't.

But despite this, stories always made it to the Archive. Very few didn't. Now more don't than do each year. At present, I have almost no stories out being edited and only enough in the upload queue to stretch to the next couple of weeks. My last couple of reminders for submissions met with one story and no stories at all.

I can do no more. The only people who can change the inevitable decline is authors. If they want to.

I guess what frustrates me is that for a fandom for a show that hasn't aired in over a decade we are incredibly lucky to still have as many talented authors producing as much fanfic as we do. Many a fandom in those circumstances would have wound down to almost nothing by now. So, given that that fanfic is still being produced, it's just especially saddening to see the Archive dying on its feet when it seems so unnecessary.

LabRat :-)

Since joining this wonderful community I have been amazed at the care and professionalism of the archives.

Considering the alternative of fanfiction.com (shudder)I need to do my part in keeping this treasured resource viable.

It took over a year to find the time to get Stranger in Our Midst up to speed to be loaded onto the site. It took a long time to get it where it should be. So, going forward I have at least seven stories that are in different stages of completion. With Friends like these... is already on the boards. There are at least three short stories to follow and then a mid-length story, followed by a monster I have been trying to tame for over a year.

If it means working on these fics over a lunch break or sitting in the car outside of work early in the morning to get it done than that's what I have to do. In order to get my stories ready for submission.

Thanks for the reminder.

LabRat - I have a suggestion - nothing new or startling - but it might help.

In my experience, a ficathon generates more authors and a spate of shortish stories.

Admittedly, by the time we organise a ficathon (and some might prefer to wait until after the Kerths), get the stories written, and get them to the archive, it's going to take a couple of months, but it might help fill the archive in-box over the northern hemisphere summer.

Perhaps we could give guidelines to participants - try to choose prompts conducive to shorter stories.

We could run it the standard way - all participants give 3 things they want and 3 they don't want and those prompts are given to another author. Or, to try something different, everyone could give 2 or 3 things they want, and prompts could be mixed up. ie every author gets 3 prompts from 3 different people.

Or we could post a set of prompts at the beginning of a two week/month period, and any author feeling inspired could write to those prompts. Perhaps these stories could be posted anonymously and we could include a 'guess the author' competition as part of the fun.

I'm willing to organise it if there is interest from others. We could call it The Archive Appreciation Ficathon.

Corrina.

Nominations have now started, so unfortunately, stories cannot be added to the eligible story list.

Tricia

Here are the Kerth eligible stories, which have posted to the Archives since 1/1/2013 with their Kb count (apologies if I missed anyone on the list):

"Accused" - Female Hawk - 429Kb
"After Summer Camp -- Matchmaker Chronicles Volume 1C" -- A - KenJ - 21Kb
"First Love -- Matchmaker Chronicles Volume 1D -- 1L" - KenJ - 150Kb
"Las Vegas's Kerth Ceremonies" - Pat AKA angelsgmaw - 118Kb
"Naughty" - VirginiaR - 6Kb
"The Not-So-Great Escape" - Lynn S.M. - 7Kb
"Truth about Soul Mates" - VirginiaR - 3Kb

"Behind Every (Super) Man..." by Deadly Chakram is 26Kb (the Kb number was missing from the list).

Is there any way to figure out Kb totals for stories which don't have them, yet? So, I can figure out if they qualify for "Super Short", "Short", "Mid-length", "Relationship", or "Waffy"? I figure you don't want us to just guess while we're nominating stories, right?

EDIT: Next year can we have a category for best "Introspective Piece" because sometimes it's hard to define some of these great pieces as "stories".