Community Letters

An Opening Note

15 April 2020

Dear Community

This is the first letter in this book, and with this fabled position comes the incredible onus upon us for it to be fantastic, memorable, and to share the primary example of what we hope this book will someday be.

Summarily, the fairest place to start is to address the primary reason for establishing this book: 

While we are a community, and we hope to be holistic and fantastic and exceptional in every way, there are dangers of losing interpersonal connection and individuality in a constructed collective. 

One of our prime goals in the Community Interactive is to preserve that individualism, to maintain what makes every member of the group unique. We don't wish to fit everybody to the same mould, as much as we don't wish ourselves to be part of one. The idea is to bring everybody's uniqueness to the table, mix it together and create something substantial and beautiful that is more than the sum of its individual parts.

We highly encourage connection, and hope that we can maintain that both as community and as individual Wattpad users that have found our way here together.

So, that is what this book is for, and from this point forward, I shall no longer refer to the collective 'we', but only myself. 

From here on out, I don't speak on behalf of the community. I speak as a member of it.

I want this book to be a place for open discussion, for reviewing ideas, airing concerns, giving thanks, making demands, yelling into the abyss and positing opinions, so I asked the team to all write their first letters to community to be our opening chapters to forum.

I have no idea what they'll say, and I won't control it (other than minor editing, if needed). I did give them a gentle nudge to write positively so we can spread the feel-good vibes, and I'll do the same.

I'll begin with the journey to how we got here, and then I'll finish with some higher notes on how the back-end of the community works.

It started when I became (quite by accident - I might have been a bit drunk at the time) a judge for Weekly Wattpad Contests. I've always wanted to participate in a TeenFiction contest, but I never felt the courage to so. Well, I must have mixed up the announcements, because an account I had only briefly seen had announced that it was looking for judges, and I mistakenly  believed this was the TeenFiction account.

I thought to myself, Well, if I can't write, I can enter at the other end and see how things work from that perspective. 

I applied and received a response from Contests - they wanted me to make a test contest, and my first ever attempt at writing a contest was Slices of Life. I tried to make it interesting and unique, and I framed the entire contest as a cake-baking contest. 

Contests later messaged me and notified me I was the new judge. I was happy, and very confused about the affair, since I had no idea what the Contests account was or how I ended up there.

Contests was quite prolific, and I was blessed to have entered into a community that was so well established already, though it seemed to be dangling on a few hinges at the time. The participants, however, were great, and while I found my footing over the course of a few weeks, I met some exceptional people, found some exceptional stories, and discovered the beautiful culture around contests. 

I found that there was a gap for making it positive and helpful. With the help and guidance of the community, we managed to carve out a niche for ourselves, and we happily Contest-ed for well over a year. 

During this period, I've met some of my favourite people in the world, who are now an integral part of my team. They slowly started helping me out when I started testing the waters with my monumental and revolutionary idea (in my head at least) of Community Projects. 

Through circumstances in life, however, I've managed to let Contests fall into disarray and I've lost contact with the owner of the account.

But, my team and I are absolutely passionate about the unique contest culture we've managed to develop. It is my core belief that these contests shouldn't be competitive, since that was what had deterred me from entering in the first place. I want contests to be engaging, fun and informative, a platform for authors to connect and test ideas while flexing their writing skills, to learn from each other and to teach.

And that has become a major pillar for our Community Interactive, an attempt at reviving and uplifting a community like that. 

My most notable influence in this regard was the Wattpad Ambassadors Program (I had met one in passing long before, but I never quite knew what they were). When I found out more about them, their goals seemed to run parallel with my own, so I applied and was accepted. Funnily enough, I did finally post a contest for TeenFiction. I guess dreams truly do come true. 

In training, I've learned a lot about how to manage profiles and a team, and they've afforded me the opportunity to truly engage in developing Community Interactive (thanks, skidzipop !  The help has been invaluable) .

So, from the ashes my team rose and we laboured away to get to this point. I'm very thankful for them, and I hope they enjoy the work they do.

That has been your history lesson on the origins of CI.

As for how the CI works, or how I intend for it to function, I honestly want my team members to each breathe their own life into it.

I love my team, and every member of it has unique skills and attributes that I treasure. In that way, I try to bring it all to one table and mix it into something beautiful. It's exactly the heart of the community, and I want that subsist in every level of our community development, from planning contests, engaging in projects, playing war-games on our discord server, to connecting with new people and appreciating the beauty they bring to community while we help them toward their own goals.

And more than that, you, the community, are a part of my team. Your insight is valuable and appreciated. I want to make this a community for you in which you have control. 

So, in your Community Projects, in the Weekly Contests, in our engagement projects and in this book, you are always welcome to speak your mind and make choices. 

This has been a long-winded essay on the art of waffling, by yours truly

With Great Affection

TimberWoolf