WIP challenge - totally apologetic & late final check-in/feedback post

[littlebutfierce]

This is me hanging my head for doing such a crap job modding the challenge in December. I'm really sorry, folks! Should there be a challenge next December I will remember that I have to have at least one co-mod, otherwise I'm likely to fail again. >_<

How did the challenge go for participants, anyway?

I also thought this would be a good time to ask for feedback in general on the challenge. Has it helped? Not done much? Any suggestions on how to improve it?

(As for me, I completed my goals for the month, & then some -- 1 yuletide fic, as well as two Treats, & my windupandpitch one. Though it was with much less communal interaction w/my buddy group -- I know we were all busy but of course I blame myself the most for failing to check in w/them. ;_; )

Comments

[hl]

I did not meet my goals -- I finished my yule fic, but not the 10000 words minimum draft for apocabigbang. :/

Overall, I think the challenge helped (I wrote some, and most of that was due to the challenge) and it would've helped more if the month wouldn't have been a crappy month to write all around (too little alone time, too much family around...). More contact would help at any other month (and I would be able to be more in contact myself) -- December, as I said, was just a crappy month to attempt it for me personally.

[littlebutfierce]

Yeah, I think it was a crappy month for lots of people, definitely me included, which just made it not effective at all. :/

I'm sorry you didn't finish the big bang draft!

[hl]

It's not a real problem, though, I didn't miss the deadline (yet). It would've been nice to have it done already though. :P

[dbskyler]

It was a huge fail for me this time -- I didn't even come close to meeting my goal of 1,000 words.

I thought the November challenge was helpful, but the December one was not. It's possible that the difference was my own inability to push myself two months in a row. It's also possible that the difference was December busyness. I wasn't particularly busy myself, but the general dropoff of activity in the comm was a factor for me, I think.

The biggest improvement would be more support, either from buddy group members or from "the comm" in general. Truthfully, I think the buddy groups have had minimal success -- neither time did I end up in regular contact with every member of my group. Maybe it would be better without buddy groups next time? I think individual members have been of help, but "the buddy group" has not. I don't know; what does everyone else think?

I would love to see more organized writing sprints, hopefully with a better mix of time zones (there has not been a single writing sprint so far that I could do). I would love to see more comm stuff in general.

I think it might also help if we just got to know each other better in the comm. I'm not sure of the best way to accomplish that other than to say that more interaction would be good. The "how's it going?" "it's going like this" posts haven't been too successful; the conversation tends to end too quickly.

The best situation would be if I could feel part of a committed group of people who are all trying to write, and who would care if I met my goal or not. I definitely didn't feel that at all this past month.

[littlebutfierce]

It's possible that the difference was my own inability to push myself two months in a row.

Yeah, I wonder this about myself, too, although I did have a stressful/busy December, too.

I think it's difficult to guarantee that everyone who signs up for the challenge will be able & willing to participate at all, or at any level -- which is understandable (I mean, offline life happens to folks, etc.) but I agree, it makes it difficult. Sometimes I felt like I was being a nag in trying to get contact from folks. Perhaps we could give it a shot in February w/o buddy groups -- which would make it easier to organize, too.

Anyone can organize a writing sprint, so perhaps you could try suggesting one in your time zone?

& yeah, I agree that it would help if the comm was more interactive; I think some of it is the difficulty of starting any new space (I have seen this concern in a lot of comms on DW -- some of it's inevitable, I think). I'm sort of out of ideas for how to generate more involvement -- I kind of feel like I'm nagging people w/limited results, heh. I don't know if that's b/c people want to be involved but don't have the time, or don't know how, or I have mistakenly given the impression that everything has to come from a mod?

[eggcrack]

I met my goal of Yuletide-fic! Which I think was the second goal I made, but yes, making it to one goal is progress! \o/

It may not show from my progress much, but I've honestly found this community helpful. Even if I haven't completed a lot of stuff I have nevertheless been writing a lot, which has been good because it's so easy for me to fall back into doing nothing.

Keeping up with my buddy group has been hard for me, so I think it would be good if there was more community-wide action in the future, because I think the problem with the buddy groups is that you may end up a little isolated in them. Comm posts would allow more bonding between the comm members, and maybe it's easier to catch up with everyone on a community post than through private PMs.

[littlebutfierce]

Yay for one goal, indeed!

Thanks for the feedback -- I think maybe we should try the challenge in February w/o specific buddy groups. It's difficult when not everyone in the buddy group has the same time or inclination for contact (& I know that things happen sometimes to limit participation -- I mean, it happened to me in December!). People could always do PMs & e-mails in addition to commenting on posts, here, too (just in case folks don't always feel like saying things out loud for the whole internet to see, ha).

[curuchamion]

Personally, I like the arrangement on LJ's picowrimo (I haven't yet figured out linking LJ comms from Dth) where somebody makes a daily post every day and participants just say how they've done that day, leave snippets and so forth. It's not always even the same person making the daily posts, but having them showing up on the flist every day is a good motivator (at least for me). And it's simple, and you get more variety of feedback... you know how some people say "good job, I'd like to read more of this" and some leave a whole mini-essay, and some say nothing? I tend to find buddy groups too small to get a sense of whether my snippets are any good.

Me, I wasn't around much in December anyway - agh, finals - and I was pretty shy about taking the lead in anything because it was my first time and I hadn't leisure to read the back posts. I'd be up for another challenge in February, though.

(This comment is being left at oh-dark-thirty in the morning, so I apologize for any incoherence or abruptness.)

[littlebutfierce]

I think daily posts would be awesome -- moreso if it's not just me responsible for making them, b/c then I know I would fail, ahahaha. I don't know if it could work like on fic_promptly, where there are weekly hosts, who could then do the daily posts, or... just the first person who wants to post makes the post each day? (That could fail, though, if no one wants to do it, ha) What do you think?

*waves hands* Don't be scared! I'm totally making up how to do all this comm stuff as I go along, & there are undoubtedly lots of other things I could be doing, or doing better, so... I would love to see other people trying things too. :)

I think I ought to make another post asking for feedback in general & suggestions for what this comm could do -- we had one ages ago, but that was when the comm was a lot smaller & there might be more ideas now. I don't think I have the brain to make the post now, but I'd like to hear more thoughts along these lines from folks.