1/2: Writing, in and of itself, is an experience. There are many ways to get there, and it all depends on you. The same does not apply to learning your colors or how to do a math problem.

3. August to December of when I first joined.

5. If you have permission, a permission giver thought you wrote well. Therefore, if you have permission, there is at least one person here who thinks you are a good writer.

6a: The PPC has been around for quite awhile. I would like to say late 2001, or 2002. I can't quite pin it down at the moment. Up until rather recently, the only writing guides, as it were, were other people. People are, by and large, far better than a prewritten screen on a page outlining every single step for you and anyone else who might go and read it.

I likely should have elaborated on this in my first reply.

If you have to rely on a writing guide, you are doing it wrong because you are relying on something that is static. You are ignoring the community. There is a community here. Or at least, I thought there was.

If we rather foist newbies at a writing guide instead of getting to know them better through chatting or answering their questions directly we are doing it wrong, and there must be something wrong with one side of the equation; either the new people or our opinion of them.

I disagree with the idea of a writing guide for the PPC because it does several things:

It enforces a static formula, no matter how nice and open the writer tried to make it.

It eliminates what I think is an important step- I'd rather see what you want to try, personally, than what you think the PPC would like (or dislike intensely) because of what you saw in a guide.

It takes the community out of the equation. The Board, as of late, has been filled to the gills with introduction posts, people saying they're leaving for awhile (that no one especially cares about because you haven't posted all that much lately anyways and we thought you were already gone), people saying that they've come back (that no one else especially cares about because we've been so busy greeting newbies that we didn't even notice you had disappeared in the first place), or going oh noes at badfic.

We haven't had a game of Fill The Plotholes for ages, nor any actual interesting discussions about things not related to bad fanfic or the PPC since who knows when.

With a writing guide, we are streamlining the process of getting to know each other out of the way because it eliminates a large aspect of getting to know each other. A bunch of questions that might have been asked to a member who has been around longer (or just think they have an answer to the question) are now not asked. There's no need to any longer.

A writing guide streamlines the creative process. I like reading missions that are bumpy and lumpy and haven't smoothed all the internal edges out yet. They are different, the writer is doing something different, because while they might have read missions (in some number between one and a thousand), there wasn't some thing telling them the exact steps, or they had some wild and crazy idea that they decided they wanted to use.


6b: No. That is not the argument. What I'm trying to say is that I am not trying to be hurtful. It is not fine if people are hurt by what I say. But I'm not going to go out of my way to soften what I have to say just so someone's ego is not bruised or rattled a bit because I go in with the expectation that people prefer honesty to disingenuous words. Lying and telling people only what they like to hear is the worst and cruelest thing you can do in an environment which is intended to espouse the idea of creativity and quality. Or would you rather I accompany everything I say with a pat on the back?

I said interest. Not not wanting to write. Many of those people who wrote the single missions posted them immediately after they got permission, and then never returned to the board in general. You have not written anything new for quite some time, but you are still here. I have not written anything for months, yet I am still here. Vixenmage has been here for years and years, and she has permission, and is a permission giver, in fact, but has never produced a spinoff.

Producing but one (or three or two) missions right after getting permission and then disappearing soon after speaks for a lack of interest.