This topic is part of a series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss creative projects they have been working on.

Projects can be personal, professional, physical, digital, or even just ideas.

If you have any creative projects that you have been working on or want to eventually work on, this is a place for discussing those.

✂️🧵✂️ Sanity through crafting! ✂️🧵✂️
While I wait for supplies to come in the mail for my next sewing project, I made use of my hot glue gun and some odds and ends to learn something new and make this boutonniere for my step-son for Valentine's Day. The pink felt is leftover from another project and the green started life as a protective layer for storing that came with a pan. Here's hoping he wants to wear it! 🤞
Front
Back

You are invited to cut right to the heart of things for the first Tildes Writing Club event. Let's road test the club with brief fiction or verse. Got a sonnet that needs airing? Want to weave a brief spell and dip before the magic fades? Let's read it!


Length: less than 500 words of prose, or 30 or fewer lines of poetry.
Theme: Optional. But if you're in search of inspiration, @acdw suggests you work with this palette: love/unlove/hate/red/heart/viscera.
Guidelines: Post your short work in the submissions topic, which will open on 2/14. Throughout the next couple of weeks, leave feedback for at least two other submissions. Brief rules for a brief, trial-run writing event. To opine on the rules that are taking shape for 3/1, reply here.

Let's discuss themes for our March 1 Writing Club submissions. (If prompts or themes aren't your thing, you may write what you like and post when the submission topic opens.) Feel free to suggest a prompt (a scenario, dilemma, or background), a theme, or an ambiguous title to jump-start writing efforts. What do you want to suggest?

All writers are invited to take part in the newborn Tildes Writing Club! Let’s let the club organize as it grows, but as a starting point, I present loose, inclusive guidelines formed from the meeting of ideas in the last thread. (I was going to list aspects as separate replies for easier picking apart, but I guess I can’t make separate replies to the same post.) Feel free call out an aspect to compare it with a different approach.

Schedule

A thread will surface every three weeks inviting you to post your work. You may post your piece to the thread at any time before the next appears, but you risk missing out on readers. Finish and submit your critiques before the next recurring thread. (I declare this quite confidently for someone with no idea how recurring threads work.) Should the inaugural submission thread open on March 1?

Sharing

Reply to the recurring submission thread with a link to your work, which may be housed anywhere you like, including on Tildes. Prioritize venues that are not known to be aggressively anti-privacy (e.g., Google Docs). You may share a selection from a larger work, but your submission should not exceed 7,000 words. Shorter by half that is likelier to be read. There will be no minimum length. You may provide questions for readers in hidden expandable text, if you like.

Feedback

Critique participation will operate on the honor system. When submitting, you are encouraged to provide meaningful feedback to three pieces each cycle. These will be self-assigned. To assign yourself a piece, post a reply to it as placeholder. Assign yourself to pieces that haven’t yet been taken before signing on as a 2nd, 3rd, or 4th reader. That is, while there are still pieces without assigned readers (which will be apparent due to the lack of replies), take one of those first to ensure everyone is getting read. Naturally, you may leave critiques or comments in a free and unregulated fashion if you aren’t submitting work for critique this round. I suggest leaving feedback in the reply you created as placeholder. Others may have better ideas.

Themes / Forms

Hopefully, taking part in the club will motivate you to produce new writing. The community will suggest themes as inspiration after the posting of a submission thread. These could be chosen democratically, or by a rotating theme-warden, but should be mooted outside the submissions thread. I prefer themes to be extremely flexible, rather than a prompt: “Orange; Breathless; Common Parlance;” instead of “On Tuesday you discover the ability to control trains with your mind.” Submissions do not need to follow the theme. We might decide to have a round dedicated to poetry, but then again, why not gather an assortment of forms and genres?

Showcase and ‘Zine

As motivation for writers, and to benefit the wider Tildes community, I would like to see a periodic showcase thread highlighting the best of our work. It makes sense to post this separately, rather than just by tagging exemplary pieces, because most of us will want to improve our submissions with feedback in mind. @acdw has the idea of organizing a ‘zine to further showcase our best work. This, it seems to me, suggests wonderful opportunities for collaboration with visual artists. The schedule for both of these will have to depend on activity in the club.

Spirit

I hope for the club to be egalitarian, advanced by participants with good ideas and a flair for organization. Despite my failings, I hope to be such. To the degree that I can direct the energy of the group, I would like to give the following precept: Be generous. Writers, be a gracious guest in the minds of your readers. Be generous in your criticism. Don't abstain from lauding your favorites--that is important. At the same time, recognize that you compliment writing when you take it seriously enough to voice serious problems you may wish to see it avoid. Interpret criticism in the same spirit of generosity.

I'd like to gauge interest in a writing group. The quality of expression I find at Tildes and the nature of some of the Timasomo projects prompt me to wonder if maybe there aren't enough regularly-writing members to form a circle for critique and support. I have some experience teaching, but never have run a group. I'm a committed generalist--I don't think I would want to limit it to a particular form or genre.

Anyone interested? Have you taken part in one before / belong to one now?

This topic is part of a series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss creative projects they have been working on.

Projects can be personal, professional, physical, digital, or even just ideas.

If you have any creative projects that you have been working on or want to eventually work on, this is a place for discussing those.

(Only took me 2 months /s). Also this map is by no means a complete list.

Santa-pocalypse: What if santa was (a tiny bit more) realistic?

A timeline where Santa delivers his presents via quantum tunneling and due to a failure in this device, he causes a nuclear explosion when he accelerates to relativistic speeds in order to gift Children worldwide. Given nuclear fusion doesn't work like that and the Shockwave travels westward counterclockwise, I disagree with the notion this is realistic, but that's pedantry.

What the fuck: The Timeline

Someone mashed dozens of fictitious worlds and the real world at different times to make a very weird and high-effiry map.

Industrialized, colonial, imperial China

A timeline where the Ming is an expansionist empire and puppets nearly half of the world's population. Given China has been as large and populous as entire continents at times, the fact that China had so much the leadership felt they could be self-sufficient and refuse to try to expand until like, 10 years ago, I find this scenario something that could totally have happened but didn't due to disinterested leadership.

What if the new world didn't exist?

A world where columbus is right about Geography and the Americas don't exist. While I don't think it's particularly realistic, I find this scenario underrated.

A grim, dark rainbow: What if the current rightwards shift of politics doesn't stop?

What it says on the title. Not particularly realistic given the CCP and NATO apparently collapse, but I like to use this map as a stand-in for the worst-case scenario of the near-future.

The dragon in shackles: Qing China and Japan in 1932

A timeline where Qing China re-unifies China, but at large costs to their economy, independence, infrastructure and territory.

Flavo et purpura: A world in which Islam never leaves Arabia Ca 800 AD

A very detailed map with quite a few differences from what happened IRL. Far more romanized.

Spain if the re*conquista continued into North Africa

A timeline where the Spanish conquer the Western half of the Maghreb. The justificarion is that Pre-columbian empires ally themselves to other European nations to not be colonized by Spain, so the Spanish focus their imperialist efforts into neighboring Morocco. Obviously not very realistic, but the maps are cool.

Fictitious maps based on real data:

The world divided into 200 areas of equal population

What it says in the title.

This topic is part of a series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss creative projects they have been working on.

Projects can be personal, professional, physical, digital, or even just ideas.

If you have any creative projects that you have been working on or want to eventually work on, this is a place for discussing those.

This topic is part of a series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss creative projects they have been working on.

Projects can be personal, professional, physical, digital, or even just ideas.

If you have any creative projects that you have been working on or want to eventually work on, this is a place for discussing those.

This topic is part of a series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss creative projects they have been working on.

Projects can be personal, professional, physical, digital, or even just ideas.

If you have any creative projects that you have been working on or want to eventually work on, this is a place for discussing those.

Timasomo is Tildes' Make Something Month: a creative community challenge that takes place in the month of November, where participants from our community self-select creative goals to achieve.

Timasomo 2020 is now officially complete! Participants will be posting their creations and efforts in this thread as a showcase! Comments and feedback from the wider community are both welcome and encouraged! Let these creators know what an awesome job they've done!

Creators: In posting your showcase:

• Give your project a title, and use the # markdown to make it stand out in the showcase thread!
• Link to your project in whatever way works best for your project.
• Give a "creator statement" that contextualizes what your project is.
• Add anything else you consider relevant! The showcase is yours!

Community:

• Treat this thread like a walk through an art gallery or a museum where you get to see different works on display.
• Comments do NOT have to be in-depth -- it is okay to just affirm that you like/love/appreciate something! (In other threads these might be considered noise, but here they are directly validating the sustained creative efforts of another community member!).
• Make sure any feedback you give is constructive.

Unless there are any remaining holdouts still waiting to enter their works in the showcase, Timasomo 2020 has officially concluded! I couldn't be happier with how it turned out.

While the experience is fresh, I want to gather some feedback for next year's Timasomo. Use this thread to identify:

• Positives
• Negatives
• Tweaks
• Suggestions

Basically, what should we keep the same for next year, and what should we change? Feedback is welcome from anyone, but in particular I'm interested in hearing from Timasomo participants.

Also, while I would be more than happy to run next year's event, I think one of the signs of a healthy community is when community events trade hands and leadership successfully. As such, I would like to be able to hand over Timasomo to someone else. You don't have to commit right now given how far away a year is, but just know that come October of next year I'll be seeking someone to take the reins. Let me know if you'd be interested!

This topic is part of a series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss creative projects they have been working on.

Projects can be personal, professional, physical, digital, or even just ideas.

If you have any creative projects that you have been working on or want to eventually work on, this is a place for discussing those.

Inspired by this post on lobste.rs, I thought it'd be fun for us all to post our homepages and talk about them. I'm posting this in ~creative because I think of a homepage as a creative endeavor, but feel free to move this to ~design or ~tech or wherever, mods.

Just post your homepage as a top-level comment, and we'll workshop in replies!

IMPORTANT INFORMATION

Deadlines

The creative portion for Timasomo ends at 11:59:59 PM on November 30, 2020, relative to wherever you are.

The showcase will be next Sunday, December 6th (probably posted around 18:00:00 GMT).

Next Steps

Finish up your project in the next two days. You have the following week to prepare your showcase. This means you can edit, add polish, find hosting, etc. It's your week to get your project ready for however you're wishing to present it! And if you have to cram in a little creativity in that time too, well, I won't say anything. :)

Showcase Logistics

Changes

You can see last year's Timasomo showcase here. It will look fairly similar, but there are going to be a few changes this year based on feedback from last year:

• The Showcase will be hosted in ~talk, not ~creative, to expose the projects to the wider Tildes audience.
• Participants will post their own projects in the comments rather than me posting them within the topic (this is so people don't have to ping creators, and to give participants better control of their showcase entries)

Preparing Your Showcase

• Give your project a title, and use the # markdown to make it stand out in the showcase thread!
• Link to your project in whatever way works best for your project.
• Give an "creator statement" that contextualizes what your project is.

Showcase FAQ

Do I have to share my whole project?

Nope! Only share what you're comfortable with! Snippets, excerpts, screenshots, or even just a summary from you are all fine. Tildes is a privacy-respecting site, and that extends to Timasomo! :)

What if I have more than one project to showcase?

Awesome! Make more than one entry in the showcase!

What if I didn't meet my goal?

It's up to you if you want to participate in the showcase. Even if you didn't meet your goal but still feel you want to share what you did accomplish, that's fine! If not, no worries!

What if I need hosting for files/images?

Please ask here! There are plenty of people here who can help with that.

What if I have a question not covered here?

Please ask here or by PM!

Timasomo FAQ

This topic is part of a series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss creative projects they have been working on.

Projects can be personal, professional, physical, digital, or even just ideas.

If you have any creative projects that you have been working on or want to eventually work on, this is a place for discussing those.

The sky is clear
except for some
soft grey clouds
beyond the hill

The early setting sun shines orange
on the woods
and the houses
that sit atop the ridge

Not a single bird crosses
the pale blue sky
though I can hear
their chorus
and a gentle wind blows
cold
on my face

I can smell the traffic
from the road behind my house
mingling with
the earthy smell of trees
from the field in front

Neither my hot black coffee
nor my dressing gown
are enough
to keep the
cold
at bay
on this
the first truly frosty day
of the year

Weekly Task

Last full week to work on your projects! I'll post the final weekly update next Sunday, and then you'll have Monday the 30th to finish up with the creation part. Do NOT worry about having everything perfect by the 30th -- a rough cut is enough! You will have the first week of December to polish, edit, configure, tweak, etc. and get your piece(s) ready for the Showcase.

Update us on your progress so far. What did/didn't you get done this week? Anything go according to plan? Anything go off the rails? Any successes or struggles to share?

Next Steps

Just over one week left! We'll discuss Showcase logistics next week.

Timasomo FAQ

It was AMAZING to see everyone's progress from last week! I didn't get to respond to everyone but I am so excited to see everything that's shaping up.

Weekly Task

We're at the halfway point! Update us on your progress so far. What did/didn't you get done this week? Anything go according to plan? Anything go off the rails? Any successes or struggles to share?

Next Steps

Continue creating! Two weeks left!

Timasomo FAQ

Weekly Task

Update us on your progress so far! What did/didn't you get done this week? Anything go according to plan? Anything go off the rails? Any successes or struggles to share?

Next Steps

Continue (or, if you're like me and didn't get anything done this week due to US election anxiety -- start) creating!

Timasomo FAQ

This topic is part of a series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss creative projects they have been working on.

Projects can be personal, professional, physical, digital, or even just ideas.

If you have any creative projects that you have been working on or want to eventually work on, this is a place for discussing those.

Timasomo Has Officially Begun!

Weekly Task

This is the thread where you commit to your goal. Post what you plan to achieve this month. Posting in this thread is your official entry into Timasomo.

Next Steps

Get creating! Timasomo is LIVE!

Timasomo FAQ

Timasomo 2020 has concluded. Please visit the Showcase Thread to see and comment on participants' work!

What is Timasomo?

Timasomo is "Tildes' Make Something Month": a creative community challenge that takes place in the month of November. It was inspired by NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month. The first ever Timasomo took place last year. You can see the threads for the previous Timasomo using the timasomo tag, and you can see the final showcase thread of creations here.

What are the rules?

Timasomo is self-driven and its goals are self-selected. On November 1st, participants will commit to a creative project (or projects) that they plan to complete within the month of November. There is no restriction on the methods/products of creativity: writing, painting, code, food, photos, crafts, songs -- if it's creative expression for you, it works for Timasomo!

Though most will be participating individually, collaborations are welcome too!

What is the schedule?

Timasomo begins November 1st and ends November 30th. All creative output towards your goal(s) should be confined to this time. This week prior to the start of November is for planning, and there will be a few days at the beginning of December given to "finishing touches" before we have our final thread, which will be a showcase of all the completed works. Below are the dates that I will be posting weekly threads:

Sunday, October 18, 2020: Announcement Thread
Sunday, October 25, 2020: Planning Thread
Sunday, November 1, 2020: Roll Call Thread
Sunday, November 8, 2020: Update Thread #1
Sunday, November 15, 2020: Update Thread #2
Sunday, November 22, 2020: Update Thread #3
Sunday, November 29, 2020: Final Update Thread
Sunday, December 6, 2020: Timasomo Showcase Thread

This announcement will be posted in ~tildes. All Timasomo process threads will be hosted in ~creative. The final Timasomo Showcase thread will be posted in ~talk.

Can I participate?

Yes! Timasomo is open to anyone on Tildes! The greater Tildes community is also encouraged to participate in discussion threads even if you are not actively working towards a creative goal. This is meant to be an inclusive community event -- all are welcome! If you are interested in participating but do not have a Tildes login, please e-mail the invite request address here for an invite to the community.

Participants will formally announce their plans to enter into Timasomo on Sunday, November 1st, in the Roll Call thread. If you are planning to participate or just want to follow the event, please make sure you are subscribed to ~creative where all of the update threads will be posted.

What if I have ideas for how to run the event?

Please share them here! I am facilitating the event, but I am completely open to feedback and suggestions to make this the best event possible. I want this to be Tildes' event, not kfwyre's!

What a magnificent purchase.

I fixed the saddle on my bike and now it’s less saddle than duct tape.

I was so mesmerized I took it cycling with me, and stopped near the road to put some tape on the handlebar.

It looked neat, sharp, complete.

When I got home I told my husband about my duct tape, and all the little things I could use it for.

He was not very enthusiastic, so I shut his mouth. With duct tape.

I then shut his nostrils and made his head into a cute little football.

It looked neat, sharp, complete.

He wiggled back and forth. It was adorable for a while. And then he stopped.

I need to buy some duct tape.

This topic is part of a series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss creative projects they have been working on.

Projects can be personal, professional, physical, digital, or even just ideas.

If you have any creative projects that you have been working on or want to eventually work on, this is a place for discussing those.

Weekly Task

This is your chance to talk about what you might do, bounce ideas off one another, and solicit feedback in advance of the start of Timasomo 2020. You do NOT have to decide on your official Timasomo project(s) yet, but use this thread to share what you're thinking of (which many of you already started doing in the announcement thread)!

That said, do NOT start working on your project yet either! It is perfectly okay to plan what you will do this week, but the actual creative process toward your goal should not start until November 1st.

Next Steps

The Roll Call thread will go live on Sunday, November 1st. That will be the thread in which you will officially enroll in Timasomo 2020 and publicly commit to your goal!

Timasomo FAQ

This topic is part of a series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss creative projects they have been working on.

Projects can be personal, professional, physical, digital, or even just ideas.

If you have any creative projects that you have been working on or want to eventually work on, this is a place for discussing those.

This topic is part of a series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss creative projects they have been working on.

Projects can be personal, professional, physical, digital, or even just ideas.

If you have any creative projects that you have been working on or want to eventually work on, this is a place for discussing those.

I've been re-watching Avatar: Legend of Korra, and I've always thought Bumi's crazy stories would be super interesting to go into more depth on how they actually happened (if his descriptions were indeed true to life).

Then I thought it would be fun to have a sort of creative thinking exercise where the set up is provided and you have to come up with the details of how the characters got to it. Can you make it work?

Top level submissions will be the end state. You should reply to those top level submissions with how the subjects / characters got to that point while using the information provided in the set up.

Example:

"Yo Johnny, you remember that time we talked our way out of getting arrested using my pet rabbit and a dead cell phone?"

Reply:

"Yea dude, that was wild. I was shitting bricks when he walked up to my window with all that weed we had in the trunk. If Fluffy Jorge hadn't been in the back and your allergy pills hadn't wore off that you wouldn't have been all glassy eyed and looking like you were crying. I don't think he would have bought my fake ass story about your family being in a tragic car accident earlier that day."

I'll provide a couple to get y'all started with, but if you have any good one's feel free to submit those as top level entries!

For a class I have to compose soundtracks and music, and I have no experience whatsoever.
Okay, I played classical guitar for a decade but I never was good at music theory and can barely read notes.

My issue is that I come up with a tune, and I need to dump that information to a recording medium as soon as possible. Translating that tune into a short term memory and playing it out on my guitar doesn't work, as I'll end up forgetting it nearly instantly. The one instrument that I can play is whistling, but that's kinda hard to do for long.

I'm looking for a more intuitive way to input notes into a computer.
I was thinking of some kind of pitch slider that continuously plays a note (limited to notes, no microtones) that I can control with an external input device like a knob or potmeter / by moving my mouse up and down, and then hit a button to input that sound, moving on to the next note. No delays inbetween, just immediately starts playing a new note.

Like the computer whistling a note for me, and me adjusting the pitch and length.

I can move my mouse quite precisely & can adjust pitch pretty easily when whistling, it's just that translating music from head to an instrument will never be as intuitive as something like whistling.

It's not supposed to be perfect, on-point music, just enough to record the vague idea and process it later. It also should be super minimalistic, I'd preferably only have the slider, the play/pause button, the confirm note button and a "save to file" button.

I'm not sure where I can even start finding something remotely related to this. I've looked around and tried a bunch of music software, but it's all either complicated or unintuitive.

Anyone know something like this?

Edit: As this website puts it;

Intuitive music composition requires that you hear the musicality of the music as you are composing it. Which means that you have no choice but to compose by playing.

and

You cannot intuitively compose music by entering note data into a software application.

This topic is part of a series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss creative projects they have been working on.

Projects can be personal, professional, physical, digital, or even just ideas.

If you have any creative projects that you have been working on or want to eventually work on, this is a place for discussing those.