EDIT: I’m extending the dates to give a few people time to participate.

Please read the instructions below to be clear on what this involves: firstly you submit something you have already created, whether recent or not; then I send your thing to someone else and provide you with someone else’s thing; then you simply say a nice thing about the thing you received.

The closing date for participation is now Monday 7th December, and I will send people their matches on Wednesday 9th. The date by which you’ll need to do your ‘say something nice’ bit remains the 21st.

End of edit! Normal service resumes…

Oh, hey, everyone!

Hope you’re all safe and well and doing as good as you can be in what I’m sure are still really weird times for everybody. In an effort to make the times seem perhaps a little less weird, or at least a little more community-spirited, I thought it might be fun to do a very simple event: low-effort for all involved, and something that’d bring people together just for a little bit.

I know I’m not really active in my old blogging circles these days, and it is a real shame to me that I don’t get to talk to some people as much as I’d like. I think a few people are feeling a similar kind of way; there used to be a lot of collaborative stuff going on, and it’s just a bit quieter these days.

So here’s what I was thinking: a Creative Community Christmas Collab… Thing.

It’s super-simple, I hope, and it’s open to anyone who does any kind of creative thing at all on the Internet. Streamers, bloggers, writers, reviewers, podcasters, musicians, videographers, everyone.

If you want to be involved, all you have to do is let me know by the end of the day this Friday, 4th December. Leave a comment here, hit me up on Twitter, whatever – just give me some kind of contact details for you and include a link to one thing you’ve created (video, podcast, stream, article, story, whatever).

Over the weekend I’ll be randomly matching people up, Secret Santa-style, and on Monday 7th I’ll send everyone the creative thing from their matched participant.

All you then have to do is post something somewhere, anywhere – your blog, on a stream, in a social media post, wherever you like – saying something nice about the person and/or the thing you received of theirs, by Monday 21st December. And let me know where it is so I can share it, too – and, heck, let’s get a hashtag going. Whatever you do, talk about it with the hashtag #CreativeChristmasCollab.

So, to recap:

1. Let me know you want to take part and provide a link to something you’ve created.
2. I’ll give you something that one of the other participants created. (Another participant, who could theoretically be the person you’ve got but is unlikely to be, will receive the thing you created.)
3. Everyone then just finds a way to say something nice about the thing they received, and/or the person who made it.

And that’s it!

So hopefully that’s fairly simple and doesn’t require too much effort. You get two weeks to look at something someone made and find something nice to say; I figure that should be enough!

As for what your something nice should look like, it’s really up to you. If your gifted creative thing is a post about something important to the person who wrote it, maybe you could do your own sort of response to that writing on a similar topic. Or you could write them a limerick. I dunno. I don’t want this to take up too much time – I know we’re all busy and stressed! – but I do hope you’ll put at least a little sincere effort into giving some love (don’t just write ‘it were good’ and leave it at that!).

I’m just hoping it might make a couple of people smile, in which case it’ll have been more than worth it. Maybe you’ll get to meet someone cool you didn’t know before, or maybe you’ll just have a great opportunity to sing the praises of someone you already know and love.

So, er… cool.

I hope to hear from a few people soon!

Stay safe, and much love.