Tardis Big Bang - again!

[selenay]

tardis_bigbang sign-ups opened today - hooray!

I've signed up with my Bambera vs fairies fic. Before I put out the request to a wider audience on the comm, is there anyone on my f-list who would be happy to do beta work on a 30,000 word (or more) fic featuring Bambera, Nine and impossible mythological beings? Final deadline is July 5th, so I'll be looking to get this beta'd late May/early June.

Last year my two non-flist betas both flaked out on me (without even replying to emails - eep!) so I'm appealing here first before going to the comm. You guys are much less flakey :-)

So, now I need to pull out the 500 words I wrote in November and work out what I was planning to do with this fic...

ETA: Got one beta lined up (yay!) but would love a second, even if you're just doing a final sense check read-through to pick up stuff that PA and I have missed on.

Comments

[paranoidangel]

Me! There's no way I can write for it - I can't manage 20,000 words in 4 months while I'm not ill, so there's definitely no way I'll manage 30,000 words in 4 months while I am. I was fine when it was 20,000 words and 8 months, why must they change things?

[selenay]

Awesome! I was a bit surprised to see that they'd upped the word count. They gave us a similar time last year (actually, possibly a little less?) but it was only 20,000. The increased word count means that I need to plan carefully to ensure that I get that count without needing to add tons of filler.

[paranoidangel]

I have just looked at the dates and it's due at the end of Wimbledon, so I will only be available for betaing while it's not Wimbledon.

[selenay]

First full draft is due May 23 - if I don't have a full draft to send to you at that stage then I'm not going to make it anyway :-)

[paranoidangel]

I was very surprised because 20,000 is a lot. The first year they gave 8 months and then dropped it to 4 months because they thought a lot of people dropped out because it was too much time! I think that maybe they just want fewer people, so they're making it harder.

[selenay]

With 8 months, there's a lot of room for people to procrastinate and then suddenly realise they've got 1 month to write the entire fic. With 4 months the pressure is on from the start because it feels much closer - they definitely had more finishers last time.

Looks like the word count increase is causing issues - there's a poll to gather opinions on word count and how long we get. So they may yet change their minds.

[netgirl-y2k.livejournal.com]

I'll cheerfully do a final sense read through. Epic Bambera fic sounds like win!

I'm swithering over signing up. I think I will with my post EoT Donna & Romana fic if the word count gets dropped back to 20,000. But 30,000 is about 9,999 words more than I'm capable of writing in three months.

[selenay]

I don't blame you for swithering. I'm excited about doing Big Bang again (and getting to write Bambera again!), but 30,000 words is a little intimidating. I'm hoping they find a better compromise - either back to 20k or an extra month to write.

Thank you! Having someone to do the final sense check is so good. You reach a stage where you've read it, your beta has been through it once or twice and neither of you can tell any more whether the edits have stuffed it up completely.

[paranoidangel]

I can understand other people procrastinating, but I didn't! I suppose I could write 20,000 words in 4 months if I did nothing else at all, but I just couldn't do that.