RE: My Steemit Failures #1: Lessons Learned from Trying & Failing to Start a Book Club on Steem
I was wondering why there was never a second book, haha.
I don't think you should give up hope for the Page Dwellers yet. It might not be active right now but you could find someone with the right motivation and hand over the reigns to them.
On the topic of failures though, I think my biggest failure and regret on Steemit is not being able to continue the Dwarf Fortress posts. I just found it too difficult to get all the information and screenshots and try to present it in a sort of narrative prose style. Oh, that and my laptop was finding it hard to keep up with everything even after just the first year of the fort, and anytime I used Stonesense the game started crashing.
I'm not giving up hope for it yet though, I was recently considering trying to start a sort of collaborative effort with a better storyteller than myself where I give them all the information, we work through it, and they write the prose. It's something I need to give more thought to though.
Oh yeah I remember those! You were putting in so much work, and it was great content - but I don't think enough people were paying attention to it. It should have been rad - but it's very similar to what happened with The Page Dwellers, where all that initial interest kinda wanes and then you have to ask yourself: "Is this worth pushing through, or should I abandon it and try another project?"
There's never an easy answer. One of the problems right now is that Steemit really rewards short, quick interactions. Any club that requires a continuous effort from the members that is more than ~5 minutes per day is VERY hard right now.
There are some examples tho - like the Minnow Support Project radio station, which is ballin'. It's just... tricky. That's why I stopped several projects, I realized I needed to slow down and rethink everything... and this post (plus some more upcoming ones) are part of that thinking process :-D
I would love to do The Page Dwellers, but in all frankness I doubt I can try it again in the next few months. Maybe in 2018 we can all get together and give it another try...
For the Dwarf Fortress posts it wasn't lack of interest that caused me to stop, it was just my own laziness, apathy, and good old fashioned procrastination. I always planned to do another post but putting all the information together and then trying to make a story out of it was just too much for me.
I'm sort of in the same situation with making posts in general right now. I haven't done a real post in weeks, I just don't have the drive right now I guess. Thanks to DSound and learning how to use Reaper for making beats I am at least still doing something on here, haha.
But, yeah, slowing down and rethinking things is always an important thing to do, otherwise you run the risk of burning out.
As for the Page Dwellers, I do hope to see it active again. One idea I've only just had is that the focus of the project could change for a little bit. I've seen you post at least one book review, perhaps if you plan on doing anymore reviews you could post (or at least mirror) them on the Page Dwellers account. That would keep it active to some degree, and it would sort of keep it in the collective conscience of Steemit. It's something that doesn't require a large effort, it's much more of a passive undertaking than trying to run a book club. Then, once the time is right, and there's more involved interest, the book club can start up again.
Now I'm thinking more, and I wonder... maybe The Page Dwellers as a short story club would be better?! That way we can just read something in like 20 mins and discuss it for a week or two.
HMMMM....
edit: and we could even feature Steemians' stories! So we could read short fiction, some of which is written by our very own authors. O_O
Oo! I like that idea! ....Sorry, totally eavesdropping :D
:-)
I've only just seen this after making my own suggestion for The Page Dwellers in my other reply, it didn't show up in my replies tab. That's a good idea, especially the bit about including stories from Steemit. It would work as a constructive criticism group to some degree, and that's something I know I'd like to have access to.
Cool, let's consider this a solid maybe for now :-)