Community Creator Chat 11/5/24
Update and Sequel
For the first installment of this series, see here.
Greetings, all!
The last month has flown by. I can’t believe I’m doing another one of these chats and it’s going to line up at a four week gap! Seriously, where did the month go?
I hope it goes without saying, but I was very surprised by the results of my first Community Creator Chat (CCC) way back at the beginning of October. Thank you to all who read and sent it to the top of the Leaderboard that week! I honestly did not expect for it to get enough reads to warrant a repeat forum, nevermind riding the leaderboard.
So why, you might ask, am I doing another one?
Well, I got an unexpected email, and decided I should publish an update and the opportunity for anyone to respond. (Oh, feel free to write about anything, though, not just the email.)
Back on October 9th, I promised you that I’d send the comments to Support. I did exactly this once the comment section dried up on October 17th. I fully expected them NOT to reply, as they’ve been known to ignore emails like this in the past.
However, a couple days ago, I was proven wrong! On November 1st, I received the following email.
Hooray!! I’m so thrilled that Vocal will be continuing the official Creator Chat! (When is now the only question remaining, lol.) And the fact that they’re reviewing the comments and taking note is, I think, a good thing too.
What do you think? Naturally, we have to wait and see, and perhaps nothing will come of this for a while, even for a long while…but at least this gives us some hope, right?
Anyway, I just wanted to share this development! I’m glad the team got back to us. 😊
Now, back to this week’s CCC!
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Tell me your current woes, excitements, or questions. Has anything changed in the past month? Anything you want to vocalize, get off your chest, shout the praises of? Any feelings about the future of the platform, whether it be in regards to yourself or just in general?
I’ll go first.
I haven’t gotten my question about the Vocal Writing Awards answered. It’s frustrating, but I’m going to assume the answer is “no.” What a shame! I hope we can see them return next year, at least. I almost want to figure out how to do them ourselves, the way that we want to…That seems like quite the endeavor, though.
When are we going to get a really difficult challenge? Like Stephen Roddewig has cited a few times, challenges like the Lipogram are few and far between, yet pose a fun, difficult task for writers to actually stretch and grow. Limitations like removing a letter from our repertoire is a great example of this, and I’d love to see more challenges like it in the future. Really challenge us, eh?
And like Gina C. mentioned in the comments last time, I’d love to see an update to the judges panel, complete with bios and other details. It would even the playing field in a way, make Vocal more like other writing contests where the writers get to tailor their pieces to the judges’ tastes and experience, and bring to attention any potential biases or conflicts of interest.
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Let the conversations commence! ;D
About the Creator
Mackenzie Davis
“When you are describing a shape, or sound, or tint, don’t state the matter plainly, but put it in a hint. And learn to look at all things with a sort of mental squint.” Lewis Carroll
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Copyright Mackenzie Davis.
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Community Creator Chat 10/9/24
As of posting this, it’s been five months since the last Vocal Creator Chat. So… I doubt I’m the only one who has missed its regularity. Regardless of that regularity changing over time, it had become expected. Even predictable, to some extent. Now, it seems to have plateaued or paused or perhaps memory-holed…
By Mackenzie Davisabout a year ago in Writers
Comments (15)
So Fantastic Oh My God❤️Brilliant & Mind Blowing Your Story ❤️ Please Read My Stories and Subscribe Me
Like Amanda- I missed this the first time- and am kinda in the weeds with (waves hands vaguely around in the air) everything. However- maybe the reason ALL of the Challenges for the rest of the year have suddenly shown up (click on see all in the Challenge place on the main page)... is that they are looking at new things/bringing back things that work for 2025?
I don't know what to expect much less say anymore. I am here and hopefully Vocal admins know their roles are integral positions and their work matters.
Hi Mackenzie! Dropping in to ask: how is life? Months fly by, right? So volatile.
Thanks for setting this up, Mackenzie! I love Vocal as is, honestly, but I think it would be cool if there was a community for unofficial challenges and if there was a tab (or some way) to categorize top stories for each writer on Vocal.
Ok, another conversation on this thread. I think the perception of what constitutes a published piece in the overall world of publishing needs to be changed. If you've written a piece that got 50 views-which is way higher than my average piece, it is still considered to be seen by the entire world's eyes in most competitions or print journals even if it is behind a paywall or on social media sites. I find this laughable even though I agree it is published. A quick check of Vocal's traffic is 3.65 million visits in the month of September 2024 (semrush). I guess what I am saying is, the chances that a piece has reached its entire audience is low and I don't think these pieces should be automatically disqualified from calls for work. I think publishers are slowly changing as I have been seeing more that allow individual pieces in a book submission to be previously published, but I wonder what your thoughts are on the future of published vs. unpublished.
Hi Mackenzie! Thank you for writing this update. I love your suggestion of more openness regarding the judges. In lit mags, we know who the judges are and what writing credentials they hold. In the past, they’ve also brought in a guest judge. I wonder whether it would be good to have more challenges/competitions where we don’t see the entries until after the closing date? Not necessarily all, but some? Radical for Vocal, I know, but it’s part of the challenge to have no idea of the competition, and it’s how other competitions operate.
I lied. One or two more. I am tired of my friend's work getting plagiarized. It hurts them. I don't know if Vocal's story review system is automated or not, but I very strongly wish that there was a more thorough way to PREVENT plagiarized articles from being even published. It's hard not to be frustrated with the review process - when it doesn't prevent plagiarism and you also see strictly AI spam articles being published in communities that they are irrelevant to. Like the other day, someone had an AI write up a summary on an anime character, and it was posted to confessions I think? I'm glad more people have joined vocal. But I feel like there's been a disturbance in our community force because of it. Not everyone is on here to connect and build a network of people they trust, some of them are on here because they think it's 'easy' money.
I think this was mentioned by someone last time, and I've mentioned it in the discord suggestions, but I'd LOVE to see a much better way to display stories on author profiles, and even for authors looking through their own stories. Readers/authors should be able to toggle between exclusive, non-exclusive, and all stories. I like how you can see which stories are in which communities. But it's frustrating having to traverse pages and pages of stories to reference an old article. Other then that... I'm pretty happy.
I just want Vocal to completely ban spammers and AI-Generated content. Is that too much to ask? 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭
Oooh this is exciting! I'm still keen for an update to the 'Creators we're loving' section!
Glad to see you doing this cos miss our interactions! hope you are well? my gripes are my usual boring ones!
I’m of two minds when it comes to being able to tailor the submissions to the judges. On the one hand, it would be great to know what exactly the referee is looking for, but I feel like it might actually dissuade me from participating. If the judge isn’t known for liking what I write, or is only looking for specific things, then I’m less likely to try in the first place. On the other hand, it would be nice to know why certain pieces were chosen. I like that Vocal seems to be announcing some reasons for their winners, but I certainly wish they were more a review than a vibes piece if that makes sense. As for what I’m struggling with? Hard core writers block, believe it or not. I have a few things on the back burner because they just WILL NOT be written. But as for everything else, just good old block 🤷♂️
A couple things- there was a guy plagiarizing classic poems and new stories found on Medium and probably stories from authors here too. I was thankful when enough people called him out and lodged complaints that they finally kicked him off, but it was over two weeks. He followed me to my Medium page from here during that time, where I promptly blocked him, but it made me realize there is no way to defend your work on Vocal. Who knows how many pieces he took in the two weeks before he was ejected. Writing contests-there did used to be more transparency around who the actual judge would be, usually someone known. It would be nice to see that again, even if they only pick from 50 or so that the Vocal curators cull for them, even though I think generally Vocal seems to have an excellent selection process. I usually think a good percentage of the selections are worthy. I do think the challenges have been great for incubating ideas I might not necessarily reach for, and I’d like to go back and finish a few that I got stuck on before submitting that are still languishing in the drafts file.
I missed this last time, but huzzah! I AM HERE NOW! : D That is incredible that they responded to you and are reading through the comments! It's really encouraging, and even if it takes a bit for CCC to return, I think them responding in this manner is a big deal. As for your topics: I would assume they won't do the Vocal Writing Awards again because of a combination of things: money & man-power. Ever since they've lowered the challenge rewards from $1,000 to $500 I've had this feeling that they don't have the ability to throw around those kind of resources anymore. I hope I'm wrong. As for doing a Vocal Awards on our own...yeah, same problem comes back. :( I would love to be a judge rather than enter anything in, but time & money would be a problem. I actually had a lot of trouble with the Lipogram challenge! I couldn't reach the word requirement as it was too much hair pulling for me. xD A mix of open ended challenges and restrictive ones would make it more interesting. I too have wanted to know more about the judges on the vocal team, and the editorial team in general. As for me, I'm currently struggling with some frustrations that my longer pieces don't do as well as my shorter ones. Like, I get it, it's the internet and social media has given us all brain rot to the point we have negligible attention spans. Yet, it's incredibly disheartening that the stories I put the most effort into don't get the kind of engagement my one-off 'written in one sitting' works do. I've been lucky that one or two of my older, longer stories got a resurgence from being featured by other creators, but it's still night and day.