I'm pretty sure I'll sign up for merlin holidays so I will be doing all the work for this in January. :D

I just hope it will go more smoothly than last year when my laptop died permanently with my not-backuped submission on it.

Ouch! That must have hurt like hell!

You know, last year I hovered over the last sign-up slot for merlin holidays before deciding I just wasn't a good enough writer to do that fest. I was glad I didn't take the spot because I found out the next day that my friend winterstorrm had come back from holiday and got the last slot for the fest. That made me happy because she can out-write me every day of the week!

Also, like I said above, I am not good at writing in response to someone else's prompts or even tailoring one to their specific kinks. I tried that once for a friend and I think that fic wound up just going into graphic-porn-overload! And really, no one needs that as a Christmas gift!!

I did do the smaller, Yuletide Exchange at merlin_challenge and yah, it was definitely not one of my better bits of writing (even the recipient didn't bother to comment on it). Heck, that fest crashed and burned and I still to this day don't know what happened to it. They only posted half the submissions. I had a story in the queue for the second half as well and they didn't post it and somehow I lost my draft of it so that story was completely lost to the ether! So I will not be signing up for merlin_holidays. I will leave that to the good writers like you to make worthy gifts for people who deserve them!

It kind of amuses me that you wrote a huge and awesome bb fic and then say that you're not good enough writer. But yeah, I get how you mean it. I need to like my prompts too. :)

Aww, thanks *blushes* I think we all have huge doubts about ourselves though don't we? I mean, I am not the worst writer in the world by any means but still, I don't seem to write well for mass appeal. And merlin_holidays is kinda all about mass appeal.

merlin holidays is about using some of your precious time to create something for someone just to make them happy. And yeah, you don't have to hit the exactly right spot with your writing, but that happens even to the best. You can't really get into your recipient's head, especially when you have just few lines of likes and dislikes to base your story on.

also, the way it works, the mods would never give you a prompt that would be completely out of your list of favourite stuff to write.

And why should be the minorities excluded? It's not like there's a rule that fics for merlin holidays have to be bright and happy all the way through.

When I started writing mpreg, I thought I'd be writing for a smaller group of readers and now when I look at number of hits at ao3, it's mpreg that has the highest.

Also, when I take your big bang story as an example, you had a very dark theme that was potentially very depressive, but you managed to brighten it up with love and hope. It's something not everyone can do.

Well, I may consider doing it this year. I'll see what my other commitments look like at the time.

I just sorta still have it in the back of my head that no one is actually interested in anything I write. It still surprises me when people are!