Should I, or Should I Not?

It is the month of March and time for you to help me make a decision. Should I, or Should I Not?

And at this point you’re wondering what I’m talking about, right?

Well, let’s get some background for you, a little bit of history, a bit of data and armed with that, we, you and I, working as one, as it were, can come to some sort of understanding on the path forward.

To wit: Should I, or Should I Not.

Background

Years ago, I set up “The Little Red Blog”, as a way for lonely, Little Red Bloggers to meet other Little Red Bloggers. That morphed into

The Irregular SloWord BirthMonth Festival.

This festival with the snappy title comes along every August to celebrate our guests by hosting fiction, non-fiction, poetry, music and other works from a diverse set of guests. Its main purpose is to give back to the community of creatives something we all crave; a chance at reaching more people outside our current circle.

In short, I offered free publicity, with free and voluntary participation.

After a couple of false starts, The Irregular SloWord BirthMonth Festival kicked off in 2020.

It has chugged along for the past 6 (six) years, since then.

Participation

I have thoroughly enjoyed reading what has come through from the participants. Creativity and commentary that has entertained, illuminated and made me think about the world we live in. As an aside, it has made me think and wonder why I don’t have ideas that I can convert into compelling stories like those I received.

As you can see from the chart, participation rates haven’t exactly blossomed over the past 6 years. The trend line does seem to be moving heroically upwards, more in anticipation, as it were, hope being present in buckets.

Feedback

Apart from the actual contributors, there were other folks who showed interest, queried me about participation, and, in some cases, showed excitement about contributing. Sadly, some were unable, due to the exigencies of their life getting in the way of creativity. Some didn’t follow through.

Aside from this, there was a certain sentiment that was expressed that made me wonder, and this has contributed in some measure towards the question I am asking you.

The sentiment was: this is vanity, and you are simply trolling for clicks on your website, so, they felt, they didn’t believe they needed to participate.

Effort

There is some effort that goes into setting this up. As a sole proprietor of this website, with no staff, it falls upon me to do everything.

Annual Thematic, Formatting, Pre-submission publicity

Every year, I scour my collection of photographs for suitably summery photos to use for the year’s Festival. This requires selection, formatting, trial and error.

The post layout is reviewed every year to seek opportunities for improvement.

All the publicity posters have to be developed by this decidedly un-arty chap and then posted on social media to drum up support.

Submission Processing

Not everyone follows the recommended procedures for submission, with pieces coming in through various channels. This requires this techie to do some techie stuff to separate the content from the chaff, as it were.

In some cases, editing is required. This can be minor, but there have been cases where substantial back & forth has been necessary.

Then the upload and formatting into the site takes up a chunk of time to make sure it looks reader-ready.

Approvals from contributors can also take a bit of time, due to my own travels, and others schedules.

Festival Publicity

Once the schedule is set and posts start going live, there is the business of more publicity posters and social media engagement.

The Question

Should I, or Should I Not continue with this annual effort?

I’m asking for your help in this. After all, this is a fair amount of effort I take on every year.

Do you feel this is something of interest? Is there value in this? Am I wasting time I could spend elsewhere, such as eating okra, hating cats, buying socks, traveling to distant lands, writing my own stuff and staring at the walls of my office?

You tell me.

Please!

Check out the poll and send me your comments!