Despertar

creativity versus community

"Babies, Multicolored and Not So Much" 

And that is how I know, for sure, that creativity and community are not mutually exclusive.

*

My first thought was, I'm going to write about how all the non-writing-related stuff that goes on around here is dumb. Obviously there are exceptions, like hosting a raffle to raise funds to keep a portfolio in which to store your writing, or auctioning off port raids to encourage friends to review eaach another's writing. But by and large, there's a lot of stuff around here that passes for relevant and just plainly isn't.

I've seen surveys posted by authors looking for more focused critiques on specific, treasured pieces of writing on which they have toiled for months on and off the site, but I've also seen surveys like this one: "Two warm jellos and a pink toco"  [18+]. Not only is the titular taco spelled wrong (and I'll save you the trouble, it's a euphemism for vagina here, which, coupled with the misspelling, should tell you everything you need to know about the overall depth of this item), the survey itself neither (a) has anything to do with whatsoever nor (b) offers even the incidental opportunity for the person taking it to experience any type of growth. There isn't even an open-ended field for any type of actual writing to take place.

Um, so I'm hard-pressed to find where items like that one either display or engender creativity. The author does, however, profess the purpose of helping people get to know each other's sexual preferences better. So maybe Dughlas is right, maybe the two are mutually exclusive, in which case, in the epic battle between creativity and community, I would like to publicly lend my support to keeping Writing.com focused on the former, and saving the latter for places like Facebook.

*

But then I thought, be fair. Even the most narrowly focused communities have to be well-rounded to keep their members nourished. Otherwise, grocery stores at nudist colonies wouldn't sell any food, just sunblock and depilatory cream.

As irritating as I think it is to keep stumbling across portfolios whose contents consist of c-notes and paper dolls with the fewest possible words even in their captions, those anomalies aren't really worse than the (abundant) portfolios full of writing that sucks. And anyway, it isn't my place to limit the reaches of a website I didn't create.

Also, I've seen a lot of couples find happiness by connecting over this site, and if love isn't inspiration at its finest, I don't know what is.

Well, there's pain, too. But love is more fun.

*

I sometimes have little soul-searching tangents where I criticize myself for keeping this contest running when I'm not sure where exactly it falls on the spectrum, which side of the versus divider.

On the one hand, compelling people, even loosely, to "journal" about particular topics seems weird. Ditto offering gift points to those who prove themselves able to "journal" "better" than others in under marathon conditions. I also feel kind of strange about challenging people to do something I'm not sure I could do very well myself--in all the (estimated) twentysomething rounds I've run, I don't think I've ever succeeded at keeping up with the prompts so I didn't have any left over by the time winners were announced; I'm always backlogged and reaching back to previous rounds for entries that have become passe.

On the other hand, people seem to like it, and I routinely get participation from people whose artistic integrity I really respect (Aaron, Aaron, Caroline). Plus, as I keep reminding myself, except maybe not in these words, till I read that Leading entry, community is kind of a necessary component of creativity. If you're not informing your writing with all the ambient stuff going on around you, you're probably stagnating as a writer.

That's my argument, anyway, and I'm sticking to it.