Would anyone be interested in a DL writing group?

[Cotigo]

Commentary on Excal's story up. Commentary on Andy's expected to be up after work tonight. C'mon people get discussing.

[AndrewRogue]

Yosh. We are past deadline folks.

Given this is the first week and I know some people were busy I'm willing to extend a bit of credit and push everything back one more week, but we really need people in and doing stuff if this is going to work!

That, or we need to cull people early.

[VySaika]

All my creative energy has been caught up in GM prep lately(huuuuuuuge complicated arc coming up in the game I run for Jenna), between that and sick I kinda forgot this was a thing. @_@ Will be happy to give feedback on this cycle of stuff, but I'm going to miss this round for submission.

On the plus side, I do have like 8 custom monsters and two new prestige classes done! Buuuuut those aren't exactly things I can submit to this(unless people want to see them anyway or something).

[Cotigo]

I frankly see nothing wrong with submitting that sort of stuff? It's still writing, our focus on giving feedback is just gonna be a bit different than submitting a story.

[Lady Door]

Really not happy with anything I've written lately. It's all flat.

Ended up unexpectedly without computer internets which made it impossible to submit feedback. Just posted the feedback I'd written previously. Stupid vacations.

May or may not post a story and I'm willing to relieve myself of participating in the story submission part because fail. I'll still participate in the reviews!

(Also, gate, your membership is approved so you can post now.)

[AndrewRogue]

Hokay. So, been a little slow on this, but here is the deal. Due to a few failures (and anticipated failures) for the remainder of round 1, I'm just going to call a mulligan on this whole thing and we'll launch again in the new year.

That said, gloves do have to come off after the mulligan. Writing groups need consistent participation to function. I know stuff'll happen sometimes and, if you can just let us know a bit in advance, that's cool. But we really can't have due dates arrive and see absolutely nothing to show. Both parts of a writing group (putting your work out there and commenting) are super critical. So, we'll offer some leeway if you can provide advanced notice and just shift your individual dates a bit, but implement an unquestioning 3-strikes for a straight failure to deliver.

Does that work for everyone? And if it does, how is January for people? Did 2 per two weeks work? More better? Less better?

[Ranmilia]

wordswordswords

January works, maybe, probably, hopefully?  But there is a lot of stick there and not much carrot and that saps my motivation from "ok, let's try and have something for this" to "maaaybe I should just quietly drop out now and not even try, there's no way I can keep up with these expectations..."

For me, the long spacings and times actually hurt, I want the involvement and activity to keep up.  The first attempt had - by my mental standards - a really long delay from startup to action.  Topic went up late September, interest came in pretty fast, but then it was mid-October before things were finalized, and then the first dates were set at the end of October into November.  That's several weeks from people posting interest to actually doing anything, and in the intervening time life stuff came up, depressive phases started and entered full swing, etc.  It's easy for people to lose interest in that amount of time, and kind of harsh to go from cooling heels for multiple weeks on setup to a sudden schedule of activity expected every week with penalties for missing. 

In my case in particular, I was talking with Andrew about scheduling one night, and we made a rough schedule that had me in the first group with about a week to write something.  That got me excited and planning... until the next day, when I woke up and saw that Ashley had posted a schedule here that had me in the last group to submit, and I talked to Andy again and we decided to go with that one since it was posted here.  So my brain went "oh, now I don't actually have to get writing for another month, huh..." annnnnd other stuff came up as per above.  Now, that was just miscommunication, it happens, no big deal by itself.  But it highlighted the large amounts of startup downtime, especially for people in later groups. 

So my long rambling point here is that we're doing it again, it's December 10 and we're already talking about doing nothing for the rest of this entire month, but then reemphasizing the need for activity in January!!! - except for whoever's in the last group and doesn't have to write anything until probably February... 

So I guess for me, more activity would be better?  (Or maybe I'm just being a huge jerk and should sit out?  That is also possible)

[Cotigo]

I'm on vacation until January 9th. After that is fine.

[Lady Door]

I'm fine with shortening the sub/review period to weekly. I believe in Parkinson's law -- that a task will swell to fill the time allotted to it, no matter the task -- so it makes sense to keep it fast paced.

I put you at the end, Alex, because Andy mentioned you might need time to work through some things.

If everybody's up to the pressure of quick deadlines, let's go for it. We can start whenever. I wanted to be accommodating to everyone's individual situations but obviously that leads to inaction.

[Cotigo]

So we all just gave up on this right?

[AndrewRogue]

Sorry, been preoccupied and not actually checking the forums. But yes, at the moment, it is dead in the water.

I'd still like to give it a shot if people are still interested.