Entries for label: challenge

Found 3 entries.

My Proudest Moment for KiwiWriters

In all the work that I've done in getting the KiwiWriters site up and going this year, I have just finished the thing that I am most proud of.

Finally, after many months of wrangling, I have pretty much wrapped up the Challenge section of the site. So let's look at the stages I had to go through to make it happen:

  • I needed to do a quick release so we could use it for The 6,000 Word Easter Challenge and prove the concept and implementation
  • that initial release did pretty well and not much was changed to be able to add SoCNoC 2007 not long afterwards
  • at the same time, I added the lovely participation icons and the progress bars for anyone that wants them
  • since then, I've added the ability to choose your timezone and have the challenge work with your local time
  • I've just released updated code to actually use it :-)
  • next will be a script to log everyone's daily progress to the database
  • soon that will also be reported on the site
  • added to all this, the admin interface to add/edit/delete new events
  • plus finally, the ability for the members to add their own events

So already there is quite a lot but the other thing I really like is that the challenges can be of many different types - not just word counting. I think it is an uber-cool feature that we wanted from the start and I'm very happy with the implementation being all nice and data-driven.

It seems other challenge-based writing sites put all their effort into one challenge a year, which to me, also sounds like manual-database-editing overhead-hell. Being someone who hates restrictions and one of the most important requirements for KiwiWriters as a group was to have the ability to stage many challenges throughout the year and the ability to let members create their own.

So I/we made it multi-evented from the start and now it's blossoming into it's own little world. Soon we will have even more challenges:

...not to mention lots more when we release the 'member' challenge section.

As always, what are you waiting for, Join Us!

Labels: kiwi-writers, challenge, planet-catalyst

Inserted: 2007-07-27 00:02 (3 years ago)

A Descriptive Challenge

I have added a new challenge in Kiwi Writers, is small and simple. Why don't you join us?

Have a look at my latest challenge on Kiwi Writers., It is A Descriptive Challenge.

It's only small, will take only half an hour per day over this coming Friday, Saturday and Sunday and is really easy. Why not come and Join Us and join in the fun.

Progress can be posted in the writing forums and usually there are people offering encouragement there too.

What are you waiting for?

Labels: kiwi-writers, challenge, writing

Inserted: 2007-02-27 23:37 (3 years, 5 months ago)

NaNoWriMo Back on Track

After pulling out all of the stops these past 9 days, I'm now back on track to completion.

The best part about it is that my novel is getting more and more exciting every day I write some. It's been gaining momentum for the past week now and I'm still about 3 days (of writing) away from the climax!

I feel it's just flying off my fingers at the moment, so at least that means I should be able to continue and make the 50,000, especially since the amount I have to write has now come down to below 1,600 per day.

Finally, to all those keeping track of my progress, or any other Wrimo's progress, I challenge you to do it next year. I have already said that this will be one of my most favourite personal achievements so why not give it a go. I know I'm not finished yet, but either way it's been really good and just keeps getting better.

I went along the weekly Wellington Write-In at the library yesterday and one of the other Wrimo's mentioned a few novels which happened to be around 50,000 words. I didn't realise this but when you think of the likes of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" which you have held in your hand at one time or another, well this will equate to that - if only in volume :-)

When I print it out at the end of the month, I think my smile will be broader than my face!

Labels: nanowrimo, challenge, personal-achievement

Inserted: 2006-11-20 23:21 (3 years, 8 months ago)