Writing And Being -- What I Learned From Rushing Into A Story Contest:

In Fall of 2018, I decided to participate in Tapas’ annual writing contest.  The story I submitted is called Ascending Spires, and although I liked the idea of it, it probably won't get finished until I have more inspiration for it.  Meeting the contest deadline was a little stressful, but there were a lot of good things about participating that are worth reflecting on.

Participating opened me up to some opportunities that I wouldn’t have had otherwise.  Tapas offered everyone participating in the contest a chance to join the Tipping Program, even if they wouldn’t normally qualify based on the amount of subscribers they have.  If Tipping is activated on a Tapas author’s profile, it means that readers can tip them with Tapas Ink, which the author can then exchange for real money.

This was pretty awesome for someone like me that is just starting out and would like to begin implementing ways to make money off my work.  Furthermore, Inksgiving was going on during this time, which meant that I had a series that I could design an ad for and submit to the list of Inksgiving episodes asking for Tips.  Although I didn’t get many tips off of this, at the very least Tipping is now implemented on my profile and available for when I start posting comics more regularly.

This event also encouraged me to post more work online.  Sometimes it's hard to cross that line and put a story out there for the world to see.  I've already posted fanfictions on other sites, but outside of roleplaying, I haven't posted many of my original stories.  Entering the contest got me started with that.

The contest provided a way to test Tapas' author user interface and get an idea of potential click through rates.  Participating in the contest kind of brought home the fact that, for novels at least, a lot of people might bookmark a series that sounds interesting, and then completely forget about it until a much later date.  This really seemed to be the case when looking through the series' analytics day to day. Often, people would only read a chapter or two at most before moving on or bookmarking the series and forgetting about it.  

Of course it isn't impossible to make people read more consistently, but those posting on Tapas need to be aware that even when someone bookmarks a series, it can easily get lost in a sea of other free stories.  It takes time and planning to facilitate reader engagement, and participating in the contest helped me get a better idea of how that might work on this platform.

Also, I gained further proof that forcing myself to work on something I’m not truly inspired for under a short deadline is bad for me.   I already know I have a hard time forcing myself to write things I'm not inspired for.  Learning to write decently under pressure is an important trait to develop, but this contest served as an example of why those circumstances are not usually conducive to forming my best work.

Overall, this experience was both exciting and stressful.  But I did learn from it and so far don't regret it. Do you have any art/writing related experiences that were both stressful and educational?  Do you have any input as far as facilitating reader engagement or churning out better work even under pressure? Let me know in the comments!

Writing Tips -- 2019 New Years Resolutions For Writers

Here’s a list of New Year’s resolutions (or just writing goals/challenges if you’re like me and don’t exactly make official resolutions). There are a wide variety of them that will be useful to people at varying experience levels, so just pick the ones that appeal or apply to you.

Write 100 words a day, at least.  Preferably on every current WIP.  This one’s great for busy people that have a hard time getting themselves to make progress on their stories.  A hundred words isn’t much at all, so it’s a good way to chip away at projects bit by bit, and as the months go by, there will eventually be a decent amount of writing accomplished.

Write in a different POV style.  This can be in terms of writing a POV you aren’t used to (perhaps you normally write in third person, and want to write in omniscient POV for this challenge.)  Or, this could be in terms of challenging yourself to write in a POV you dislike(maybe you like writing in third person but normally hate writing in first person.  Writing a few short projects in first person could help you learn to write first person in a way that you like or help you figure out exactly why you dislike this POV).

Thoroughly research a different physical condition and write about it.  Again, do your research and write about it in a way that doesn’t disrespect people in real life.  But, let’s say you’ve never written a blind character before. This would be an opportunity to come up with one and explore what it’s like to be in that char’s shoes.  In this case, it would be good to figure out exactly what caused their blindness to make the research more precise.

Take at least one or two of your most prominent characters and give them a Myers-Briggs personality test.  Then, incorporate your findings in the character somehow.  This can be useful because it will force you to consider the character’s habits and thoughts more.  Also, once one understands a character’s personality type, it can be fun to research and incorporate quirks that that personality type is known for.

Research an obscure philosophy and consider adding it to your character’s story world.  Maybe not the entire philosophy, and perhaps in your story world the philosophy would go by a different name, but philosophies have a huge impact on how societies form and how people behave and thus can give worldbuilding a nice kickstart.

Find a culture, philosophy, mindset, species, etc. you’ve invented for your story world that is represented by multiple individuals, then make sure those individuals actually act like individuals.  Even when two people grow up in the same culture and have lots of similarities, they will always have differences that will eventually make a huge difference in their lives.  Extroversion is usually valued to some extent in the United States, for instance, so I’ve learned to get out there and talk to people when need be, but I’m still highly introverted and often avoid unnecessary conversations.  But practically no one will handle social contact in the same way. Different people have different levels of talkativeness, and they also have different types of social situations they will embrace or avoid.