Saturday, September 4, 2010

Josh Grimmer: A status update, and the future of this project

So sports, eh? Go, team. Go. Did you all have fun reading our sporty exploits this week? Dear God, I hope so. Please tell me you had fun. Please?

Seriously though, it was a lot of fun for me to put this all together this week. The response has been just fantastic. This has already been a much bigger hit than I ever expected it to be. I want this project to be sustainable, and I want your help.

How many of you would like to write every week? How about every other week? Every month? Every month seems like too far between essays. The goal of this is to get people writing more, you see.

Here's what I want. First, I want to find out who the every-weekers will be. They will write – believe it or not – weekly. The every-other-weekers will be broken into two teams. The first team will have two weeks to write about, say, their favorite hat or something. That'll be posted one week. The second team will have two weeks to write about something else, like an experience they've had with an escalator or whatever. That'll get posted the next week. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Week A: Hats
Every-weekers
Group A of the every-other-weekers
(Every-weekers and Group B of the every-other-weekers writes about escalators.)

Week B: Escalators
Every-weekers
Group B of the every-other-weekers
(Every-weekers and Group A of the every-other-weekers writes about bears)

Week A: Bears
Every-weekers
Group A of the every-other-weekers
(Every-weekers and Group B of the every-other-weekers writes about blah blah whatever you get it by now.)

This plan allows for those among you who want to write more often to do so, but it also gives you the option of kinda dialing it down so you don't burn yourself out. Obviously I'd love all of you to write every week. I'd love to run 14 essays a week. (I'm capping it at two a day – any more would be too much to read.)

This also means that if you don't feel like writing one week, whether you're sick or you hate the topic or whatever, you can skip one. I don't suggest skipping anything, though, particularly if it's a topic you don't like. That'd be a cop out, and you're much better than that.

Grosses bises,

Josh Grimmer, Editor in Chief.

8 comments:

  1. EOW! EOW! EOW!
    also,
    USA! USA! USA
    and
    Let's go, Wildcats, let's go!

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  2. I would like to do one every week. Having said that, I will be out of commission for 2 weeks starting Sept 15th. I think that every other week should be fine, though. I like the immediacy of weekly because I need the motivation. Others might find it draining or too hard to fit into real life constraints.

    (Was that helpful? I like making things more confusing . . .)

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  3. I would love to contribute every other week. I like to write, let it steep, then take another pass at it. No idea whether it helps the end product but makes me feel like I've at least worked at it.

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  4. I wanna write things and if I write things can I write also? HATS!

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  5. Great idea. I really like the idea of writing every week, for myself anyway.

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  6. I like the idea of you assigning a topic, and those that feel motivated to write something, to do it. Any one else can wait for the next topic that appeals to them.
    Steve

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  7. So, wait, are you no longer assigning topics, Josh? Because that made this project a lot more interesting, I thought. Reading a series of different perspectives on a single theme. You could be coming up with 2 or more topics at a time, keeping them in a running list on the side of the blog.

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  8. Did you get this week's topic, Meg? I thought I sent it to you already. It's "near perfection." Write about something that's almost perfect, but not quite.

    I have the next two weeks planned out, theme-wise. Suggestions from the lovely Katie McMahon.

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