What would it take to build us a new one?

[labelleizzy]

Writing Community:

What if we collected a group of writers willing to write to prompts. Everyone contributes prompts, somewhere between 1 and 5 for some fixed period of writing to be agreed upon in advance, six months maybe?

Use an open google doc to organize all the promptsprompts, and have a rotating moderator, maybe like in the game Apples-to-Apples.

We could still have polls for favorite stories, but low votes,instead of elimination, could have mandatory concrit from other members, specific to that one piece.

Thoughts? Feedback? Suggestions?

I know thattherealljidol will not last forever, and I would love to find or found a group to keep writing and reading with.

Good discussion in The Green Room for this week that's prompted this idea.

Comments

[tjoel2]

I think that's a great idea!~

[labelleizzy.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I'll be sure to publicize this once I/we get started.

[ashmedai.livejournal.com]

That sounds like a great idea. I couldn't participate, though, because my automatic reaction to any sort of deadline is the writer's block from hell.

[labelleizzy.livejournal.com]

Well, if you'd like, you could participate on topics that you were stimulated by, and not on ones you didn't fancy.

Part time participants would be welcome, AFAIAC.

[ashmedai.livejournal.com]

That does sound interesting...

[temperance14.livejournal.com]

I agree with Ashmedai...and same stipulations, unfortunately.

[labelleizzy.livejournal.com]

Knowing your own habits and triggers is A Good Thing.

Same caveat as for Ashmedai then: you could pick up topics that please you. Participate part time.

[jem0000000.livejournal.com]

A lot of people use writerverse, IMO. There's also worldofscribble, which was similar in concept to what you're suggesting (minus the mandatory concrit bit, I think, although it was generally not difficult to get feedback), was formed after Season Eight, and is now more or less abandoned. And brigits_flame works on a rotating basis and focuses on building short-fiction writing abilities; as part of that, they organize concrit on submitted pieces.

So while I agree with the idea that this is a pretty cool thing that would be nice to do, I guess my question is, how is it different from the writing communities that LJ already offers?

[labelleizzy.livejournal.com]

I don't suppose it IS that different of an idea. Just that I wasn't familiar with those communities. it's been easier, in my experience, though, to bring fresh energy to something new instead of trying to revitalize something that's dormant or defunct.

I have nothing against those communities, but I don't have any social capital there wither. So if I want a thing to happen, maybe I got to try to build it.

[jem0000000.livejournal.com]

AFAIK, both writerverse and brigits_flame are going strong, and while I think both of them are based around a round/phase/season-like concept, I'm reasonably sure that they take new members. The "more or less abandoned" was in reference to worldofscribble, which is on "pause", but one of the mods has taken something of a hiatus from LJ recently, so I don't know if/when it's going to be "unpaused".

[labelleizzy.livejournal.com]

OK. Worth an investigation then. Thanks for the lead!

[jem0000000.livejournal.com]

You're welcome! Poke me if you need more, I went through a phase where I was sort of collecting writing comms, and I can flip through my bookmarks and see what else is active.

Though I certainly hope you'll be waiting a bit -- I would hate to lose you from LJI, particularly in the last season.

[jlly-coppercorn.livejournal.com]

I'm one of the maintainers of Brigit's Flame. I was alerted to your post when one of your commentors used our livejournal tag. As a writing community on livejournal we were going strong for years and then as members started finding other social sites easier to deal with the involvement scaled back.

A group of us recently took over for the original team who had become burnt out and discouraged by the membership decline. We have some exciting new ideas to keep people writing, reading, and involved with the community. I would love to see your group who wants to write join ours that wants to grow again.

I'd like to invite you to check out our current structure and make sure it is something you would want to be a part of. We would love to have you.

We have been on livejournal since 2008 as Brigit's Flame http://brigits-flame.livejournal.com/ and we recently (just in the last month) added a facebook page https://www.facebook.com/BrigitsFlame and we have a twitter account for promoting and reminders @flamestorming (occasionally we try to do little 140 character stories/poems, but the readership levels are still low on twitter). We have a website that a member built for us back in 2009, but I'm still working on how to make it an active place for members to use - http://brigitsflame.com/. The code is not mobile compatible and I need to move it to a different server that is compatible with something like Wordpress. It is a great archive of stories though. I love that.

Previously our membership was limited to livejournal users only, but when we expanded to facebook we opened up to the possibility that people might join us from their blogs on other sites and we welcome that. We've even switched the community to voting polls from lj polls to a 3rd party site where data can be collected from many types of users.

We have 5 moderators and we post daily chatters to encourage people in the community to talk to each other and have fun together. We write weekly prompts for a month long contest. We do mini contests for the 5th week of the month if there is one. We also have volunteer peer editors for concrit and two experienced editors for technical edits who also volunteer.

Check us out and share the invite with your group. We really would love to have you join our community. You could be a part of our rejuvenation period that we are referring to as Brigit's Flame: The Next Generation.

I liked your Google Docs idea, though I'd have trouble selling it to some of our older members.

[labelleizzy.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the invitation! I appreciate your stopping by.

Any writing group of mine is so far just an intellectual exercise. We'll have to see what develops.