Dear, dear, dear Rewriters,
First of all, don’t panic. It’s only a small change, and I think it’ll hurt me more than it hurts you. In fact, I’ve been arguing with myself over it for the past two weeks.
Time constraints dictate that, for future Inspiration Mondays, I can only promise to read the first ten unique submissions (“unique” meaning from different people). This doesn’t mean I won’t read your submission if it happens to be number eleven. It just means I might not read it. I will also continue to link to ALL submissions (so keep linking back!).
This is in no way a guilt trip or a veiled request for less participation. The whole point of InMon is to write more! I hope that more people will continue to be regularly involved, and if any of you even thinks of apologizing for participating “too much,” I will hire a private investigator to find out where you live so I can go smack you upside the head.
Really, this was bound to happen sooner or later. If I want this thing to grow, I can’t limit it to what just one person can keep up with. But even now, as my cursor hovers over the “Publish” button, I am hesitating. I don’t want you to think I don’t care, or that reading your work is even a chore – it’s not! This is like giving up chocolate or something. All week long, I was reading submissions, thinking – what if she writes something this fantastic next week and I don’t even read it? What if he tops himself again next week and I miss it? Plus, you’ve all been so kind and supportive. So even though this is torturing me, I wanted to be up front with you guys about the what, the why and whatever else.
First Tuesday posts, now InMon reading, are you slowly inching away?
No! I’m simply instituting practical guidelines for myself so I can keep this good thing going. There’s so much I want to do with this blog! But I only started blogging seriously last February, so I’m still gauging how much I can handle.
Will there be any other changes to InMon in the future?
If the submissions keep building, I may have to limit links. For instance, if we get up to 40 or 50 per week, I may only link to the first 25. But for now, I’ll continue linking to all submissions.
The only other changes I can foresee might be how I select the 10 to read or the 25 to link – I may start choosing randomly, or focusing on new faces. Also, there may be some “break” weeks for holidays like Thanksgiving, Christmas, and the Super Secret Project.
What is the Super Secret Project???
I can’t tell you yet! But I’m about 25% of the way into preparations.
And another thing…
I don’t want you to look at me as some kind of faceless, inaccessible “expert.” First, I’m not really an expert. I’m still learning, too. Second, this is a community; we should help each other. So talk to me! Ask me questions! If I can possibly help, I will.
A question to leave you with:
What do you guys think about maybe, possibly, sometime in the future self-publishing a collection of the “best of InMon” in a book? All the Rewriters would pick the best of their submissions, and we’d put them all together in a book through Lulu.com or something like that. Nothing fancy—it would only be marketed to our small community—but I think it would be cool. I’ve created a poll (click through if you are reading through email/RSS), and feel free to elaborate on your thoughts in the comments.
EDIT: Okay, I can’t figure out how to get the poll up. Just let me know what you think in the comments.
