"c) discover surprisingly fresh and beautiful words within themselves through the freewrite vehicle. " I think this is a worthy goal. The aim after that should be to take what you have found through the medium of the freewrite and polish it into something, whether that be an article, a poem, a story, a script, an informative blog post. There are so many options. The good news is that there are people around who are willing and able to help brainstorming, crafting and polishing.
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I agree, @thinknzombie. I really do. Raw, unedited material really shouldn't be published anywhere... unless, perhaps... it comes out the gate in a nice form (which it very often can), it fits into its own new little genre (which in this case it does), and it suits a community of people on this de-centralized platform where the community is the arbiter of what matters. A lot of people hated rock and roll when it emerged as an art form, and wouldn't acknowledge it. (I'm really sorry if anyone bristles at that comparison!) There are other examples in the art world throughout time where a different form of expression emerged and was roundly lambasted, but a community grew up around it and appreciated it nonetheless.
Let me think of a better example. Let's pretend for a moment that someone on Steemit decided to post a pet picture and call it art. It's just an unedited picture of Fluffy. But then others began to do the same, all tagging their raw, unedited pictures of their cats and dogs and bunnies, just doing what they do, with a "pet-art" tag and no other content. What if they all created a community, commented on the pictures, upvoted each other and felt really excited about it, and finally felt like they had something to contribute. They didn't spend any time setting up a scene, making sure there's no red eye, editing the lighting, etc., like a real photographer would. The fact is, their goals are different from a real photographer, and the raw picture that took a nanosecond to snap is all they've got. I don't know, should the real photographers police them, tell them they should stop, downvote them? I think it's an interesting philosophical question.
Again, what I wonder at the end of the day is whether something like this generates Steem and helps support the reward pool. I just don't know whether it helps or hinders. Do you know?
Love and hugs.
"Again, what I wonder at the end of the day is whether something like this generates Steem and helps support the reward pool. I just don't know whether it helps or hinders. Do you know?"
Do you mean "generates Steem" as a cutesy way of taking the idiom "generates steam" as in drives the platform, or do you mean literally, "generates Steem"? Because if it's the latter, no, none of anyone's content literally does that. The Steem is all generated by the witness machines at a set rate of 1 Steem every 3 seconds.
If you meant metaphorically, I think the answer is a resounding "yes". Here on Steemit, we have a community of mostly content creators, a few significant curators, and even fewer pure audience members. The structure of Steem is such that there's no financial incentive to be an audience member, and no financial incentive to attract an audience member who isn't also a successful creator or curator. Building a community of writers who are enjoying each others' writing and welcoming more people into that community with a relatively low barrier to entry is a prime example of how that high creator:consumer ratio can work. Otherwise you have an ecosystem of thousands of creators vying for the attention of a very few mercurial whales whose only claim to fame is their accumulation of wealth, and who may not have the best interests of a vibrant fiction community in mind.
Furthermore, I would much rather read someone's 5 minute freewrite than a 5th article about what happened with bitcoin today. Or a copypasta.
Furtherfurthermore, I was first introduced to freewriting in college, through writing down the bones and a friend. We would meet in a cafe, do a freewrite, and then simply read aloud what we had written, listening without comment or criticism. This is what that is, but with an online community.
Furtherfurtherfurthermore, isn't part of the point of decentralization that we no longer have to contend with gatekeepers? Aren't we done with folks in power determining what is and isn't art? Taken to its illogical extreme, are we condemning the entire self-publishing industry? Those writers are often far too prolific to be spending much time, though certainly more than a freewrite, on editing. One can always edit, but at some point you release it. So this is one extreme. And at the other extreme is a single slim volume that takes a lifetime to complete. Neither is wrong. Both will find an audience.
Furtherfurtherfurtherfurthermore, I have nothing here, I just wanted to make that word.
In conclusion, nyan cat.
Hi guys, good discussion here.
Thanks for gently setting me straight about Steem/steam, @improv. I went looking for an answer that helps me ask the question I was trying to ask, which I realize is this: Do communities that grow up around a particular type of content support the increase in Steem value that we are all hoping for? I think they do: https://steemit.com/steem/@taskmaster4450/steem-token-unit-stu-when-a-usd-is-not-a-usd-plus-the-damn-is-breaking-in-active-users.
I have read all of the discussion here. I hope it doesn't get any more heated than it already is. This is all great stuff to talk about, but I am personally out if discussion turns to fight. Not only am I a peacekeeper by nature, but I care deeply about everyone involved in this philosophical debate.
I have a few final thoughts before I bow out, sweetly, into that good night.
First, I just want to say that I did not weigh in here to convince anyone of my point of view, but to share an additional perspective. Philosophical discussions become fights when someone needs to win. Does anyone need to win? (Rhetorical question.)
If anyone reads my posts, you know that I care deeply about quality fiction. It is my personal value that high quality fiction matters, and that it's important for those of us who have a bit of knowledge to give some love and nurturing to those who really want to better themselves.
That said, I also think any creative endeavor/genre is going to have a vast range of ideas and values about what it is and about what is worthy. Poetry is one example. I can write Haiku in three minutes. It would take me five minutes to write a limerick. I add ellipses here to let your imagination run wild regarding value, worthiness, and whether those items I just called "poetry" measure up to others in their genre, or to sonnets, free verse, and the wildly diverse types of poetry you see here on Steemit.
In other words, we can debate all day what "poetry" is and whether all the things that are called poetry (on and off of Steemit) belong under that same umbrella, and also whether those people are doing themselves a favor or disservice by posting small or unpolished bits and calling them poetry. Is it good? Good enough? Is beauty in the eye of the beholder? What would Allen Ginsberg or Jack Kerouac have thought of all this?
I believe it's a similar thing with fiction. If someone who has no idea how to write a story spends five minutes writing "She sat down at the computer to do her first freewriting exercise... to keep her hand moving, to see if she could make something worthy of posting that day. But she felt frozen, staring at the glow of the terminal as petrified as fossilized stone," (I just made that up) and then posted that and called it "fiction"... and then the little community spawned by that type of writing welcomed her and patted her on the back for her little fledgling effort, well maybe it is a type of fiction. She wrote a mini story and shared it, fresh and hot off the press, from her heart. It's not the type of fiction I'm writing, and that person most likely isn't the next Douglas Adams or Sue Grafton, and in my imagined scenario has no desire to be. But she is working within her milieu, trying something, and being in community. And communities are the foundation of our platform.
That is all I am saying. These views are my own, and do not represent the views of any other entity or writing community. Love and hugs.
Love and hugs right back. Thanks for holding the middle position. Live and let live, I think. And love and let love.
And sometimes the things that come out of freewrites I read sound like Douglas Adams. Not often, but occasionally.
So much of building is about making welcoming spaces. Two things up. And by things, autocorrect means thumbs.
And live and let love.
Nobody is saying it can’t be published on Steemit. I think the general argument is that if you have any pride in your work product whatsoever, you just won’t. What goes onto the blockchain can be googled forever. For many, it may end up being the same as those girls-gone-wild photos they let people take at 17, when at 27, those pictures resurface and not only embarrass the shit out of them, but prevent them from getting jobs, relationships, and respect. I think this is something folks need to consider .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_writing
From the link above: "The writing does not have to be done with pen and paper. A technique known as Freeblogging combines blogging with free-writing with the rules changed so that the writer does not stop typing for long periods of time. The end result may or may not be shared with the public. "
And I'm not sure the distinction between "can't" and "shouldn't" is measurable in this circumstance. Clearly even spam posts CAN be shared on the blockchain. We agree that they SHOULDN'T be shared.
And, I want to be respectful, but when you say, "if you have any pride in your work product whatsoever, you just won’t", you assert something unjust and insulting. If you didn't mean to be insulting, feel free to correct your semantics. If you did, why? How are you the arbiter of what folks can take pride in? I'm sure you can do the exercise of making analogies in your head that apply best to how you'd feel if the tables were turned.
I'm sure you're a very nice person, but the original post, and your defense of it here both smack of folks setting themselves up as the gatekeepers. I'm in Hollywood. A gatekeeper is not someone who says, "You CAN'T." At least not since the rise of youtube and digital video. It's someone who says, "You will find no success." and "what you're doing is wrong." (and who then has the power to make that true regardless)
There has to be some measure of quality control in any creative medium that is marketed for public consumption. And there has to be someone who retains some degree of pride in the art. This is an argument not even worth making. It is self-evident.
I’m not overly worried about freewriting on Steemit. To me, it’s just another form of shitposting. I believe the market will set a fair value for it eventually. I am, however, worried about all the starry-eyed writers who may not be hearing both sides of the story. Someone has to speak up and let them know the consequences of publishing permanently on the blockchain. Anyone with a sense of pride is going to want only the very best of their work publicly searchable until the end of time, or until the end of technology and the Internet as we know it.
I believe people are being very shortsighted about Steem, and its permanence. I know that personally, as a publisher, I would think twice if I Googled a particular author and got a whole bunch of hits that amounted to sloppy, first draft writing. I would question whether or not that author cared about their brand, or my brand. And they would have to produce for me a truly exceptional piece of work for me to be able to forget the reams of junk posts they previously took it upon themselves to publish.
I think fledgling writers need to hear the other side of this. So as long as people keep posting substandard work and calling it fiction, I am going to keep talking about why that may not be such a great idea.
Wow.
Well I guess I'll back away from this conversation. You have very strong opinions that I think are about as far from what I believe to be the truth as you can get. We can agree that Steem is here it stay and that's about it.
I don't think your success, my success, the success of others posting freewrites, and the success of Steemit are even remotely mutually exclusive, and I honestly wish you good luck.
I guess I'll add one thing that I don't think you realize. Worrying about permanence, in this case of the blockchain, is not particularly new. For a very long time, "If it's been on the internet once, it's still on the internet somewhere." has been the rule most internet users know to be true.
No one HERE has advocated or talked about flagging Freewrites. That idea isn't coming from me. However, there has already been discussion from WHALES about flagging fiction on Steem as a whole. You would benefit from reading my articles on this topic, as taking a piece of the rewards pool pie isn't a way of helping Steem as a platform. Building a closed community that never reaches beyond Steem also doesn't help Steem as a platform. Bringing readers to the platform DOES help Steem as a platform, which is something true polished, quality fiction has the potential to do. However, we might bring readers to our own posts, but they will quickly leave, when attempting to look for more reading material results in slogging through a mess of stuff that isn't really fit for public consumption. My only goal here was to make sure people were EDUCATED. Both about the actual exercise of freewriting and its benefits and drawbacks and about the impact posting such raw work can have on your future. I skip freewrites when curating for any of the projects I curate for. But that's the extent of my "policing" on this issue. If you people consider freewrites their own separate medium, why tag them fiction?