February Prompts and A Response
First, February prompts will go up either late today or first thing Saturday morning. I’m working on my last piece for work, and it’s very detailed and technical.
Second, I wanted to respond to a comment from Gautami, who has been lovely about “advertising” CafeWriting.
Gautami Tripathy wrote:
This site offers good prompts. However, it needs to be advertised. I have done all I can by linking it with my blog in various posts.. Somehow the interaction is not as it should be. I think, Mr Linky might work and placing deadlines for each prompt should do the trick too. Make it a weekly futute. Say for, tuesday. As for as I can see we don’t have any postings for tuesdays as Writers Island changed over to friday postings. Saturdays too can be considered. That way, we get to do a prompt for each day of the week.
I like this site, its originality. We need to interact more to spread the word.
While these suggestions are good, there are reasons why I haven’t installed Mr. Linky, and why the prompts are monthly. First, Mr. Linky allows autolinks, yes, but it doesn’t have the robustness required for multiple prompts per post. Meaning, as far as I can tell, you can’t have more than one instance of Mr. Linky on a specific post.
Why not, then, make this a weekly project? There are a few reasons. One is that the structure of this site is drawn from the long-defunct Alchera Project. The monthly project, with choices and options, was one of the features of that site that I most liked. With a month to work on any prompts one chooses, there is little pressure.
Another reason is that there are already weekly memes and writing prompts. If there’s a specific day of the week you’re not already writing, feel free to pick that day for your own submissions. I don’t like rules, and I don’t like huge amounts of structure. I also recognize that we all interpret prompts differently, and that while some of us write quickly, others do not. A month seems to be enough time for the people who like to consider before writing, and not so much that momentum is lost. While there are a few rules here, they are really guidelines, not hard and fast rules. One of the things I loved about Alchera and tried to carry through here, is that you don’t have to write poetry on the third Tuesday if you’d rather write fiction. I wouldn’t want to have to choose which prompts are “available” each week, and I don’t want to impose that choice on any of you.
As to advertising, part of the experiment with this site was to invite a few friends and blog-buddies, and see what happened. I have no need for this site to have hundreds of distinct participants. I think for a site that is only in it’s fifth month we’re doing fine. Yes, I appreciate those of you who are plugging the site with more than just a link-back in your responses, and yes I agree we need more interaction, but I don’t want to force it. I think, in time, it will come.
I want to take a moment to thank all of you who responded to my post about the possibility of a forum. I haven’t decided if I will implement that feature or not - I think we might revisit it in another couple of months.
Gautami - and everyone - please don’t think I don’t appreciate your feedback. I do. Even if I don’t act on it, I do listen, and let it simmer in my brain.
February 1st, 2008 at 12:37 pm
Well, for what it’s worth, I like the monthly format: I like having more time to think about the prompts. Plus, I really enjoy the diversity of prompts here and I don’t think you could offer that in a weekly format.
You’re right about the free version of Mr. Linky not being able to support multiple prompts. (There are additional features available for $$– I don’t know if this feature is one of them.) But with the monthly format, a delay of a couple days in posting people’s links is not as critical as it would be on a weekly site, so I don’t think the instant-response aspect of Linky is necessary.
One suggestion I would make would be for a graphical button that people could display in their sidebars and/or on Cafe Writing posts. I’m using the picture at the left end of the title bar, but at the size I had to squeeze it down to, it doesn’t look like very good.
As far as increasing interaction: what would you think of saving up the responses and posting them all at once at the end of the month? The downside would be that people who responded early in the month wouldn’t get any hits until weeks later, but the upside would be that we could all go to the site and read all the responses at once. It would have more the feel of a monthly newsletter, rather than a site that we have to check every day to see if there’s a new response. (I know, there’s RSS. I haven’t bothered.) People who wanted to read responses earlier in the month could always get them via the comments.
February 1st, 2008 at 2:50 pm
I am only new here and did not realise just how new this site is as well! I too adore the variety of the prompts but agree how difficult it is to keep checking if there is a new posting.
For what my comment is worth, I would rather keep the format that already exists, giving it time for people to adjust and develop their own routine in response.
For example, my first posting here drew quite a number of responses, but I am presuming people did not realise I had added more.
So, my suggestion, in short is plugaway with what we have for a little longer, then we can see more easily if and what change is necessary.
Love the efforts here! Keep writing!
Smiles and Light
February 3rd, 2008 at 7:50 pm
I like the monthly format myself as it gives me the entire month to work on anything I want and not pressured by a deadline (as if we have enough of those already in life!).
And I’d like to also inquire if there’s a way to put everyone’s posts together so that we don’t have to check this site every day. If there is, then it’d be awesome–like a digest version!
February 5th, 2008 at 7:13 pm
Hi,
I’m new to your site and I love your vision and limited structure. I come from a forum background and I sorely miss interacting with peers in a central location. I’m looking forward to seeing how this community evolves.
February 6th, 2008 at 10:50 am
Melissa, you asked for suggestions. I said what I thought. It is on you to accept it or reject it. As you run this forum, I suppose you know what you are doing.
As I mentioned before, I like the the prompts. I write the ones I like most. I even visit others entries. However, interaction is almost non-existent. Let’s see if it goes up in future.