Scribes and Makers

scribesandmakers

Scribes And Makers Logo © Lydia VVinters used with kind permission *** Questions for June 25 *** About and FAQ *** Older Questions *** Resources ***

Questions for June 2025

  • 1. What do you want to work on this month?
  • 2. How do you define your creative style?
  • 3. Did you ever try Kintsugi? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kintsugi
  • 4. What's the most challenging creative activity you've started? How did it work out?
  • 5. Have you tried sculpture or pottery? Tell us about your experience.
  • 6. What’s your best dish? What are the ingredients and how do you make it?
  • 7. Do you plant a garden each year?
  • 8. Create a multiple choice poll listing 4 books you've read, then ask “Which of these have you read?” (Indie/self-published encouraged, but list anything you want.)
  • 9. Tell us about the book that received the fewest votes yesterday.
  • 10. What role do you think social media plays in shaping photography trends today and impacting emerging photographers?
  • 11. Do you give any of your work away for free?
  • 12. How can we, as adults, get excited about art/creativity again? (credit @SJHoodlet@writing.exchange and @EmmaCox@writing.exchange)
  • 13. Self-promotion day: show us what you're proud of. Let's boost away.

14 Talk to me day. Featured creator: Rachel A. Rosen ( @youseeatortoise@wandering.shop )

  • 15. How is your creativity so far? Anything you want help with?
  • 16. Have you ever tried hyperbolic crochet?
  • 17. People here are open minded and don't want to gatekeep, but where do you draw the line? Aside from AI, which most agree on, what does not count as art?
  • 18. Share pic(s) of something you've created. (Don't forget the alt text.)
  • 19. Did you ever try talking a friend or loved one into taking up your creative activity too? How did it go?
  • 20. What fictional character do you most closely identify with and why?
  • 21. What sort of environment makes you feel the most creative?
  • 22. If things don't go well with your creative project, do you give up or persevere?
  • 23. Do you like to look at the creative projects of others as much as you like doing your own?
  • 24. Tell us about a time when you pushed yourself outside your comfort zone with your creativity. How did it go?
  • 25. What do you like about #ScribesAndMakers ? What could be better? (Please also consider replying to the poll @saposcat@indieauthors.social posted today.)
  • 26. What?
  • 27. If someone wanted to learn your art/craft, what advice would you give?

28. Talk to me day. Today's featured creator is: C. R. Collins ( @crcollins@writing.exchange )

  • 29. What is your proudest or best moment with your creative endeavor this month?
  • 30. How did it go? Any changes you want to make next month?

*** About and FAQ *** Older Questions ***

Scribes And Makers Logo © Lydia VVinters used with kind permission Questions February 25 *** About and FAQ *** Older Questions *** Resources ***

February 2025

Intro Questions

Today begins a two-week introductory period for #ScribesAndMakers. I was inspired by a friend who started a monthly group where we met up at a local café for drinks, baked goods, and conversation about our creative work. We talked about our progress, asked for help if needed, and offered encouragement. I wanted to create something in a similar spirit for an online community, with goals, check in days, and daily questions. Please feel free to suggest any questions you would like to see.

  • 15. Welcome to #ScribesAndMakers. Tell us about yourself and your creative work. (Unless specified, work refers to all your creative projects.)
  • 16. We're considering a monthly featured creator day. We would develop a few questions for you and encourage the community to do the same. Anyone interested in being featured would contact us and we would schedule a day for you and let you know which month it would fall in. This could give people more engagement and an opportunity to self-promote separate from our monthly “boost away day.” Would this be of interest to you?
  • 17. Do you create for income? As a professional or as a hobby? Or for fun/ for yourself?
  • 18. Do you have multiple creative outlets? Are they distractions, or do they work synergistically?
  • 19. Do you find creative work therapeutic? If so, do you do it for that reason, or is it more of a side benefit?
  • 20. Do you measure progress with something quantifiable, like word count, or something more abstract, like resolving an issue?
  • 21. Do friends/family give you gifts for your activities, or do you buy all your own supplies?
  • 22. Which creative activity gives you the greatest satisfaction, and why?
  • 23. I do my best work in ___ ?
  • 24. Time management. How do you manage to fit one or more creative activities into your day/week?
  • 25. Do you buy your supplies online, at discounters, or in specialty shops?
  • 26. In writing and with other activities, do you stick to one genre/category (e.g. historical, portraits, sweaters, architecture)?
  • 27. Have you ever written to a writer/creator to tell them you liked their work? Did they respond?
  • 28. Shameless self-promotion day. Let's boost away.

Please feel free to suggest any questions you would like to see. You can either pm or mention them to @saposcat@indieauthors.social, to @willelm@indieauthors.social, or to @gahlearner@writing.exchange, or just post them under the monthly question posts.

Scribes And Makers Logo © Lydia VVinters used with kind permission About and FAQ *** Monthly Questions *** Resources ***

About and FAQ

About

#ScribesAndMakers is a hashtag game on Mastodon for writers and other creatives. I was inspired by a friend who started a monthly group where we met up at a local café for drinks, baked goods, and conversation about our creative work. We talked about our progress, asked for help if needed, and offered encouragement. I wanted to create something in a similar spirit for an online community, with goals, check in days, and daily questions. Please feel free to suggest any questions you would like to see. You can either pm or mention them to us (see below)

FAQ

(click on the little triangle on the left side to see the text)

How do I contact you when I have questions for the hashtag game, or when I want to be featured? Either pm us, or or just post them under the monthly question posts. “We” are Walter Thinman (@saposcat), Will Elm @Willelm, and @gahlearner

What is the Talk To Me Day? It is one or two days in the month where we feature one specific creative person. We give the names of the featured creators at the beginning of the month so people have enough time to look at profiles and posts, and think about what they would want to ask. Getting more engagement is the name of the game. We ask one starter question each to get the conversation going and then it's your turn. When you post your questions, please tag the featured person and add the hashtags #ScribesAndMakers and #TTMD

Tell us if you want to be featured too. You don't have to have a product available. We're interested in hearing from all kinds of creative people and what you do. Absolutely feel free to use it as a marketing opportunity if you've got things out there, but also don't feel like you have to. We want it to be an opportunity to talk about what you're into.

Please be kind. We will post the 'dos' and 'don'ts' we get from creators regarding personal questions, or things they don't want to discuss. Thank you for respecting their wishes.

This isn't a 'live chat' event. You post your questions if and whenever you want to, and the featured people will answer them, but people won't always be able to answer right away.

I don't know where to start with TTMD, where do I get information about the featured people? If you want to ask questions on Talk To Me Day, and don't know where to start, there's a hashtag #SAMInfo – that gets you to my replies to all the people who introduced their activities on February 15. There's a lot of info there. This, people's profiles, their webpages, and maybe their posts should give you a good idea about their creative activities. And if you can't come up with your own questions, you can always join other conversations.

What is Shameless Self-Promotion Day? Do I need to have a published book to answer that?

This is a day, once a month, where you can promote yourself. You can tell us about your published books, or about your art exhibitions, about the socks you've just knitted, a prize you just won, or anything else creative you want to share with us. It can be a marketing event for you, but it doesn't have to be. And you get boosted. We support each other.

What are hashtag games and prompts and how do they work? In the writing community—and many others—different people post prompts or questions on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. These can be prompts for writing flash fiction or a poem, to showcase what you did last week or month, or they can be questions that are, more or less, related to writing or other activities. People answer these questions and use the hashtag, so others can easily find their answers. That's what many call hashtag games. The strictest rule for most of these is: be kind to each other. The prompts are often written by individuals or a group of people who keep the game running and usually participate and interact with the people who play. These people usually post a list of questions for the month, or the daily prompt. The questions often also can be found on blogs, websites or google docs maintained by them, just check out their profiles.

Here's a short list of hashtag games and prompts about writing and creativity.

There are many more games and prompts. If you have games you want to see on this list, please pm us.

Steve DeGroof @degroof@mastodon.social compiles a plain text list with the monthly questions of four of the hashtag games here in this google doc file

What is The Scribes And Makers Write Together?

It is a site where we collect the round robin stories that were written by participants of the #ScribesAndMakers hashtag game on Mastodon. It was a prompt question on July 16, 2025: Let's make a story. I'll start, then people keep adding to the thread to see where things go. It was a fun game, and if someone wants to continue, The Scribes And Makers Write is the place to go. Feel free to add to the stories in the comments. No login required.

*** Monthly Questions ***