I’ve created CREAZEE to find external incentives in maintaining my daily writing habit. It’s a private group of people writing, every day, each on their own, contributing to the same community forum, sometimes following a common prompt, sometimes each one independently. I am the habit-building facilitator, a community coach, writing too, leading a group of wanna-be habitual creators. I started my habitual creativity challenge way before, and I am now on day 220.
On day 83 of group writing, I have repeat questions coming to my mind every day.
Timing
How is the sequence of shared articles influencing the group? For example, how am I influencing others if I publish my daily article first? Or last?
When shall I publish the daily prompt? Day by day, at the end of the day (how is timezone dealt with?) What would change if I posted all prompts for a month at the same time?
Participation
How to deal with who doesn’t write? If the One Rule is “You Will Write Every Day,” shall I throw out of the challenge who misses a day?
What about reminders, nudges, and gentle pushes: shall I go one by one and remind them they have to write for the day? Up until which level should I go? Shall I phone them?
What can I do to automate the reminding process, so I don’t have to spend my time chasing participants?
Pace
Diverse participants with diverse backgrounds, skills, attitudes, objectives write at different paces, varying lengths with various efforts and outcomes.
What is my role as a facilitator and a coach to help them keep the daily pace while respecting their diversity? All in all, a day is the same for everybody: either you wrote or not. How is the different distribution of efforts and outcomes distributed on that day of the challenge, and how does it affect my role and the overall group performance and mood?
What happens if we write simultaneously, setting a specific time frame during which we actually write together? What are the logistic implications?
Goals and motivation
I have never stressed the goal of why you should write daily, and I am not asking any participant to explain why they want to write daily or why they should do it. Is that affecting the group motivation? What would be the difference if each participant had to declare their goal at the beginning of the writing challenge? Would it be feasible and reasonable to allow individual plans to be pursued in a group effort?
The subject matter
Right now, I am providing a daily prompt which is optional. Participants may or may not follow it. Is that a waste? Shall everybody write following the same prompt? Or shall I drop the prompt entirely and just transform it into “write about anything you want but write?”
What if participants had to declare a milestone project giving continuity and coherence to the sum of their daily efforts? How would it affect the logistics and my responsibility as a group facilitator?
What would be the effect of having several independent trends posted daily, overlapping in the group forum?
Private or Public
I have never forced participants to share the daily articles publicly. What would change if we made it compulsory to publish on the Web the daily contributions?
Have your say
I would appreciate your thought on the above questions and reflections, either if you participated in CREAZEE or not.