Sunday, December 31, 2006
How to Participate
A few months ago, my friend and I thought it would be interesting to post a different word each week. The word would be something broad, but not cliched: something like difference, or indiscretion, or smoke (all of which have been past prompts). Then, bloggers-turned-writers would post personal anecdotes inspired by the prompt, incorporating the word somehow. At the end of the week, all the participants could read each other’s recollections. We figured, isn’t that the point of blogs? To write about ourselves and somehow make a connection?
So that’s what we’ve done. Each Monday (usually in the morning), we post a new prompt word. After that, you get to writing. There are only a few simple guidelines that we came up with, in the spirit of keeping everything cohesive and purposeful:
1. Unless you’re going to open yourself up, don’t bother. It defeats the entire purpose of it, if you’re going to make shit up, or pretend that something is what it isn’t. You don’t need to give super specific details, or anything like that. But, you have to give something of yourself into this.
2. Think about the topic seriously. If it’s a funny topic, that’s fine. if it’s not, take it seriously, and really think about an interesting, deep, wonderful, painful, glorious, infamous, whatever story. Don’t simply read the topic, and decide right then and there what to write about. You’ve got a week. Use as much time as you need.
3. Post a link in your entry to this site, so that your readers can find out how they can also participate.
4. Comment at this site with a link to the post so that we can keep track of them. This way, people can see what everyone writes about. At the end of the week, we’ll post them all in one entry on both sites, and let people take that post, and make it for themselves. It’s a collaborative writing project.
[taken from the original welcome post.]
