Hi everyone! This is just a reflection of my personal experience (and confusion) with this writing contest (?).
To be honest, I haven’t tried this platform before I heard about Friends Who Write, so I am just starting to learn about the territories and stuffs. I initially took this contest as a writing contest, like the sort in which you publish your weekly short stories etc, but it seems to be more complicated and includes a lot of different genres, and it’s not only for fictions. It would be hard for you to find anything useful as an advice/instructions from this post (except a list of the easiest territories to join) as I’ve got no idea what I should do, but it might be helpful if you are in the same situation, and I would be grateful if you could answer some of my questions 😉
My major question is: how can I know the status of my teammates from this website? Do we have a team interface that we can access? I just received an email from Wanshu that starts with "Don't forget to complete the sign-up for FWW S2 today!" Honestly, this line made me a bit anxious, as I just realized the registration deadline for my time zone is seriously approaching, yet we can't find any evidence for our team’s existence.
Yesterday, my hastily gathered team member and I registered on the competition's interface (hoping neither of us misspelled the team name), and got confirmation emails, yet we got no idea about what we should do next. I felt that I need to explain everything to my innocent team member whom I dragged into this event (lured with the promise of a writing competition with cash prizes), but I’ve got no clue myself. We came up with a team name At 1 AM yesterday and designed our team logo based on the logo other teams from last year in the introductory page (to avoid copyright issues, we drew our logo ourselves, although I personally despise her drawings). I hope to see how could I view our existing team members, upload our designed logo, and keep track of how many t.p.s my teammate has earned (in this regard, I trust her far more than I trust myself). I do trust my friend for registering, but it just feels good that you can actually see how they are doing.
Regarding posting questions, I know that we could join a Discord server to ask our questions, but when I tried the link emailed to me, all I got was a page as welcoming as a pile of cold, gray poop saying that the invitation is no longer valid…let's not go into details. I can't let my teammate see it as she'd be too amused with businesses like this like she had always been. Anyway, I wonder if it’s still possible for us to get a new link and join? Is there anything that I missed by not joining the discord server?
Plus, I realized that just signed up and already missed a deadline! The registration deadline is on 14th March, yet the last submission deadlin is on 8th March. Makes me wonder, for those of us who registered before the registration deadline after the first submission deadline, do we still have a shot at the consistency prize?
Part of the reason I'm bringing all of those stuffs above up is that I realized this post is already pretty lengthy, which might just help us hit this week's 1000-word goal. I'm not entirely sure if this article will count towards our team's total score after it's published, but hey, consider it a bit of a personal strategy. As the above part is only around 600 words, here's an outline of what I've learned so far:
To meet FWW's requirement, we need to post a 1000-word piece weekly in any territory.
To win the consistency prize, we need to publish something before the deadline. (The coming one is on 11:59 tomorrow)
We need to first join any territory to post anything on this site.
Both readers and writers can earn t.p.s on this site, and t.p.s can be used to join territories.
As part of the game, we must join the territory of Friends Who Write, which has a membership requirement of 5tp (pretty heavy compared with other territories).
Therefore, as someone who just registered in t2 to join Friends Who Write, what you and I could do today is:
1. Read something in any territory to earn enough tps (like this one?).
2. Join the territory of Friends Who Write using 5tps.
3. Join any other interesting territory with a membership that’s cheap enough to afford.
4. Write something more than 1000 words and post it in that territory before the 11:59pm deadline.
5. Earn more t.p.s from the posts you made (or simply by reading).
6. Join other territories that are perhaps more expensive
For step 3: here’s a list of territories with cheap membership deposits that I found:
TwiggTales: membership 0 t.p.
Stories: membership 0 t.p.
Confession: membership 1 t.p.
OuLipo: membership 1 t.p.
For step 6: here’s a list of territories that are pretty expensive to join:
PopScience: membership 50 t.p.
Illumination: membership 33 t.p.
Also, I wonder how exactly could one set up their own territory here? I've been digging around and participating as much as I can, but I'm really interested in creating a space that's a bit more tailored to my interests. Any advice or steps you could share would be super appreciated!
And before I forget, a massive thank you to everyone who's made it through this post! Whether you're here out of curiosity, looking for tips, or just stumbled upon my ramblings by chance, thanks for spending your time with me. It's been pretty hard trying to figure out everything I want to say, and your patience is important for me. Hope we all have a great writing experience! Thank you very much and cheers!