Crowdfunding Creative Jam

[ysabetwordsmith]

Welcome to the second Crowdfunding Creative Jam! This session will run Sunday, November 20-Monday, November 21. The theme is "Inner Worlds." (See also the corresponding post on LiveJournal.)

Everyone is eligible to post prompts, which may be words or phrases, titles, images, etc. Prompters may request a specific creator, but everyone else may still use that prompt if they wish. Prompts may specify a particular character/world/etc. but creators may use the prompt for something else anyway and post the results. Prompters are still encouraged to post mostly prompts that anyone could use anywhere, as this maximizes the chance of having creators make something based on your prompt. Please title your comment "Prompt" or "Prompts" when providing inspiration so these are easy to find.

Prompt responses may also be treated as prompts and used for further inspiration. For example, a prompt may lead to a sketch which leads to a story, and so on. This kind of cascading inspiration is one of the most fun things about a collective jam session.

Everyone is eligible to use prompts, and everyone who wants to use a given prompt may do so, for maximum flexibility of creator choice in inspiration. You do not have to post a "Claim" reply when you decide to use a prompt, but this does help indicate what is going on so that other prompters can spread out their choice of prompts if they wish.

Creators are encouraged, but not required, to post at least one item free. Likewise, sharing a private copy of material with the prompter is encouraged but not required. Creative material resulting from prompts should be indicated in a reply to the prompt, with a link to the full content elsewhere on the creator's site (if desired); a brief excerpt and/or description of the material may be included in the reply (if desired). It helps to title your comment "Prompt Filled" or something like that so these are easy to identify. There is no time limit on responding to prompts. However, creators are encouraged to post replies sooner rather than later, as the attention of prompters will be highest during and shortly after the session.

Some items created from prompts may become available for sponsorship. Some creators may offer perks for donations, linkbacks, or other activity relating to this project. Check creator comments and links for their respective offerings.

Prompters, creators, and bystanders are expected to behave in a responsible and civil manner. If the moderators have to drag someone out of the sandbox for improper behavior, we will not be amused. Please respect other people's territory and intellectual property rights, and only play with someone else's characters/setting/etc. if you have permission. If you want to invite folks to play with something of yours, title the comment something like "Open Playground" so it's easy to spot. This can be a good way to attract new people to a shared world or open-source project, or just have some good non-canon fun.

Boost the signal! The more people who participate, the more fun this will be. Hopefully we'll see activity from a lot of folks who regularly mention their projects in this community, but new people are always welcome. You can link to this session post or to individual items created from prompts, whatever you think is awesome enough to recommend to your friends.

Comments

Open Playground: "Schrodinger's Heroes"

[From: ysabetwordsmith]

Everyone is welcome to play with Schrodinger's Heroes. This is an imaginary fandom for an apocryphal television show. A team of heroes practice quantum physics and other hijinks to protect Earth against invaders from other dimensions. The team is racially, sexually, and culturally diverse. Because the subject naturally deals with alternate realities, it lends itself well to crossovers and alternate-universe interpretations; you can use my version or make up your own.

The background material and some sample stories, poems, and scripts are linked from the menu post. If you do play with this, I'd love to know; I'll link to other people's contributions if I know where they are.

Prompts

[From: ysabetwordsmith]

Image Prompts:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/25/Colpoda400xm2.jpg/230px-Colpoda400xm2.jpg
http://www.microscopyu.com/smallworld/gallery/contests/2011/index.html
http://www.foreverwarm.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/computer-insides.jpg

Title Prompts:
"thOUGHT"
"Asexually Yours"
"Introversions and Explications"

Text Prompts:
intertubes
a symbiote growing inside a sentient host
the Earth is hollow

Prompts

[From: lynn_einin]

Text
Living in two worlds (simultaneously)
A girl who migrates with the seasons.
A hollow acorn, or is it?
Butterflykin

Quote
"Two butterflies went out at noon" by Emily Dickinson

Title/Quote
The Winter of Our Discontent
The Soul Wears Out the Breast
The Soft Mist of My Regret

(N.B. All titles are quotes from respectively Shakespeare's Richard III, Byron's "So, we'll go no more a-roving" and Robert Frost's My Butterfly, so they're quote prompts as much as they are title prompts.)

Hope these provide some fun ideas for people! ^-^

Re: Prompts

[From: ysabetwordsmith]

From your first prompt I got the poem "Whose Body Encircles the Multiverse," posted as today's freebie:
http://ysabetwordsmith.dreamwidth.org/2055599.html

[From: jjhunter]

SONG PROMPT: (improvised joy)
Hallelujah Rising

FRAGMENT PROMPTS:

• house, home
• 17 pocket-sized journals and counting
• the curious incident of the dragon in the library
• critical distance
• heartclasp and naked eyes
• next thing you know I’ll be wearing tweed
• O monsters all run away
• girl deserves a break now and then

IMAGE PROMPT:

Prompt Filled

[From: ysabetwordsmith]

I misread "Fragment Prompts" as "Fragrant Prompts," which led to a poem titled in the latter interpretation. It is written in tercets and evokes the inner world of memory through the imagery of scent and the language of flowers.

21 lines, Buy It Now = $10

Claim

[From: ysabetwordsmith]

I need to break for lunch, but I'm claiming "the curious incident of the dragon in the library" and have notes for a poem.

Prompt Filled

[From: ysabetwordsmith]

I turned a prompt into a title with "The Curious Incident of the Dragon in the Library." This is a free-verse poem belonging to my Steamsmith series. Maryam the Steamsmith is called to the Guildhall Library to deal with what turns out NOT to be a simple furnace leak after all. Note: I've used a British English spellchecker online, but this hasn't been properly britpicked yet so there may be changes.

126 lines, Buy It Now = $63

Prompt Filled

[From: lynn_einin]

I wrote a poem (possibly not a good one, my apologies) based on one of your prompts. ^-^

Seventeen Pocket-sized Journals and Counting is a poem that deals with what lies between the covers of those journals, death and rebirth, and self-discovery. It's available in full and for free, and with a chance to have some more influence on it as I'm also planning to go through the revision process publicly on my journal. (I hope that'll be fun anyway.)

(I'm also hoping I can get a clearer idea for some of the other prompts, but have had no luck with that so far, so I don't want to claim them and learn I've made a promise I can't keep. Plus, I'd like to present something as polished as I can make it for them and that'll just take me longer too.)

Anyway,I hope you'll enjoy it and I'm sorry for waffling at you!

Re: Prompt Filled

[From: jjhunter]

Wonderful! I've left feedback at your post.

Re: Prompt Filled

[From: lynn_einin]

Thank you! And I've just finished writing up the commentary to poking at it so now you have two poems/drafts (and even more rambling) for the price of one! ^-^ It'll be three or four drafts to get it to what's my current best poetic ability, I think, to give you a heads-up there.

Re: Prompt Filled

[From: jjhunter]

I look forward to reading this and future drafts.

Re: Prompt Filled

[From: lynn_einin]

I hope you'll enjoy it whenever you get around to it! ^-^ (No rush on that, though, of course. ^-^)

[From: wrenstarling]

Before too much time passes, I want to let you know that I'm working on a story inspired by "heartclasp". Thanks!

[From: jjhunter]

Neat! I look forward to reading it. :o)

[From: wrenstarling]

And it's now posted to my shiny new Tumblr art blog! Let me know what you think; I'm dusting off my fiction skills right now. :)

Wow!

[From: ysabetwordsmith]

This is an awesome story. Thank you so much for sharing. I love the clasp imagery.

Re: Wow!

[From: wrenstarling]

Thank you! I particularly appreciate that coming from you! :)

[From: jjhunter]

Lovely. I like the idea of 'heartclasp' being such a physical metaphor, if that makes any sense. It took me a moment (and reading further in the text) to realize that the 1 inch taken at the beginning must have come closer to the middle of the heart rather than the end.

Thank you for sharing -- I quite enjoyed it, and you surprised in a wonderful way when you took the prompt in directions I hadn't consider.)

[From: wrenstarling]

Thanks! I'm not sure I understand you there; the first one was the first one; I started at the top and went down. Thus the frayed (by the event) edges.

[From: jjhunter]

Oh, oh. That makes sense. *sheepish*

[From: wrenstarling]

Don't feel bad. Happens to everyone sometimes. :) I'm just glad you liked it; I'm literally in the middle of a personal renaissance and that's the first short fiction I've written in something like a decade!

[From: lynn_einin]

Oh! That is a beautiful story. Very evocative and emotional (in a good way, of course). And it's a wonderful place to take that prompt word. <3

Thank you for sharing! ^-^

[From: wrenstarling]

Thank you so much! I'm glad you enjoyed it. :)

Prompt claimed

[From: lynn_einin]

Now that things have calmed down a little and I'm happier with the first poem, I decided to poke at your fragment prompts again to see if anything bit since some of them keep on niggling at me.

"the curious incident of the dragon in the library" decided to bite. It's about a dragonkin literature student who comes across a dangerous magical book that really shouldn't have been in the mundane library (or anywhere) whilst looking for something one of her tutors recommended to her.

It's going to need at least one more complete rewrite before I'll be happy to share it with people, so I can't give you an estimate on when it'll get posted and shared. It stands at a little under 3,100 words right now and will likely be in the 3,5-4K park once it's all revised and polished. But I wanted to let you know it existed and offer you a sneakpeek at any of the draft(s) if you wanted that. ^-^ My first drafts are always fairly messy, though, you're warned.

Re: Prompt claimed

[From: jjhunter]

Oo...that sounds very cool. This upcoming week is a busy one for me; I'll store away my anticipation of this upcoming treat as one more fire to keep me going.

Re: Prompt claimed

[From: lynn_einin]

I'd be honoured! I'll try to poke at it some more before the week is over, but I might need a bit more time between drafts. Not sure. Depends on how hard it is to address the things I want to work on.

(And good luck with the busy-ness of the week!)

Re: Prompt claimed

[From: lynn_einin]

And the public version of the story is up! You can find it here. ^-^ (I renamed it, yes. I'm still not sold on the title, but ah well.)

There's absolutely no rush in reading it/pressure to read it, but I hope you'll enjoy it as much as you did the sneakpeek! I had a blast writing and reworking this despite the difficulties it gave me at times.

Thank you for inspiring such a wonderful story!

Re: Prompt claimed

[From: jjhunter]

p.s. have I mentioned poetree to you yet? We're always looking for more weekly hosts...

Re: Prompt claimed

[From: lynn_einin]

No, you haven't! It sounds fun, though. ^-^ If also scary to do, but that's partially just because I've always been more of a background person.

Re: Prompt claimed

[From: jjhunter]

S'meant to be a low key kind of thing, and whatever you might choose to share can be others', yours, or some mix thereof. The requirement is simply three poems.

If you did decide to go for it & chose to also write a meta post, something I'd be interested in reading about (if you'd be interested in writing about it, anyway) would be the process of revision -- I'm struck by the care with which you revise and the sense that multiple revisions are an important part of your poem writing process. It's a style very different from my own, and one I'm interesting in trying on.

Re: Prompt claimed

[From: lynn_einin]

And there's no having to commit to any which three poems or to a meta post beforehand? Because the meta post is the thing I'd be dreading the most. ^-^; I hate promising to do something only to find that I can't deliver.

*blushes and scuffs feet* To be honest, I'm not the best or most diligent revisionist in the world. I know that I have some older works where I knew there were problems even after I wrote them, but I didn't have the skill or the knowledge to fix what was wrong and so I never did. I could certainly try to write meta post on revision, but it might end up exploratory as I'm not consciously familiar with the style either. (I hope that makes sense.) Usually I edit as I go, but I've had the idea to try and discuss the process for a while now and when your prompt resulted in a poem, I just thought it'd be the perfect piece to try that out with. I'd like to revise the poem at least once more, though, before I start composing a meta piece like that. I should at least have one finished documented revision case to talk about.

I'm curious how your style works, though. ^-^

Re: Prompt claimed

[From: jjhunter]

Yes--no need to commit to which three poems, and doing a meta post (or just posing a question to the auidence) is entirely optional. People usually do a brief 'yo, I'm so-and-so, and I'm the poetry host this week' intro post as well.

Any interest to giving it a try this week? Anything you post would be better than nothing; it's such a busy time of year that just about everyone left on the volunteer list for hosting is saying they won't be available to do so until mid-December. *gently tears her hair out in frustration*

If not, but you are interested in doing it at some point, just comment on the signup post & I'll be in touch when your turn comes up to see if that particular week works for you.

Re: Prompt claimed

[From: lynn_einin]

Sure! I'm not particularly busy this week (or, er, in the coming few, actually) and it sounds like fun. Expect some stumbling as I try and find my feet, though. ^-^ I could do an intro post (later) today, and then spread the poems out over the rest of the week. Tues-Thurs-Sat. Sound good? I'll try and make sure there aren't any doubles with poetry others have posted.

(Please be careful with your hair. Pulling it out hurts...)

Re: Prompt claimed

[From: jjhunter]

YAY!

Thank you so, so much--I really appreciate it. Your posting schedule sounds just fine. There's more info at the signup post re: guidelines, but I suspect just browsing through previous posts will be sufficient to give you an idea of how it tends to go.

I really look forward to reading what you choose to share, and hope this proves a fun experience. :oD

Re: Prompt claimed

[From: lynn_einin]

You're quite welcome! I'm excited about it (when I'm not busy being scared ^-~)! You may have to help out a bit with the tags, though. ^-^; I'm hopeless with them. Organisation is... not my strong point.

Re: Prompt claimed

[From: ysabetwordsmith]

The volunteer work is flexible. Minimum is just posting 3 poems during the week, and they don't even have to be your own, although they can be and often are the host's poems. Writing a meta post is encouraged but not required. I did a whole bunch of them during my week, because I LOVE talking about poetry. Most hosts have just done one or two, talking about what poetry means to them or how they write it, etc.

As far as I'm concerned, I think your post about revising your poem is spot-on and could be copied over as an introduction to that poem. But you could also talk about your revision process in more general terms as a meta post -- you've clearly put a lot of thought into how it works.

Re: Prompt claimed

[From: lynn_einin]

That'd be a really long introduction, though. ^-~

you've clearly put a lot of thought into how it works.

I try to. I've found that, certainly for me, the best way to fix something is to figure out why things are broken (or not). It's actually really helpful to write it down and force the words into more than just a feeling. ^-^

As I was telling jjhunter I'd certainly be willing to work on a meta post about revising poetry, but since this way of editing is also pretty new to me I'd like to revise the poem at least once more before I start on a meta post. I know I've revised poetry before, but not like this and I haven't written poetry in a couple of years. It's a wholly new method to me too.

Prompt

[From: clare_dragonfly]

Turning inside out.