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silveradeptChallenge #9 asks us to indulge in the urge to create.
I did some fills for![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
threesentenceficathon, so that ticks the box of creating a fanwork for today's challenge.
This particular challenge, even though it appears every year, and I do things for it every year, feels much more about exercising creative ways of thinking to get something done in a limited time than it is about creating a fanwork. Yes, the challenge explicitly says there are no deadlines on any of these elements, so someone could take however long it is they want to on creating a fanwork. There's also no penalty for skipping any of the challenges, or only doing the ones that you want to do, so if this one doesn't make sense, there's no reason to force yourself into doing it. That said, for people who are using the challenge as both exercising their muscles and trying to make connections with others in fandom while the burst of energy that is Snowflake is still happening, waiting to finish the thing means missing out on the comments and connections that come from being relatively on time to the challenges as they appear.
I think there are also some underlying assumptions with this challenge that send people scrambling for shortcuts, cheats, or other ways of getting something done so it can count, rather than going through their usual processes of creation. For many of the media mentioned in the challenge post, there's a time investment that's fairly significant. Practiced hands at all of these media can turn out things in seemingly impossible times, sure, but not everyone has that level of practice they can draw on. Several of the "goals" that I've seen while looking at other entries in the challenge were about finishing WIPs, exercising the habit of practice without necessarily any goal toward posting or publishing the finished product, or trying to get their inner editor and critic out of the way long enough to finish something. Working on those goals might not mean anything finished or presentable turns out any time quickly.
For some media, there may not be any way of shortening the time that's required to produce something, and so that twenty-minute podfic might have a twenty-hour requirement just to get to minimum viable product of all the proper takes, all the correct editing and stitching, reading and listening to make sure nothing weird happened, having others listen to make sure nothing weird happened, retakes, re-edits, and the like. If your fanwork is a playthrough of a game, or something related to a playthrough of a game, like machinima, even the speedrunners sometimes still have several hours of time ahead of them, and that's assuming they hit all their tricks on the first run, and that's only for recording the playthrough. There's still plenty of time on the back end for video editing and the production process that gets to a finished product. Icon making might appear relatively simple to an experienced hand, but for people who are new, finding the right illustrations or frames in the source, then capturing them and cropping down and making sure that they then fit in the size (dimensions) and size (kilobytes) requirements for use elsewhere on the Web and social media can still take significant time to create a batch with.
For others, most of the time it takes to create a work is in the start-up costs. Having an idea is not a guarantee, and not every creator has an entire file full of ideas they had but didn't work on at that specific moment they had the idea to refer back to or draw upon. Not every creator is multi-fannish and able to pivot to whatever fandom idea pops into their head that sounds good. And not every creator has the ability to carve out a block of time to go from idea to product to refinement to posting, as they have workdays, child care, partner care, self-care, errands to run, household chores, emergencies and time-pressure situations, and other things that require their attention and take away their time. They might want to create something substantive and only have enough time for three sentences or a drabble. Or they might only have enough time to post something that they've deliberately held in reserve for this challenge, that needed the last word put in, so they can get it done and take advantage of the social aspects of Snowflake to get plenty of eyes on it - not that there won't be plenty if it goes to AO3 and is in a fandom with a large presence, but forging connections on Dreamwidth is a goal of Snowflake, so I wouldn't be surprised if people hold a good thing in reserve for this challenge, as a way of saying what kind of person they are and what they like creating, and seeing if there are other people out there who like the same thing.
People who use shortcuts or post almost-ready things, or otherwise find a way of making their cognitive and time burdens go down to complete the challenge might feel like they've cheated at the challenge by holding something in reserve to post, or having something already mostly done that they then polish up and post, but I think this is one of those situations where someone says that's their feeling, and someone else says "oh, same hat," and someone else says, "Yeah, me too." and you find out that a whole bunch of other people around you have been using the same methods to get things done and have the same kinds of feelings about it.
One of the stories my university professor told to us on the subject of using office hours and feelings of impostor syndrome as that in one session of his class, all of the students in the class, at one point or another, came to office hours to get assistance about some aspect of the class and their assignments, and every last one of them said something to the order of "I'm the only one struggling in this class, everyone else seems to be doing just fine." Having heard this from every student in the class, he took time in the next lecture to say what he had learned from every student in the class, with the specific idea in mind of telling them that they were not, in fact, the only person struggling in the class. The class, once this was revealed to them, had a good laugh and gained some perspective on how much everyone else is paddling furiously underneath the surface of the water, even if it looks like they're floating serenely on top.
I see a lot of people lamenting their ability to create, their available time to create, and their worries that when they create things, that it's not actually good enough or they've somehow not done thigs according to the "right" way. There's a certain amount of practicality in giving advice back to them in the vein of the Two Cakes comic, focusing on the idea that most of what the audience craves is more, and they will enjoy more, even if you don't think it's as good as something else that's already been created. I think there's also a complementary item for that in the commentary that Ira Glass gave about the gap between our taste and our skill and the necessity of practice to close that gap. What I want to point out about that commentary is how much Ira points out that going through the phase where you realize that your output is not according to your taste is normal for everybody, and not just you. (For me, this also suggests this idea of the taste-skill gap is probably true for so many other things.) Giving yourself the grace that you would extend to others who are not feeling great about their work is difficult, because you know your own internality, but when you can succeed at it, things do go better. And, a lot of the time, there is someone there going "Two caaaaakes!"
None of this commentary is meant as a criticism or a slight against the challenge creators or the decision to include this challenge in the sequence. It's a good challenge, and people do produce neat things from it. It's a call for all of us who are working through this challenge, or any other challenge to our creative output, to find someone who will cheerlead for us, or to cheerlead for ourselves, and to accept that the thing that we can do for this challenge is enough. Maybe if things go great, I'm going to finish up mypoetry_fiction assignment, but maybe I won't, and the 3SF fills and the community-building and encouragement that I do through Snowflake will stand as the fanworks that I created for this challenge, because sometimes the work of being a fan is supporting the other fans in succeeding at their designs.
When thinking back to this year's fourth challenge, 'Make some Goals,' I remember how many of you mentioned that they plan to write more or create more icons. If you haven't already started, today is your chance to do so.
Challenge #9
In your own space, create a fanwork.[…]
Don't think you have to limit yourself to "write some fic" or "create some icons," though please do if you like that. But also consider art, graphics, podfics, musical scores, meta, fiber arts, videos, recipes, or whatever other combination of the words "fan" and "work" strikes your fancy.
If you are still looking for ideas of what to create, I suggest checking out Challenge #7 - Make a Wish. Maybe you can create a little something for someone else?
I did some fills for
threesentenceficathon, so that ticks the box of creating a fanwork for today's challenge.This particular challenge, even though it appears every year, and I do things for it every year, feels much more about exercising creative ways of thinking to get something done in a limited time than it is about creating a fanwork. Yes, the challenge explicitly says there are no deadlines on any of these elements, so someone could take however long it is they want to on creating a fanwork. There's also no penalty for skipping any of the challenges, or only doing the ones that you want to do, so if this one doesn't make sense, there's no reason to force yourself into doing it. That said, for people who are using the challenge as both exercising their muscles and trying to make connections with others in fandom while the burst of energy that is Snowflake is still happening, waiting to finish the thing means missing out on the comments and connections that come from being relatively on time to the challenges as they appear.
I think there are also some underlying assumptions with this challenge that send people scrambling for shortcuts, cheats, or other ways of getting something done so it can count, rather than going through their usual processes of creation. For many of the media mentioned in the challenge post, there's a time investment that's fairly significant. Practiced hands at all of these media can turn out things in seemingly impossible times, sure, but not everyone has that level of practice they can draw on. Several of the "goals" that I've seen while looking at other entries in the challenge were about finishing WIPs, exercising the habit of practice without necessarily any goal toward posting or publishing the finished product, or trying to get their inner editor and critic out of the way long enough to finish something. Working on those goals might not mean anything finished or presentable turns out any time quickly.
For some media, there may not be any way of shortening the time that's required to produce something, and so that twenty-minute podfic might have a twenty-hour requirement just to get to minimum viable product of all the proper takes, all the correct editing and stitching, reading and listening to make sure nothing weird happened, having others listen to make sure nothing weird happened, retakes, re-edits, and the like. If your fanwork is a playthrough of a game, or something related to a playthrough of a game, like machinima, even the speedrunners sometimes still have several hours of time ahead of them, and that's assuming they hit all their tricks on the first run, and that's only for recording the playthrough. There's still plenty of time on the back end for video editing and the production process that gets to a finished product. Icon making might appear relatively simple to an experienced hand, but for people who are new, finding the right illustrations or frames in the source, then capturing them and cropping down and making sure that they then fit in the size (dimensions) and size (kilobytes) requirements for use elsewhere on the Web and social media can still take significant time to create a batch with.
For others, most of the time it takes to create a work is in the start-up costs. Having an idea is not a guarantee, and not every creator has an entire file full of ideas they had but didn't work on at that specific moment they had the idea to refer back to or draw upon. Not every creator is multi-fannish and able to pivot to whatever fandom idea pops into their head that sounds good. And not every creator has the ability to carve out a block of time to go from idea to product to refinement to posting, as they have workdays, child care, partner care, self-care, errands to run, household chores, emergencies and time-pressure situations, and other things that require their attention and take away their time. They might want to create something substantive and only have enough time for three sentences or a drabble. Or they might only have enough time to post something that they've deliberately held in reserve for this challenge, that needed the last word put in, so they can get it done and take advantage of the social aspects of Snowflake to get plenty of eyes on it - not that there won't be plenty if it goes to AO3 and is in a fandom with a large presence, but forging connections on Dreamwidth is a goal of Snowflake, so I wouldn't be surprised if people hold a good thing in reserve for this challenge, as a way of saying what kind of person they are and what they like creating, and seeing if there are other people out there who like the same thing.
People who use shortcuts or post almost-ready things, or otherwise find a way of making their cognitive and time burdens go down to complete the challenge might feel like they've cheated at the challenge by holding something in reserve to post, or having something already mostly done that they then polish up and post, but I think this is one of those situations where someone says that's their feeling, and someone else says "oh, same hat," and someone else says, "Yeah, me too." and you find out that a whole bunch of other people around you have been using the same methods to get things done and have the same kinds of feelings about it.
One of the stories my university professor told to us on the subject of using office hours and feelings of impostor syndrome as that in one session of his class, all of the students in the class, at one point or another, came to office hours to get assistance about some aspect of the class and their assignments, and every last one of them said something to the order of "I'm the only one struggling in this class, everyone else seems to be doing just fine." Having heard this from every student in the class, he took time in the next lecture to say what he had learned from every student in the class, with the specific idea in mind of telling them that they were not, in fact, the only person struggling in the class. The class, once this was revealed to them, had a good laugh and gained some perspective on how much everyone else is paddling furiously underneath the surface of the water, even if it looks like they're floating serenely on top.
I see a lot of people lamenting their ability to create, their available time to create, and their worries that when they create things, that it's not actually good enough or they've somehow not done thigs according to the "right" way. There's a certain amount of practicality in giving advice back to them in the vein of the Two Cakes comic, focusing on the idea that most of what the audience craves is more, and they will enjoy more, even if you don't think it's as good as something else that's already been created. I think there's also a complementary item for that in the commentary that Ira Glass gave about the gap between our taste and our skill and the necessity of practice to close that gap. What I want to point out about that commentary is how much Ira points out that going through the phase where you realize that your output is not according to your taste is normal for everybody, and not just you. (For me, this also suggests this idea of the taste-skill gap is probably true for so many other things.) Giving yourself the grace that you would extend to others who are not feeling great about their work is difficult, because you know your own internality, but when you can succeed at it, things do go better. And, a lot of the time, there is someone there going "Two caaaaakes!"
None of this commentary is meant as a criticism or a slight against the challenge creators or the decision to include this challenge in the sequence. It's a good challenge, and people do produce neat things from it. It's a call for all of us who are working through this challenge, or any other challenge to our creative output, to find someone who will cheerlead for us, or to cheerlead for ourselves, and to accept that the thing that we can do for this challenge is enough. Maybe if things go great, I'm going to finish up my
poetry_fiction assignment, but maybe I won't, and the 3SF fills and the community-building and encouragement that I do through Snowflake will stand as the fanworks that I created for this challenge, because sometimes the work of being a fan is supporting the other fans in succeeding at their designs.
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Date: 2025-01-17 07:41 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2025-01-19 02:58 am (UTC)Thoughts
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Date: 2025-01-28 12:49 am (UTC)The time aspect always feels important for this particular challenge.