femgenficathon

Hi, folks.

A number of people have contacted me because they're going to have to post late. Others have told me that their stories have defeated them and have asked if they'll be able to participate next year. I've answered everyone, but in case there's someone out there who's worried about either question:

1) Yes, you can post late.

I know that real life can get in the way; I know that stories can be uncooperative. Posting late is more than allowed. (And I'll add any late stories to the Master List.)

2) No. There are no penalties if you can't post a story. And you WILL be able to participate again if you have to bail.

If the story proves un-writable or, as above, if real life gets in the way--hey. It happens. Hopefully things will go more smoothly for you next year.

Hope this helps!

FemGen 2011 is officially extended until October 7. I'm hoping that will give everyone who might be affected by the disaster a bit of a break.

And I am loving the stories I've seen so far. You guys are BRILLIANT.

ETA: Yes, this applies to EVERYONE, whether you were affected by the hurricane or not.

So the question is, what to do with the prompts for FemGen (assuming any are unclaimed by 11:59 p.m. tonight)? Just post them? Open a free-for-all claiming a la yuletide's New Year Resolution Challenge?

What would you prefer?

So here's the rules post for the femgenficathon.

The ficathon is multifandom. It is also an open ficathon. You can write in any fandom you like, about any canonical woman you like. I hope this will make it easy on the participants.

(Also, I have a feeling that a lot of stories never get written because no one ever asks for them in fic exchanges. This is your chance to to write the story you've thought of writing--maybe DREAMED of writing--but that no one ever requests.)

There are prompts. They're on a separate page this time, as I could not have the detail I wanted in the rules and in the prompts without the post being too large for LJ. You sign up at the prompts page, NOT here.

Each prompt can be claimed twice. This is in an effort to get more stories about women out there. One hundred and sixty-two prompts equal 324 potential stories about women and girls (cis and trans).

If every prompt is claimed twice over before June 7th and people still want to sign up, I'll add prompts that didn't get stories.

What's acceptable and what's not are both spelled out in the rules. The due dates--first and last--are both mentioned in the rules.

Here are the rules. The rules have not changed since last year. Read the rules carefully before you sign up.

( RULES )

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If anyone has any questions relating to the rules, please ask it here.

I've gotten one private message about this, so I think I should post about it.

The short answer: Yes. There IS going to be a femgenficathon this year. I just have to finish another project first.

This is the project:

YA Anthology to Benefit Trevor Project



Remember last fall when bullying and LGBT kids committing suicide in the face of that bullying made the news? Well, one of the authors in this anthology, Jordan Taylor, went to Mark Probst, the owner of Cheyenne Publishing, and suggested that he publish an anthology called Awake about LGBT kids--four stories by four authors. And all proceeds will go to the Trevor Project, which, in the organization's words, "is the leading national organization providing crisis and suicide prevention services to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning (LGBTQ) youth."

I'm the editor for Awake.

We just went into the second round of edits. We're getting close to the time when the anthology will go to the proofreader, who will then set it up for publication. Knowing how much time FemGen signups can take, I don't want to start now and risk shortchanging the anthology or the ficathon. Both are too important.

So I'm afraid that FemGen won't start until after this goes to press. If any of you are disappointed, I'm sorry. And I hope you understand.

...you've got amnesty.

I've been hearing from a fair number of people today who were panicking over the deadline and their uncooperative stories.

Now, I know what it's like when you're fighting with a story that just won't work or is fussing about how to start or is insisting on being longer than you expected (I had that happen back in January when my smallfandomfest story turned into something long enough to qualify for NaNoWriMo.)

So. Anyone who needs more time? You've got until August 15th. 11:59 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time, to be precise.

And if you go past that...hey, you know I'm not going to kill you.

And now--poll!

[Poll #1599470]

(By the way, I'd like the stories from the general claimage prompts to be posted here. I only ask that, in the spirit of the ficathon, such stories be about women.

Also, yes, comedies are permitted.)

The date after which you can archive somewhere other than here OR the link at A3O is still August 7th. Incidentally, I'd still like to have more people posting their stories at A3O--it's a good place to post and to get the attention of other readers.

Hi, folks. I'm going to bed for a few hours. If you submit a story during that time, or multiple chapters during this time, neither the story nor the chapters will show up immediately on LJ. Instead, it or they will hit the moderation queue until I wake up and approve either. And I have to run errands from 10:30 to 11:35 today; hopefully Dial-A-Ride will have me back at my computer by noon.

The queue is new this year, thanks to an idiot joining just so that he or she could spam the comm with porn. I'm sorry about this. I know it's inconvenient, especially when I have to take a break from the computer for whatever reason.

Just...don't panic. Nothing's wrong. I'll approve the stories when I get back. That should be about four hours from now.

There is a fantastic ficathon going on now--partly in comments and partly in signups--called the Awesome Ladies Ficathon. The premise is pretty simple. Given the nature of the ficathon, the prompts and the fics need to focus on a woman. You can check out the ficathon in the links below.

For LJ:

For Dreamwidth: http://onomatopoetic.dreamwidth.org/421011.html

Also, I think everyone should participate. I really do. And the fact that so many people are participating makes me very, very happy.

It's now 12:01 a.m., Eastern Daylight Time, on April 17th. Signups for Femgenficathon 2010 are closed.

Thank you all for participating! I can't wait to see the stories you come up!

The rules are here. They will tell you when the stories are due, what kinds of stories are and are not permitted, and so on. DON'T SIGN UP WITHOUT READING THE RULES.

Now. Prompts.

Here is the list of numbers. Pick a number and get a quotation. I won't be closing the list until April 16--or until all the quotations have been chosen twice over. Whichever comes first. (Yes, you can choose a quotation that has already been chosen before all the quotations have been chosen once. They'll all be chosen twice ultimately--at least that's my goal--so it doesn't matter what order that happens in.)

If all the quotations are claimed twice over before April 16, I will hand out unused prompts from previous years to those still wanting to sign up.

ETA: Since it's April 14 and a lot of prompts have as yet gone unclaimed, I've decided that each participant can claim up to three prompts. You don't HAVE to claim three prompts. You can claim one, or two, or three. Whether you use them all to inspire one story, use them all to inspire multiple stories, write one story based on one prompt and one for another, write one story based one prompt and a second based on the second and third, or end up not using the prompts at all...well, that'll be up to you.

The first posting date is July 15. The last posting date--the final day of the deadline--is July 31.

This year, like last year, I researched who the women being quoted were in order to include some information about them with the quotations. I checked websites belonging to some of them, fansites about them and their work, sites on particular subjects (like early aviators, Nobel Prize winners, women scientists, ancient history and medieval history), art museums, online copies of medieval books, letters and operas, a plethora of quotation sites, Uppity Women of Medieval Times, Uppity Women of the Renaissance...and yes, Wikipedia and Wikiquotes.

To get these hundred and sixty-two quotations, I researched five hundred names, if not more. I learned a lot. I found women of every time, place, nationality and race, ranging from women of the twentieth and twenty-first century to Chinese artists, Japanese poets, Sufi saints and Sumerian priestesses. I found women I'd never heard of before, and I quoted them. I found whole histories that I'd never dreamed existed.

There are many women I would have liked to have included on the prompt list--like Fatima al-Firhi (d. 880), a Tunisian-born woman who, in 859, founded the oldest continuously-operating and the oldest degree-granting university in the world, the University of Al-Karaouine (or Al-Qarawiyyin) in Fez, Morocco (alas, she left no quotations); Nalo Hopkinson, a Jamaican-born science fiction and fantasy writer (she prefers not to be quoted without giving permission in writing first); Dorothe Engelbretsdotter (1634-1716), Norway's first recognized female writer and the first woman in the world to make a living as a writer (I could find little about her in translation); Sybilla Masters (d. 1720), the first female American inventor in recorded history (she left no quotations that I could find); Margaret Knight (1838-1914) , the "female Edison," as she was called (unfortunately, there is another Margaret Knight who is a psychologist--all quotations seem to be by her rather than the inventor); Merit Ptah (circa 2700 B.C.E.), Egyptian physician, the world's first physician recorded by name and the first woman known by name in the history of science (again, no quotations); and Iaia of Cyzicus (116-27 B.C.E.) , an ancient Roman painter and engraver of ivory, whose work survives but about whom almost nothing is known. It reminded me yet again of why I do this every year--so that women, whether real or fictional, will not be so easily pushed aside or forgotten.

Good luck.

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( Prompts )