CCSF Blogathon

Guys. We need more active Creatures blogs.

Every time I open my RSS reader, I hope anxiously that someone has posted in my Creatures category. And all too often I find my art/design category full of eye candy, my food category is full of delicious things I will try to cook later that day, my tea category has a handful of reviews of wonderful stuff I can’t afford, and my creatures category has nothing.

I realize I am as much to blame as anyone for this, as I’m not exactly the most prolific writer. So I have a proposal. The CCSF is coming, and there is no better time to up the activity of our little blogging community.

The concept is quite simple. To participate, simply commit to publishing one post a day during the fourteen days of CCSF. If you don’t already have a blog, there’s no better time to start!

Now, before you get scared, let me remind you that publishing one post a day does not necessarily mean you need to write one post every day! Most blogging platforms allow you to write posts in advance and schedule them to be automatically published on a certain day. If you wanted, you could write fourteen posts in advance, schedule one to be published each day, and be done with it. Meanwhile, the community will be getting a steady stream of posts to read throughout the festival!

Not sure what to blog about? If you are a developer of any sort, your blog is obviously a great place to post your releases, but usually not even the most prolific contributors have something for every day of the CCSF. If any contributors out there want to take that as a challenge, go for it, but for the rest of you, here are some suggestions:

Many creatures blogs serve as a sort of open diary detailing the events of what is going on in their creatures’ worlds. Tell us of the births, deaths, and other drama that raising creatures entails!

If you like to play creatures a bit more scientifically, blogs are a great way to document your experiments and the results that come of them. Similarly, if you are working on a selective breeding project or wolfling run with a specific goal in mind, it’s nice to be able to share your progress.

Perhaps you are a dreamer and prefer thinking of ways you might play creatures, or thinking of things you would like to develop or see developed. By publishing your ideas on your blog, you can explain them in all the detail you like, and possibly gather suggestions and general interest from readers.

You could get creative and take a fictionalized viewpoint. I think it would be neat to see a blog written from the perspective of a norn or other creature, detailing his or her daily life, like a sort of ongoing story.

Speaking of stories, if you’re a creatures fiction writer, publishing a small part or chapter of a story every day is a great way to keep readers interested. Sitting down and reading a long story can be quite daunting sometimes, but releasing small bits at a time makes it easier for casual readers to digest.

You may choose to, instead of focusing on Creatures itself, focus on the community and its creations. Reviews of agents, metarooms, breeds, and even stories, are few and far between, and are a good way to spread the word about some of the hidden gems in the community.

If you are a developer, artistically, genetically, or otherwise, other aspiring developers can get a lot of information out of “the making of”-style posts. Sharing of tips and techniques inspires more creation, and more content for the community!

If you’re really stumped, look to other blogs for ideas. Perhaps a blog you follow has written a post about why C2 is better than C1. Have a different opinion? Feel the same way but for different reasons? Write a post on your own blog in response, linking back to the post that inspired you. Multiple bloggers discussing the same ideas helps to pull the community together, and inspires quite a bit of discussion!

Honestly, you can write just about anything. During the CCSF, there will will certainly be a lot going on and a lot to to think about-- I think you’ll find that it isn’t as difficult as you think!

To kick off this blogging initiative, there is a new tab at the top linking to a list of Creatures blogs. I will attempt to keep this list as complete as possible, so if you start a new blog or know of one that isn’t listed, let me know so I can add it!

(As a sidenote, I've been fiddling with the layout of this blog, so excuse any mess in the meantime!)