Moderating yet Another

October, 15, 2005

Many writers write with on-line writing sites now. They are a wonderful thing. I have spent time at Liberty Hall, mostly just timed flash challenges. Though I haven’t done one since July 4th, I hope to get back to it when things slow down. Having a timed flash challenge is a wonderful thing. Mike, the owner of the site, gives us 90 minutes to see the trigger, write a story, and then post it. There are so many of us that we now have three groups and we critique the stories round-robin. The writing period is Friday to Sunday and then the writes crit and vote from Monday to Thursday. I have some story ideas I would never have come up with on my own, because of the wide range of triggers. The top winner from each picks the trigger for the next week.

The site that I spend most of time is the Notebored. I am a moderator of this board and there is plenty to keep me busy. Right now I am moderating our TriMo challenge, where several writers are trying to write a 50,000+ word novel in three months; I’m moderating the Polished Stories Challenge, where authors take a rough draft and polish it up; and I have recently been asked to moderate the flash challenge as well, this flash challenge is like the one Liberty Hall runs, but it is not a timed challenge, the author has from Monday to Friday to submit a story.

This sounds like a lot, but it’s not that bad. The TriMo challenge is ending on the last day of November and all I really do is post weekly word counts, so we know how behind we are all. I also read all the other posts to make sure they are appropriate for the young writers on the site. Since all of the writers know they are lurking, they keep it clean so there really is no trouble there. The Polished Stories Challenge runs about 4-6 weeks. I make a post stating that the next challenge is on, inform the authors when they have to have their stories submitted, and then read the comments to make sure everything is running smoothly. I even read the stories and give my own comments. We have only had two Polished Story Challenges so far, the first one had seven stories and the second only had one (mine). So far we have one for this new challenge and I will be resubmitting mine as well. This week the flash challenge only has two stories, I have read one and will get to the other one later.

It sounds like the NoteBored is not a busy place, but it is. There are several other threads to post to. I was only taking about the challenge threads, minus the Poetry Challenge since I don’t moderate that one. Many of the writers at the NoteBored, including me, are trying to write novels so that takes up our writing time. When TriMo is over, I am willing to bet that the other challenges will pick up. Plus, many of our authors are also part of Liberty Hall and its timed flashed challenges.

If there are any writers, no matter how novice, who are following my blog I give you a warm welcome to check us out at the NoteBored. My user name there is “Joy” if you desire to look me up.
NoteBored