Comments | zhai: If You Help Me Build It

zhai

If You Help Me Build It

Nov 21, 2007 20:11

The outpouring of support I've gotten for my very loose open source speculative fiction magazine model has been really staggering. In addition to early pingbacks from Paolo Bacigalupi and Clarkesworld, I was surprised and very pleased to see the commentary from Warren Ellis and Lou Anders. I'd just picked up a copy of an anthology edited by Anders ( Read more... )

hm, writing, speculative fiction

Comments 12

anguirel November 22 2007, 01:41:54 UTC

Sometime soon, you'll be the person people are happy to see has commented on their stuff. :P

zhai November 23 2007, 05:04:05 UTC

I'd like to think some people at least are happy when I comment on their stuff!

haikujaguar November 22 2007, 03:07:24 UTC

This is seriously awesome. I will have to go have a look at it once I'm done with my own project. :)

zhai November 23 2007, 05:03:37 UTC

Glad you're interested in checking it out! If I go ahead with the magazine, it would be very interesting to try out something along the lines of your poll-driven CYOA as a public event. Have you seen the Matter Energy Conversion Experiment on Something Awful? It's a similar principle, with a comic strip -- and because it's SA, just to warn you, also horrifically violent.

It would be cool, if you were interested, if you could post your approach to both the novel project and the chapbook to the open source wiki! If you'd like them to be there but don't have time to put them up yourself, I can summarize them on pages there if you'd like.

haikujaguar November 23 2007, 05:07:31 UTC

Maybe you can summarize them for now? I have a vague notion that once I'm done with the chapbook project I'd like to write an article about it, but at this point I am utterly swamped and probably will remain that way until January.

I think I told you the salient parts of the combination website/chapbook project. The poll-driven novel is basically a Livejournal. All entries are public for people to read. Polls are locked to the Friends-list (consisting of people who have donated at least one dollar at some point through the novel's life). People not on LJ who have donated send their votes in through email.

So: everyone reads, but people who donate can direct the parts of the story I decide are poll-worthy.

(Link to that is Godkin, by the way.)

zhai November 23 2007, 05:38:26 UTC

Definitely, no problem. I'll link the heck out of them. I suspect the thing with the wiki is first penguin syndrome -- a lot of people are hitting it (I can see it in the sidebar) but no one has modified it yet, so if I get a few other projects up there I think it'll help. I appreciate it! I should have enough data between your sites, posts, and comments. It may not go up right away (am similarly swamped), but soon. :) I think what you're doing in terms of innovation and experimentation is terrific, again.

Thread 6

eggsniper November 22 2007, 06:36:56 UTC

What's going on with the what now?

zhai November 23 2007, 04:57:32 UTC

I could tell you, but it would take more than one word!

haikujaguar December 3 2007, 16:32:10 UTC

Another online project that succeeded: Wind Tunnel Dreams, which was one piece of flash fiction a day for the thirty days of November. No required money, just a donation button at the end of each piece.

Something like $1400 made!

zhai December 4 2007, 04:24:54 UTC

Thanks for the heads-up -- that is indeed an impressive sum for flash fiction. She combined it with a 'cause' model (the vet bills), and it looks like she does a bunch of other fundraising, which perhaps means that the project isn't directly reflective of what a fiction-only work would do, but it's very interesting. And November is certainly the month to do it on livejournal.

Very cool. Thanks again. I did put your projects on the open source wiki ( http://opensourcespecfic.pbwiki.com/ ) and will add hers as well. :)