Crowdfunding

Let's try this again. Some things that caught my eye:

Petridish.org, a platform for crowdfunding scientific research rather than creative projects, has a project to research hyperemesis gravidarum, a severe form or nausea during pregnancy that can lead to miscarriages and medical nightmare for the women affected. Since apparently mainstream research decided to skip it because hysteria was a good enough explanation until relatively recently, crowdfunding seems to suit that well.

On to more fun things.

Ysabetwordsmith is running her Poetry Fishbowl today - leave her prompts to the theme "modern myth" to inspire poetry.

Next weekend, August 10-12, will see the 27th EMG Sketch Fest - leave prompts, or draw sketches based on prompts; open for anyone.

The Crowdfunding community on Livejournal (and Dreamwidth) will have a creative jam open to all media, to the theme "preservation/conservation", on August 19-20.

Torn World's creative jam, also open to all comers, is scheduled for August 24-27. It'll run in the associated Livejournal community, where you can also find last month's instalment for a description.

And I'd like to run a Flash Fiction Fishbowl to the theme "Stories people tell", but I'm not sure when exactly yet.

If you like supporting creative projects directly, whether by donations or giving people ideas, see if there's something of interest here. It's a collection of projects that caught my eye, particularly fiction Fishbowls where you leave prompts for someone to use as basis for writing. At the end you'll find links to stories written to my prompts in February, as well as my activity last month.

Networking on Twitter

If you run a project - writing, drawing, anything else - which involves asking people for prompts, and you plug it on twitter, consider including the hashtag #promptcall

Updates of last month's projects

With a bit over two days to go, Plunge, the ezine for queer women in genre literature, is fully funded.

The Pueblo of Acoma Storytelling Studio on the other hand isn't close to its goal yet, though there are two weeks to go still.

Planned Prompt Calls

• 6th - Elizabeth Barette's Poetry Fishbowl, theme "commoner heroes and second fiddles" (general information about the Poetry Fishbowl)
• 7th-14th - Eliza Gebow's Character Art Jam - you can request images of your characters, or of animals, etc. (results of a test-run)
• 8th - Ariestess has a Microfic Fishbowl, theme to be announced
• 17th - Lyn Thorne-Alder has another Giraffe Call - theme to be announced. (general information about the Giraffe Call)
• 18th-19th - Crowdfunding Creative Jam (open to anyone as both prompter and creator) to the theme "Respect"

Most dates were drawn from start-of-the-month posts in the crowdfunding communities on Dreamwidth and Livejournal

Based on my prompts

• Eliza Gebow drew an owl for me.
• Rix_Scaedu wrote the unrelated flashs Custom Made and Mirrorwall based on my prompts.
• Shurhaian wrote Wild Growth, Restoration and Frostfire
• Tango wrote On a Mountain's Summit
• Lyn Thorne-Alder wrote
  • Cleaning House (a follow-up to What To Do About Auntie X)
  • Productive (a follow-up to The Grey Line which is a follow-up to Preconceptions)
  • Exterminator
• Clare K.R. Miller wrote Dream House

I don't think any of those stories need content warnings, though I can't vouch for other content you might find looking around.
Hopefully I didn't forget anything; I need to get more systematic about the bookmarking.

My Activity

Fishbowl stories posted publicly in February:

• Phantom Pains from a prompt by Eliza Gebow.
• Fairy Godparents from a prompt by Rix_Scaedu
• Half a Life Taken from a prompt by Clare K. R. Miller
• Falling Behind the Changing Times from a prompt by Elizabeth Wordsmith
• Cravings from prompts by Tango and Ellen Million
• Bearing Witness from a prompt by Tango

The Law & Order Fishbowl I ran in February will probably end up with relatively few stories; there is a pattern of someone's general prompt working together with someone else's more concrete one to create one story idea. I'm not as far along as I wanted to be by now, partly because I spent the last three days getting my computer to work again. While I did not lose any actual writing, I'm not sure I'll be able to recover my organised notes with the prompts and ideas based on them. (More frequent and thorough backups in future for me.)

The file with the stories from the Horror Fishbowl is at the editor's.

And lastly, five of the requests from the last Small Art Call are finished now.

That project is going more slowly than I'd like, too, but I'm picking up the pace and hope to get most of it done before March is over.

If you like supporting creative projects directly, whether by donations or giving people ideas, see if there's something of interest here. It's a collection of projects that caught my eye, particularly fiction Fishbowls where you leave prompts for someone to use as basis for writing. At the end you'll find links to stories written to my prompts in January, as well as my activity last month.

Raising Money

• Pueblo of Acoma Storytelling Studio - the goal is to build a small recording studio to preserve the Acoma language Keres, as well as orally passed on stories, both of which are at risk of being lost.
• Plunge Magazine - building a genre fiction (e-)zine focusing on queer women.
• The Arkh Project - working on a professional quality videogame that stars people of colour and queer characters, rather than tokenising them.

Looking for Submissions

• Torn world is a collaborative writing an art project around a science fantasy setting. They're always looking for new contributors, but just now they started a contest to the theme Critters of Torn World, with categories fiction, poetry, art, and meta-fiction (articles about the setting).
• EMG-Zine (Steampunk-themed issue out now!) is a fantasy/scifi zine and looking for art, fiction and nonfiction for upcoming themes. The next deadline is the 1st March, for the theme "Plants". (No payment for art, payment in credits redeemable there and on a few other sites for fiction and nonfiction, so that's somewhere between no payment and token payment. On the plus side, reprints are accepted. Submission Guidelines)

Prompts

Mostly people looking for writing prompts, but occasionally jams open to anyone. Sorted by date.

• Running until the 4th - K.A. Jones is looking for fiction writing prompts to the theme "Imbolc and New Years"
• 4th-5th - Mini Giraffe Call: Lyn Thorne-Alder will be looking for fiction writing prompts for her Aunt Family setting (contemporary fantasy)
• 7th - Poetry Fishbowl: Elizabeth Barrette will be looking for poetry writing prompts to the Theme "Wild Animals" Announcement for more info
• 10th-12th - Sketch Fest: people leave prompts. People draw sketches based on those prompts, spending at most 1 hour on each sketch. (This may be cancelled for family reasons by maintainer Ellen Million)
• Starting 16th: Flash Fiction Fishbowl: I will be looking for flash fiction writing prompts to the theme "Law and Order".
• Starting 18th - Giraffe Call: Lyn Thorne-Alder will be looking for fiction writing prompts to the theme "Wine and Roses".
• 19th-20th - Garden of Prose: Clare Dragonfly will be looking for fiction writing prompts to the theme "fountains, statues, and gazing balls"

One place to find more and different projects is the Crowdfunding community at Livejournal, or its sister community on Dreamwidth

Based on my Prompts

• Rebelsheart got the prompt "twitchy" and wrote a Metroid drabble
• Lyn Throne Alder wrote Breaking Ground from the prompt "Building freeze after a find during excavations". And Thicker Than... from "family of choice", I think. And Warning Buzz from "Someone with the minor magic gift of being able to talk to insects and spiders".
• Rix_scaedu wrote The Brief from "interior design by and for mermaids", License Inspection from "performing functional magic as busking", and A Letter From An Old Friend from "What does the Man in the Moon think of Apollo 11 &Co?"
• Clare-Dragonfly wrote Air Traffic from "paths in the sky".
• Inventrix wrote Aim for the Sky in response to the question if plant magic exists, and Washed Away to a question about land loss after a storm flood.

My Activity

I'm pecking away at the small art. So far three are finished, but most are inked. There's a slightly out of date photo with a lot of the inked images

In January I posted stories from the "Horror" fishbowl:

• All That Glitters Is Not Gold, based on a prompt and sponsored by rebelsheart
• That Which Hides In Light And Song, based on a prompt and sponsored by rebelsheart
• Hunting Season based on a prompt by Eliza Gebow
• Rewriting History based on a prompt by Elizabeth Barette/ysabetwordsmith
• Rewarded, based on a prompt by LilFluff

I'm currently procrastinating on getting the ebook finished.