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[butterflydreaming]

My day-to-day is pretty much devoid of validation or praise, and I don't know how to fix that. There isn't even payout on the things that should generate mild affirmation.

It stands out as a major highlight that last week, my niece brainstormed a movie plot over take-out, and we wrapped it up wishing it were a real movie. The creative zone alone was something I keep trying to make happen in my life (with low success).

I've been over two years with my job and I know my bosses aren't the kind to give praise. But I can't seem to make it happen in my personal life, either.

Comments

[igenlode]

The only collaboration I ever did was on a Web message board -- and that was because it was supposed to be a roleplay, but only the two of us kept going after more than about three posts. Which had the benefit that with only two people handling all the characters we were able to develop some actual plot/story, instead of just having everyone 'playing' their own character...

But that one was simply done on the basis of posting a scene up to a cliffhanger/endpoint and then waiting to see what the other person would do with it next. So there really wasn't any longterm plot planning involved, even though it did turn out with quite a satisfactory arc in the end. http://ivory.ueuo.com/Tower/Fiction/Pirates/index.html

I'm not sure that a lot of people in that sort of scenario are necessarily interested in creating an advance structure -- and my experience is that most people in most groups are more than happy to let someone else make the decisions, and don't actually want the responsibility and trouble of having to do it themselves. There are usually a handful who will speak out and a lot more who sit around in the background and will go along with whatever is decided. If you got *half* your participants taking an active role in decision-making, I'd have said you were doing unusually well!

Provided you've got the ideas, I imagine the rest of the group is probably quite happy with that. And no, they're probably not super-interested in the sense of wanting to influence the direction of the story, but just want it to be available for them to participate in wheneverthe mood takes them....

It's nice to be able to ping-pong ideas off someone, but I really don't have very much experience of it, and it's not my normal form of creation.