community — Unattributed

On the Blogging and Writing Metas

July 5, 2026

The view from Lake Michigan from Michigan City East Lighthouse, 2026-07-03.

Fri, July 3rd, 2026: All of these articles were in the Top 12 on Bubbles this morning: You Don't Have to Blog Like Me, Stop Writing for Bubbles, Re: Your Metablogging is Lame, Your Metablogging is Lame as Hell. If you went further there are a lot of similar articles, especially articles talking about blogging platforms. Yeah, so there is a writing obsession running through the Bubbles community. Well alright! Time for me to get on this train to fun and profit!!

Okay, okay, I'm joking. Mostly. Kinda. Definitely.

I agree with the sentiment that writing about writing, and writing about blogging platforms is (potentially) weak content. And that writing targeted simply to get clicks / become popular is lame. Do you know what is even weaker than those styles of content? Yup, you guessed it: complaining about those styles of content.

Metas in the world of writing have existed for just about forever. Longer than any of us have been around. And, guess what? There will continue to be metas in writing long after all of us have joined the ranks of a million monkeys banging on keyboards in another world.

Metas are something that come and go in communities, they are like the waves: sometimes larger and sometimes smaller but if the tides stopped completely we'd be in an even worse situation. Want to achieve low meta-tides? The best solution is to ignore them.

In my experience the thing that matters the most is having your own reason and purpose for writing, and not deviating from it. It's too easy to get distracted by the meta high tides. It can make you want to jump aboard that wave and ride it as far as you can. But in the end you are just left standing on the shore looking for the next big wave to ride.

I'm in the middle of migrating all of my old websites to this platform. Why? The platform I had been using has become a completely unusable mess over the last decade. It is, in my opinion, a top example of the enshittification of platforms. I mentioned it already on this blog as part of a conversation. But, I'm not turning it into content. Why? Covering the enshittification of that platform is a little too on-the-nose for me. Instead, I can stick to my guns and write about the things that I want to write about without the distraction (although, enshittification is well within the range of topics I'm interested in exploring).

The writing in communities like this is at its best when the authors have a sense of why they are writing. They find a core set of values and range of topics and ideas that they want to explore through those values. That makes for more diverse writing: everyone brings something different to the table even when covering the same topic. That makes for more natural and interesting interactions. Much more than everyone riding the next big meta wave.

Categories: #Opinion Tags: #meta, #metas, #enshittification, #blogging, #communities, #community, #waves, #writing License: Copyright Unattributed. Licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0.

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How I Started A New Writing Competition

November 10, 2025

Up-close image of a person holding a fountain pen.

Intro: The End of NaNoWriMo

So, I had heard that NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) competition had come to an end. But, I hadn't known the full extent of the situation until I found a write-up about it via the NaNoWriMo2 website. And, I had only found out about this when I was browsing the Writing section of Feddit.Online (a Fediverse alternative to Reddit), and someone asked if anyone was going to participate in the Novel Writing competition as outlined on the NaNoWriMo2 website.

So, after looking at that site, I made a very quick decision: to start a community on Feddit for the NaNoWriMo2 competition. Nothing specifically tied to whoever had started that website, but just putting together a space where Fediverse citizens could talk about the competition throughout the month of November.

The Birth of FediWriMo

I put the community together on Friday night, October 31st, and waited to see if anyone joined the community. And, sure enough, a few people did join. We're currently standing at 17 subscribers, with 9-10 active on a daily basis.

I'd call that a success for a community started at the very last minute, and with nothing more than word-of-mouth spreading its existence through the Fediverse.

But, I started having some immediate reservations. Not about the community, but about the name and the association(s) with NaNoWriMo and NaNoWriMo2. There were two, in particular:

The name was too close to the old, controversial organization, while we had literally no association with the previous organization.
I don't know the people involved with NaNoWriMo2 website.

So, I thought maybe we should rename the community, and asked for suggestions. There were a couple of thoughts, but not too much input... So I made the decision to rename the community FediWriMo. The idea being that we kept the core idea of being a “Writing Month” community, but this one is explicitly based in the Fediverse.

I also think this is a good idea, as we are not linking in the concept that this is a “National” competition. We're not restricting this to one country, but to anyone that is part of the Fediverse.

What's Next?

Honestly, I just want to get through this month first. We're a small enough group that I am the sole Administrator and Moderator for the community.

There are some things that I think I can manage that would be beneficial to the group.

I would like to grow the community as much as possible within the Fediverse. That's something that I think we can do.

I'd like to bring on some moderators: if we grow the group to a reasonable size, then adding more moderators makes sense.

Also, I think there could be more documentation and resources for the community. This is something I think I can do.

There's a lot more that I'd love to FediWriMo become. But, I won't get into those ideas unless there are a lot more people that want to be involved.

Conclusion

So, that's the story of how I started FediWriMo. If you'd like to join us, please do by joining the Feddit FediWriMo Community. Of course, you can follow the community from Mastodon or your favorite platform.

And, if you like what we are doing, consider joining the FediWriMo Leaderboard. See the community for more details about TrackBear.

Categories: #Arts, #Literature Tags: #community, #fediverse, #FediWriMo, #NaNoWriMo, #TrackBear, #WordCount, #WritingMonth