I’m going to open a chatroom. I want it to be available to all writers of all genres (and philosophies, faiths, politics, issues, etc etc etc) with the need to interact in real time for whatever (legal) activities they need. They would be able to create different sub-chatrooms on the fly, which would poof as soon as it emptied. We can host writing challenges and goal setting and anything else a writer might find helpful to do in real time with other writers.
The URL is writechat.net. It’s not hosted yet. In fact, it’s barely registered.
Now, to do this, it’ll cost a little over $200 a year for the domain name renewal, hosting, and chatroom software. I’m thinking about taking donations for it. I figure, if 200 writers would find something like this useful, each could donate $1.
But the fact is, I’m going to open it anyway. WHEN it gets opened is up to my budget, so the donations part would only speed up the process and give everyone a sense of investment in the community.
So let me know what you think about donating, either here or on Twitter, with hashtag #writechatnet.
By the way, I barely moderate. Anything. Ever. About the only thing I object to (that I can think of at the moment; there may be more) is sharing kiddie porn and/or links. I cut my internet teeth on the unmoderated newsgroups of UseNet and the chatrooms of IRC way back in the day and I have no stomach for telling adults how to behave. So it’ll probably be wild and woolly for a while until like wills to like.
UPDATE: Well, then, here we go!
Awesome idea!! I can gladly donate some dough on payday.
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I’ll donate! Is there a Paypal link in the house?
Not yet. I’m trying to gauge the interest in donations. I’ve never done this before, so I feel funny even talking about asking for donations.
I’m in for ten bucks.
I just tried the PayPal button and got an error at PayPal’s website.
I’ll try again tomorrow…
Should work now. *sigh* Oh, WordPress, bless yer heart.
Success!
In for ten. Just donated.
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I love this idea!
I just mentioned it in a post on my blog — I’ve been thinking about reviving a Word Count Buddies group (I always called it The Union) I was part of a while back. The daily word-count goal, and knowing that there were people somewhere who would notice if you were just daydreaming about writing instead of DOING it — and having other people to talk to who were doing the exact same thing as you — contributed to the most productive writing time I’ve ever had.
But realizing that I have neither the technical know-how nor the drive to acquire and use it, let alone the clout to attract any sort of social nucleus, I was wishfully thinking how nice it’d be if some interested person were to appear who already had those things…and then… 🙂
Not that anybody really reads my blog these days, but I’ll be pushing anyone who’ll listen to donate and participate in WriteChatNet.
Thanks and thanks for the plug!
What one dedicated room would be is for challenges. That is, one goes there, someone times 20 minutes, and you write during that time. At the end of 20 minutes, you tell how many words you wrote and share bits if you want to.
It’s amazingly effective at motivating people.
I need to do an update post on how much money people have donated.