How not to build a writing community [one]

The secret sauce is mostly: Don’t do what I do.

Most of my attempts have been failures (aside from one single community), so I am not 100% certain why I am proposing the creation of another.

[Yes. The main point of these posts is to argue with myself if I should do such an absurd thing as try to get writers into a space to write and discuss. The most recent attempt at getting an online book discussion community was a considerable failure and only had three participants, including myself.]

Most of my attempts to try to build a writing community have failed save for the short-lived (is around nine months “short-lived”?) spoken word salon I ran during the 90s in Seattle, so I am not 100% certain why I am proposing the creation of another.

That particular community likely crumbled because no single person was foolish enough to take over the reins when I left the city — it was one of those things that really needed a single vision to keep it going, and there were three competing visions when I handed it over, each person having a different idea of what it would give to them personally, in addition to what they thought they could give the community.

To give you an idea of the personalities, I proposed “chautauqua” for the generic reference for the spoken word night, and had to settle for “salon”. And that was when I was nominally the “father” of the idea. I insisted we remove “spoken word night” from references, because it had too much local competition and was load-bearing for such gatherings.

It was lots of work when it was largely my vision, I can’t imagine managing several visions on top of that.

So why not re-create that online?

First off, there is no demand for what worked in the 90s.

At the time, the horrid little insider’s club of competitive “poetry slams” was in full swing. Instead of mutually-supportive gatherings of writers, it was an adversarial gladiator arena with unscientific clap-o-meter-styled judging (or, worse, tit-for-tat human judges). It placed performance quality over writing quality and much of the actual writing was designed for visceral reactions to increase the audience response. We came in and eliminated the competitive and judging elements. And, instead of the same 10 people hitting the slam circuit and forcing out the nobodies, we had a first-come-first-served signup. We flipped the prevailing paradigm on its head and used some “guerilla” promotional tactics to generate interest.

There is currently no such antagonist — although it could be argued that some online communities gatekeep in the same way, and not with a meaningful John Peel kind of curation that would be helpful. Some, in fact, are used to enrich the organizers at the expense of the contributors energies. But that’s a different axe to grind…

Secondly, there was no internet in the 90s in the way we currently understand the internet. We were giving voice to the smaller voices in the community who had no platform to present their art, at whatever stage their art had developed. Now, everyone has access and opportunity to express themselves in a public space, should they wish to do so. The “service” we offered in the 90s is a nonfactor today.

Thirdly, the methods of amplification have changed; again, because of the disruptive elements of the internet. Whereas it was once word-of-mouth to get your voice heard, it is now a matter of actively cultivating an exchange of “likes” and “friends” — which may or may not have anything at all to do with quality of content. Layered atop this is effusive (and largely insincere) praise or ratings-exchanges. Again, this defeats the whole point of curation when everyone never gets less than a 4-star rating on their self-published book. There is no reason to help amplify Jane Doe in the internet era, and little reason to provide a kind of curation when everyone is “special”.

Those are the reasons why the previous model of a similar writing community won’t work thirty years later. The need or the value of having one in those same veins is either diminished or is a nonfactor.

Circling back to the start of this post: If times have changed and the old paradigm doesn’t apply, and all of my previous online efforts have been epic failures, then why consider making such a thing?

Because I still think there is a need. Evolved, but still a need that is not being met.

I’m probably going to explore a few ideas over the next week or so to either argue myself into starting something, or into walking away while I still can from another potential failure.