Community (or lack thereof)

[zesty_pinto]

I will not start a community. I will not start a community. I will not start a communi- Hey, stop it hand, stop going to that community section!

Sigh. After yet another comment on writing, I keep realizing these great potential ideas for communities. As much as I don't want to commit, I do think that maybe once I have more free time, I should.

I have two ideas running in my head so far:

-Writing: A theme-based short story monthly workshop. We throw in random prompt ideas and each month, you try to write a piece of quick fiction using those ideas one way or another. You keep it intensive like a class so that way you make sure someone does it and, if you can't, you post saying you can't for that month for one reason or another. Maybe whoever pulls the prompts is done in a round-robin style where everyone critiques it off a Google Doc and a summary comment if interested. I don't know whether it would make sense to make the posts private or public in that case.

Somehow I would be surprised if there wasn't a community like this on DW, but I think it would be good to have something more dedicated like that; only problem would be I would also consider making everyone admin and I'd need to make sure that whoever is in it will take it seriously and will also not take it so seriously that they become strict with style and not so much the effort. I know writing groups can go terribly wrong and that is part of the reason why I'm afraid to look at the ones people here have.

-Photography: A dedicated 365 a day share community. Crosspost the photos between each other, basically turn the community into a collage of work.

I don't see a lot of photog groups here that are active, so I think it would fulfill that need and a large enough group would encourage people to keep posting and taking photos even if it's mundane.

I'm tempted to also push the ideas of "buddies" to check on each other in case they seem to be having issues, just to encourage brainstorming by bouncing ideas off each other through chat sessions.

I know, this sounds more like a class than anything, and that's what I think my main goal for starting a community is; not so much to teach others as much as to get myself in the mindset of one.

I dunno, I think it would also depend on if there was anyone out there willing to basically join in something that they end up treating like a class. Thoughts?

Comments

[dooriya]

I'm super bummed there aren't many active photography communities on here - that was one of my favorite things in ~2004-6 era LJ. DW seems more fanfic/fandom centered, which is not my thing at all, but there are original artists out there!

[zesty_pinto]

Same here; one of my friends back in the LJ days usually ran monthly photo contests based on a random topic that we voted on. I'm not really big on the fandom stuff either (I like talking and speculating about series, but I don't like to go further than that), so I would love for there to be more things to be out there. One of the people I friended does run a poetry circle thing too, but I want an actual workshop for writing to tool out whether certain approaches work or not while encouraging people to keep pushing themselves, maybe keep things competitive in a friendly way.

Photography I'm not as pushy on, but it would be nice just to look through your friend feed and see a whole mess of content from other shooters, you know? Just seeing that is inspiring for me.

[dooriya]

Oh yeah, i got so much inspiration from fellow LJers. so, so much. sometimes i'd even load up one of those sites that pulled the most recently posted public pictures from LJ and scroll thru them until something struck me. i remember so clearly one of a foot on a dashboard in focus from the outside of the car - it's owner busy making out heavy duty with someone, their bodies blurred on the seat. and another of a woman standing on the side of the road looking menacing. and so many others.

a workshop idea sounds like it could be fun. i haven't been in a poetry class in 9 years, but that one semester put me in such a permanent dream-like mindset that i've been trying to recapture since. it was intense - lots of reading, analyzing, writing, workshopping, but we all did it despite being all working adults.

[zesty_pinto]

Oh man, me too on the workshops. One of my favorite times in Boston was taking workshop courses at this one group called Grubstreet. It got me into figuring out how to write scripts and I enjoyed pushing myself to keep providing content every week and get some feedback along the way; even if people didn't get it, I know that it was at least exposing myself to other people's work as well to see what works versus what doesn't. Most of the time, I used the classes to experiment styles to see if I could get away with making something successfully while following certain set rules.

[iwouldbegood]

Reading this before work while sipping on my morning coffee, in a hurry but soooo looking forward to hopefully grabbing a few quiet moments at work to reply. Just skimming through the entry got me excited :D Especially the Project 365 idea!

Also I love how active you are! Three new entries to read yay :) Plus pics!

*bounces off to work happily*

[zesty_pinto]

Aw thanks, I really would like to do something like these things; before I met Michelle, writing, photos, and music were the big time sinks in my life, so I would like to at least find something I can force myself to work into and experiment with.

I don't know if I can do both though, though I do think the requirements I would put for both would be pretty lax (the photo one I would honestly just say post whatever and let the momentum run via whatever you can share, while the workshop would be one item a month of so many words). Just need to find the people to also start it moving, trickling though it may be.

[jesse_dylan]

Sounds great to me! I hope that communities, any communities, start getting going now that there has been such an influx of people.

I should join a writing community, but then I'd actually be writing, and that is scary... because then I'd have to deal again with the fact that I was desperate to make a living as a writer when I was a kid and never managed to accomplish it.

[zesty_pinto]

I can understand that; I thought I would push myself into writing during my teen days; hell, I even finished a manuscript while I was taking college classes. Then I realized that this was a compilation of writing from a not very polished level and I hated how poorly tooled the entire story was so ended up scrapping the whole thing.

I realized that for now, I'd just like to see if I can find a way to get myself more and more comfortable experimenting with written word and maybe getting some feedback on it, just so I can finally get used to making more polished work. I took some writer's workshop courses back in my Boston days and I honestly liked that it got me figuring out more about what works and what doesn't, and I think I can push out something that is more congruently entertaining to read, but I also need the impetus and feedback to make things seem more feasible.

I know I wouldn't likely make money from it either, just want to see if I can do it, you know?

[jesse_dylan]

No, I think that is really the best reason/way to do it!

[paynesgrey]

I'd say just make the communities if you feel strongly about them. I've made communities and some have flourished and some have died. But they were fun regardless. I think writing communities always do pretty well. I'd say to make DW more active it would benefit from more communities anyway. Good luck!

[zesty_pinto]

You're right. I should probably just do it and see how it goes. At the worst, I spend all the time talking to myself, which I technically do half the time here anyway, hah!