Monthly Activities
Oct. 23rd, 2024 11:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysabetwordsmith posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
newcomersSome communities and individual blogs have monthly activities or events that take place at a particular time. Most of these happen either at the beginning or the end of each month. Others happen at different times, such as "the first Tuesday" or "the 15th." Many people like to pick several events to space out through the month. Events that run for one month also fall into the category of monthly events.
Fannish activities often advertise infandomcalendar and/or fandom_on_dw so watch those if this field interests you. Of these, fandomcalendar offers a convenient Frequency: Monthly tag, although not all relevant posts use that tag. fandom_on_dw does not offer frequency tags, but is a popular place to post all types of fannish events.
Other topics can be harder to hunt down because moderators often do not mark their community with interests such as "monthly," "every 4 weeks," or other helpful descriptors of timing. You can still find them by watching your reading page for things that your friends are doing. Some monthly events have banners that participants can use to promote them, and even with those that don't, you may see friends talking about what things they have signed up to do.
If you like "bleg" posts (short for "blog begging" where you ask questions of your audience) then this is a great topic for that. You can ask your friends what monthly events they are doing and/or which ones they recommend for you.
30 Days of ...
Many challenges have a 30-day structure, whether online or offline. Some folks will grab any set of 30 and post it to their blog, usually one day at a time. These are great if your brain tends to go, "AAAA I don't know what to post about AAAA" when you sit down to write. It's also a quick way to jumpstart a community. Here are some you might like to try:
30 Daily November Journal Prompts For Journaling Inspiration
30-Day Blogging Challenge on Live Love Simple
30-Day Mediterranean Diet Challenge on Eating Well
30 Day Poetry Challenge on PS Poets (for April)
The 30 Day Relationship Challenge on Proflowers (for February)
30 Days of Instagram content in 8 Steps on Ivory Mix
This should also work for creating image content on Dreamwidth.
30 days of journal prompts on Jo Club
30 Days Of Writing Prompts on Thought Catalog
30 Fantastic and Fun November Writing Prompts
31 Autumnal Harvest Posts for Drawtober
65 Amazing 30 Day Challenge Ideas to Improve Your Life
Art Challenges: A List by Month
How To Run A 30-Day Challenge To Engage Your Blog Readers on Blogging Wizard
Monthly Writing Prompt Calendars
October Writing Prompts
Awards
Some communities have a monthly award. You are most likely to see this feature in the major fandoms where people are posting and/or recommending many new works. It helps people find the "best of" works to read, and sometimes there is an AO3 collection for this purpose. Other communities do an award every 2, 3, or 4 months depending on volume. You can search for these via the Format: Awards tag over onfandomcalendar. Another option, because awards often provide a badge to winners, is to watch for those badges on fanworks and then backtrack to the award itself (the badge often links to the award page).
A few individual bloggers do something similar. If they are posting, linking, or recommending a large volume of material then they may have an award to mark the best ones. When you find someone doing this in a topic you like, but you don't want to flood your reading page, you can just watch for their award posts. If you plan to blog a great deal about your favorite topic, consider this a tool to reach readers who want a lower level of traffic but still love the same things you do.
You can read more about awards on Dreamwidth here.
Calendars
Most calendars cover a full year. Communities or individual blogs that have month-long activities will often schedule these using a calendar, so that members can see what is coming up for each month. These will usually appear in December or January, as described in the Annual Activities post.
For an example of an annual calendar with monthly events, see the Community Calendar 2024 over inallbingo. This creative bingo community hosts a new fest each month, occasionally more if there is a new fest and a recurring one that overlap. This year's calendar is full, but the 2025 one will go up in late November or early December. Do you have a favorite fandom but haven't found your fellow fans on Dreamwidth yet? You could check out this community, because all fandoms and original work, all formats and lengths are welcome. November's theme will be Sleepytime Bear Bingo.
However, some highly active communities also post a monthly calendar. These can list events by week, which is more common; or by day, which is less common. If you decide to host a community, this is a good way to organize activities. It also works on a private blog when you have many favorite topics.
Month-long events may use a calendar too.
In December, of course, the most popular version is an advent calendar, originally a little display where you opened one window each day to reveal a treat leading up to Christmas. On Dreamwidth, this usually means revealing a new story or other content each day. Some fests set up for the advent season a month or more in advance, so watch for them in late summer to fall, with the "reveal" phase in December. Advent fests come and go over time, so this is a format you can use in your favorite fandom or other topic in the future.
adventdrabbles -- Drabbles for winter time.
hd_owlpost -- Celebrate with Owls
Harry/Draco Winter Gift Exchange.
holly_poly -- The Holly Poly Exchange
Holly Poly is a poly-based fanworks exchange for fanart, fanfiction, fanvids, and podfics.
ksadvent -- Kirk/Spock Advent Calendar
An annual fest celebrating Kirk/Spock throughout the month of December
25 Days of Draco and Harry seems similar in concept.
Fan Fests, Challenges, and Similar Events
Fan fests typically have an active period. Many run for one month. A few run a little longer, but not as long as the quarterly fests. This includes some bingo fests and many challenges for small-size works such as icons or drabbles. The best places to find these are infandomcalendar and/or fandom_on_dw. You may also wish to look for fandom-specific communities such as merlin_fests, oz_wishing_well, potterfests, or stargatefests.
Monthly events usually take place within an established community, rather than a new one made just for that event. The community may do other things besides the monthly event, or it may be just for that thing. For example,allbingo hosts a new fest each month, but not much other activity, although a few fests also make a "meet and greet" post where members can talk about the theme they love. crowdfunding hosts a Creative Jam on the third weekend of each month, but members are free to talk about any other crowdfunding interests as well. Some communities are only for posting or recommending fanworks, and just the theme changes each month.
When you use the Interest search box, Dreamwidth lists bloggers or communities based on the most recent updates. Thus communities that are active at least once a month tend to float right to the top. Few fandoms are active enough to have more than one page of communities that busy. There are more individual bloggers, though, so it's less of an effect there.
In addition to Dreamwidth, you can find some of these activities over on Archive of Our Own (AO3). Many Dreamwidth activities also have an archive for entries on AO3, which helps connect the two venues. If you plan an event here that will generate fan content, it's a good idea to create a collection for it on AO3 and advertise that as part of your description for the event. Communities that run monthly fests may have a separate collection per month if they generate large volumes of content, but not many are that busy. So they may just have one collection for everything from that community.
Examples include:
Challenge 80: Reverse Fandom: Warehouse 13 onficlet_zone (multifandom)
October PROMPT # 33: Intellectual Attraction onemotion100 (multifandom)
October Prompt # 132: Chocolate cures the frights indove_drabbles (multifandom)
October Prompts onhp_bunintheoven
fancake is among the biggest communities with monthly and other themes. See their Rules Post for details.
Fall Fest in October and Sleepytime Bear Bingo Fest in November onallbingo
List of Multi-fandom Prompt Communities onpotterfests
trope_of_the_month
Trope of the Month is a community for fanworks with a different theme each month.
Recurring Posts
Monthly activities are a big category of recurring posts. Most of these appear either on the first day or the last day of the month. However, some bloggers use a different marker such as the "first Monday" or whatever.
Community moderators use recurring posts to notify members about scheduled events, ask for volunteers, update members on community activity levels, encourage interaction, and so on. Usually this is just a copy of the basic form message, sometimes with changing details (like a monthly theme) updated accordingly. Here is the October Monthly Post forcrowdfunding.
Individual bloggers often use a recurring post to track things of personal interest. Writers may post the number of words written each month. Fanwriters may post a list of works created with links where you can find them, or just announce that they updated their Master List of Fics.
See the entry on Recurring Posts in my own blog for more ideas.
everykindofcraft -- Every Kind of Craft
For sharing information, advice and images about all sorts of crafts projects, old or new.
[Monthly check-in post where people can share their progress in comments below.]
goals_on_dw -- New Year's Resolutions and Other Goals
This community supports goals and goal setting. New Year resolutions can be for any "new year" holiday in any calendar or culture. People can also make or modify goals at other times or other lengths. January 1 just happens to be a popular example.
Here you will find resources about making and keeping resolutions, pros and cons of setting them, ideas for resolutions, alternatives if traditional resolutions aren't your style, goal setting systems, and more. Check-in posts will be weekly in January, likely monthly in the rest of the year but may include additional posts for other "new year" dates.
[Monthly check-in post where people can share their progress in comments below.]
Other Monthly Activities
Some monthly events don't fit neatly into any of the large categories. These are among the hardest to find, but well worth hunting if you want something outside of fandom. Watch your reading page for banners or friends talking about these events. You can also ask your audience if they know of any.
Bloggers may grab a "month of" and feature it. With a little searching, you can often find a list of prompts or suggested activities for that month's theme. For inspiration, see a list of month-long observances or awareness months. Your favorite worthy cause(s) will probably have one somewhere, so you can search that too. Watch for resolution-themed posts in January; some people like to run this as a month-long event.
crowdfunding hosts a Creative Jam on the third weekend of each month, but members are free to talk about any other crowdfunding interests as well. Next up will be November 16-17 on "Unconditional Love." There is no Creative Jam in December, to minimize holiday overload.
dialecticdreamer runs Feathering the Nest (always on fluff & comfort) and Magpie Monday (different theme each month). Leave prompts, get ficlets!
Winterfaire will open from just after Thanksgiving through Christmas. (See Winterfaire 2023 for an example.) If you make gift-suitable things to sell, come post a booth; if you're shopping, come let us know what for.
ysabetwordsmith hosts a Poetry Fishbowl, customarily on the first Tuesday of each month. Next up will be "Healthy Touch & Nonsexual Intimacy" on Tuesday, November 5. Leave prompts, get poetry! If a new person participates, then an extra free poem gets posted.
Fannish activities often advertise in
fandomcalendar and/or fandom_on_dw so watch those if this field interests you. Of these, fandomcalendar offers a convenient Frequency: Monthly tag, although not all relevant posts use that tag. fandom_on_dw does not offer frequency tags, but is a popular place to post all types of fannish events. Other topics can be harder to hunt down because moderators often do not mark their community with interests such as "monthly," "every 4 weeks," or other helpful descriptors of timing. You can still find them by watching your reading page for things that your friends are doing. Some monthly events have banners that participants can use to promote them, and even with those that don't, you may see friends talking about what things they have signed up to do.
If you like "bleg" posts (short for "blog begging" where you ask questions of your audience) then this is a great topic for that. You can ask your friends what monthly events they are doing and/or which ones they recommend for you.
30 Days of ...
Many challenges have a 30-day structure, whether online or offline. Some folks will grab any set of 30 and post it to their blog, usually one day at a time. These are great if your brain tends to go, "AAAA I don't know what to post about AAAA" when you sit down to write. It's also a quick way to jumpstart a community. Here are some you might like to try:
30 Daily November Journal Prompts For Journaling Inspiration
30-Day Blogging Challenge on Live Love Simple
30-Day Mediterranean Diet Challenge on Eating Well
30 Day Poetry Challenge on PS Poets (for April)
The 30 Day Relationship Challenge on Proflowers (for February)
30 Days of Instagram content in 8 Steps on Ivory Mix
This should also work for creating image content on Dreamwidth.
30 days of journal prompts on Jo Club
30 Days Of Writing Prompts on Thought Catalog
30 Fantastic and Fun November Writing Prompts
31 Autumnal Harvest Posts for Drawtober
65 Amazing 30 Day Challenge Ideas to Improve Your Life
Art Challenges: A List by Month
How To Run A 30-Day Challenge To Engage Your Blog Readers on Blogging Wizard
Monthly Writing Prompt Calendars
October Writing Prompts
Awards
Some communities have a monthly award. You are most likely to see this feature in the major fandoms where people are posting and/or recommending many new works. It helps people find the "best of" works to read, and sometimes there is an AO3 collection for this purpose. Other communities do an award every 2, 3, or 4 months depending on volume. You can search for these via the Format: Awards tag over on
fandomcalendar. Another option, because awards often provide a badge to winners, is to watch for those badges on fanworks and then backtrack to the award itself (the badge often links to the award page).A few individual bloggers do something similar. If they are posting, linking, or recommending a large volume of material then they may have an award to mark the best ones. When you find someone doing this in a topic you like, but you don't want to flood your reading page, you can just watch for their award posts. If you plan to blog a great deal about your favorite topic, consider this a tool to reach readers who want a lower level of traffic but still love the same things you do.
You can read more about awards on Dreamwidth here.
Calendars
Most calendars cover a full year. Communities or individual blogs that have month-long activities will often schedule these using a calendar, so that members can see what is coming up for each month. These will usually appear in December or January, as described in the Annual Activities post.
For an example of an annual calendar with monthly events, see the Community Calendar 2024 over in
allbingo. This creative bingo community hosts a new fest each month, occasionally more if there is a new fest and a recurring one that overlap. This year's calendar is full, but the 2025 one will go up in late November or early December. Do you have a favorite fandom but haven't found your fellow fans on Dreamwidth yet? You could check out this community, because all fandoms and original work, all formats and lengths are welcome. November's theme will be Sleepytime Bear Bingo.However, some highly active communities also post a monthly calendar. These can list events by week, which is more common; or by day, which is less common. If you decide to host a community, this is a good way to organize activities. It also works on a private blog when you have many favorite topics.
Month-long events may use a calendar too.
In December, of course, the most popular version is an advent calendar, originally a little display where you opened one window each day to reveal a treat leading up to Christmas. On Dreamwidth, this usually means revealing a new story or other content each day. Some fests set up for the advent season a month or more in advance, so watch for them in late summer to fall, with the "reveal" phase in December. Advent fests come and go over time, so this is a format you can use in your favorite fandom or other topic in the future.
adventdrabbles -- Drabbles for winter time.hd_owlpost -- Celebrate with Owls Harry/Draco Winter Gift Exchange.
holly_poly -- The Holly Poly ExchangeHolly Poly is a poly-based fanworks exchange for fanart, fanfiction, fanvids, and podfics.
ksadvent -- Kirk/Spock Advent CalendarAn annual fest celebrating Kirk/Spock throughout the month of December
25 Days of Draco and Harry seems similar in concept.
Fan Fests, Challenges, and Similar Events
Fan fests typically have an active period. Many run for one month. A few run a little longer, but not as long as the quarterly fests. This includes some bingo fests and many challenges for small-size works such as icons or drabbles. The best places to find these are in
fandomcalendar and/or fandom_on_dw. You may also wish to look for fandom-specific communities such as merlin_fests, oz_wishing_well, potterfests, or stargatefests. Monthly events usually take place within an established community, rather than a new one made just for that event. The community may do other things besides the monthly event, or it may be just for that thing. For example,
allbingo hosts a new fest each month, but not much other activity, although a few fests also make a "meet and greet" post where members can talk about the theme they love. crowdfunding hosts a Creative Jam on the third weekend of each month, but members are free to talk about any other crowdfunding interests as well. Some communities are only for posting or recommending fanworks, and just the theme changes each month. When you use the Interest search box, Dreamwidth lists bloggers or communities based on the most recent updates. Thus communities that are active at least once a month tend to float right to the top. Few fandoms are active enough to have more than one page of communities that busy. There are more individual bloggers, though, so it's less of an effect there.
In addition to Dreamwidth, you can find some of these activities over on Archive of Our Own (AO3). Many Dreamwidth activities also have an archive for entries on AO3, which helps connect the two venues. If you plan an event here that will generate fan content, it's a good idea to create a collection for it on AO3 and advertise that as part of your description for the event. Communities that run monthly fests may have a separate collection per month if they generate large volumes of content, but not many are that busy. So they may just have one collection for everything from that community.
Examples include:
Challenge 80: Reverse Fandom: Warehouse 13 on
ficlet_zone (multifandom)October PROMPT # 33: Intellectual Attraction on
emotion100 (multifandom)October Prompt # 132: Chocolate cures the frights in
dove_drabbles (multifandom)October Prompts on
hp_bunintheovenfancake is among the biggest communities with monthly and other themes. See their Rules Post for details. Fall Fest in October and Sleepytime Bear Bingo Fest in November on
allbingo List of Multi-fandom Prompt Communities on
potterfeststrope_of_the_month Trope of the Month is a community for fanworks with a different theme each month.
Recurring Posts
Monthly activities are a big category of recurring posts. Most of these appear either on the first day or the last day of the month. However, some bloggers use a different marker such as the "first Monday" or whatever.
Community moderators use recurring posts to notify members about scheduled events, ask for volunteers, update members on community activity levels, encourage interaction, and so on. Usually this is just a copy of the basic form message, sometimes with changing details (like a monthly theme) updated accordingly. Here is the October Monthly Post for
crowdfunding.Individual bloggers often use a recurring post to track things of personal interest. Writers may post the number of words written each month. Fanwriters may post a list of works created with links where you can find them, or just announce that they updated their Master List of Fics.
See the entry on Recurring Posts in my own blog for more ideas.
everykindofcraft -- Every Kind of CraftFor sharing information, advice and images about all sorts of crafts projects, old or new.
[Monthly check-in post where people can share their progress in comments below.]
goals_on_dw -- New Year's Resolutions and Other GoalsThis community supports goals and goal setting. New Year resolutions can be for any "new year" holiday in any calendar or culture. People can also make or modify goals at other times or other lengths. January 1 just happens to be a popular example.
Here you will find resources about making and keeping resolutions, pros and cons of setting them, ideas for resolutions, alternatives if traditional resolutions aren't your style, goal setting systems, and more. Check-in posts will be weekly in January, likely monthly in the rest of the year but may include additional posts for other "new year" dates.
[Monthly check-in post where people can share their progress in comments below.]
Other Monthly Activities
Some monthly events don't fit neatly into any of the large categories. These are among the hardest to find, but well worth hunting if you want something outside of fandom. Watch your reading page for banners or friends talking about these events. You can also ask your audience if they know of any.
Bloggers may grab a "month of" and feature it. With a little searching, you can often find a list of prompts or suggested activities for that month's theme. For inspiration, see a list of month-long observances or awareness months. Your favorite worthy cause(s) will probably have one somewhere, so you can search that too. Watch for resolution-themed posts in January; some people like to run this as a month-long event.
crowdfunding hosts a Creative Jam on the third weekend of each month, but members are free to talk about any other crowdfunding interests as well. Next up will be November 16-17 on "Unconditional Love." There is no Creative Jam in December, to minimize holiday overload. dialecticdreamer runs Feathering the Nest (always on fluff & comfort) and Magpie Monday (different theme each month). Leave prompts, get ficlets!Winterfaire will open from just after Thanksgiving through Christmas. (See Winterfaire 2023 for an example.) If you make gift-suitable things to sell, come post a booth; if you're shopping, come let us know what for.
ysabetwordsmith hosts a Poetry Fishbowl, customarily on the first Tuesday of each month. Next up will be "Healthy Touch & Nonsexual Intimacy" on Tuesday, November 5. Leave prompts, get poetry! If a new person participates, then an extra free poem gets posted.
