Green Room - Week 23 - Day 5

[clauderainsrm.livejournal.com]

Let's try this again: GOOD MORNING!!!

How are you doing?

Have you gotten in your entries: http://therealljidol.livejournal.com/454553.html yet? It's currently looking like half and half!! Considering that the deadline was extended until TONIGHT, hopefully that means that people were taking advantage of that extra time to get it right.

Or at least be less wrong than usual. ;)

So - now that at least half of you have delivered your entries, how did working with three people differ from your experience with two? (and no, I don't mean "there was someone else!". I am curious how the give-and-take worked and if it was massively different/better/worse?

Comments

[java-fiend.livejournal.com]

GOOD MORNING!

And hey, FIRST! :-)

I got my entry in a full day before the deadline. This is an obvious sign of the Apocalypse.

I enjoyed working in trios... it was fun and let you explore the different sides of a story. There was a lot of give and take between theafaye, xo_kizzy_xo and I and I think the net result is a pretty good tale from three different viewpoints. I enjoyed it a lot.

Hope everybody has a great Hump Day!

[xo-kizzy-xo.livejournal.com]

WOOT, you're first, partner!!!!! :throws confetti:

...and I'm so glad you got my message about posting in the entry thread!

[lawchicky.livejournal.com]

I thought for a brief second that I'd get a "first" when I saw this post at the top of my friends list, but you beat me to it! I cannot believe you got the first AND you submitted a whole day early (and before me).

[nyxocity.livejournal.com]

Yay first! And wow, a whole day early. The world is surely coming to an end any moment now.

[millysdaughter.livejournal.com]

Good morning!
**brings in coffee**
Cannot stay long -- back to work this morning.
**pouts**
**whines**Doanwanna go!

[roina-arwen.livejournal.com]

I can use some coffee right about now - thanks!

[momebie.livejournal.com]

You know, I often think that I'm not doing these right. I generally just suss out the prompts and where the hands go and then go on my merry way, write my thing and be done with it. Last week comedychick let me look at hers before she put it up, but then I just sort of put mine up, not really figuring that it mattered if someone else looked over mine. This week I tried to correct that by sending cheshire23 and basric a draft last night, just so they'd know what's up, and by happy coincidence my post and Cheshire's post share themes.

I feel like maybe I'm trying to make it harder in my head than it really should be. Maybe just sussing things out and going your own way is a perfectly fine way to go about it.

*sighsigh* I'm so bad at playing with others!

In other news, I would really like it if my body would stop giving me shit and actually sleep or something. This whole being exhausted all the time thing is for the birds.

[xo-kizzy-xo.livejournal.com]

This whole being exhausted all the time thing is for the birds.

Trust me, you're not alone in that respect :p

[xo-kizzy-xo.livejournal.com]

One thing I've taken away from these intersections besides working with Awesome Fellow Idolers is the respect for different approaches, schedules, time differences...everything. Intersections basically demand flexibility and lots of give-and-take. In the greater scheme of things, there's a lot to be said for that :)

[pixiebelle.livejournal.com]

Totally agree. I love trying new styles I might not have thought about before. My intersection pieces always feel stronger than my regular ones because they are different than what I'd normally write and that's a very good thing :)

[lawchicky.livejournal.com]

It was actually very cool to work in a threesome once we got the topic/schematics worked out. It's a little more complicated than just having one partner, but I love the way my team worked out! I'm off to post the link for my entry now :)

I'm grateful for the extra time, particularly because we were working with three partners and dealing with the usual time zone/work schedule issues. Although we all finished writing last night, this gave us an opportunity to circulate our entries again before the deadline.

The baby has a doctor's appointment this morning, so I'm off the hook from work for a few hours. I'm back in Surrogate's Court again tomorrow. Joy (insert sarcasm) joy. Oh, and the hubby is completely bogged down in royal wedding coverage such that they're keeping him in NYC tomorrow night so that they can have him work all odd hours day and night. It's extremely important that we Americans get an hour of primetime coverage of the wedding on Thursday and then TWO hours of coverage Friday night!

Yeah, so I kissed him goodbye this morning and will probably see him again on Saturday.

[serpentpixie.livejournal.com]

OMG Royal Wedding coverage is driving me MAD. EVERYTHING here has suddenly been covered in Union Jacks.
On the positive side, there's loads of offers on alcoholic drinks at the supermarket ^^

[alephz.livejournal.com]

I know that I, for one, had a blast with the process. It's a bit more complex, having to coordinate with TWO other people as opposed to just one, but the mix of personalities was really good. Or at least I feel like it was.

Though I imagine they probably got real tired of seeing the "alephz has sent you a message" mail in their respective LJPM inboxes 'cause witht he subject matter I just sort of babbled on and on.

As I am wont to do, at times.

But they took it in stride, even though I was crap communicating some last-minute changes and overlooked a few things that had to get corrected just before our posting (sorry, guys!).

A really fun couple of people to work with, I must say. But, again, a very different enterprise than working with just one other person 'cause the conversations are a bit longer and involve more people and the logistics (particularly given our utterly mismatched timezone placements) were a bit rougher to figure out.

[pixiebelle.livejournal.com]

That mismatched time zone thing is a challenge all right...it's hard with two people, but three? And my team had us spread apart on three different continents too. It was insane, but really cool too!

[nyxocity.livejournal.com]

Man, I have been so sick. Am still sick but must sadly try to drag my butt to work today, because a third day out will not only look bad but will cost us too much money.

Working with three people as opposed to two... There was a lot more give and take and discussion. I feel like it allowed us to tell more of a story by showing several different sides to it. For as much fun as working in teams was for me, working as a trio seemed to be even more fun, maybe because of the extra dynamics involved.

And now I'm off to shower for work. Bleh.

[ecosopher.livejournal.com]

Feel better...

[pixiebelle.livejournal.com]

I think my group takes the cake for worst time differences possible. We still made it work with all three of us on different continents! Who else can claim that, huh? It's certainly a challenge to brainstorm when at least one of us was asleep at any given time. We never had a time when all three of us were awake at once. But you know what? I had the best partners and we made it work really well. A threesome is certainly harder to coordinate than a regular intersection, but I got lucky to have awesome partners so it was a blast! I think my partners entries rocked and I wouldn't have had my idea at all had it not been for their entries and ideas inspiring me.

I'm very pleased with our efforts. I couldn't be more pleased actually. We posted last night and now we can spend the rest of the time mud wrestling before the poll comes up. ;)

[alephz.livejournal.com]

Two continents and an island's gotta be pretty close, anyway.

[serpentpixie.livejournal.com]

I've been loving all the intersections, actually -- I was initially kind of wary about working with other people (because I've tried that in offline projects and it's never worked out) but then every single person I've worked with has been so brilliant and so much fun - everyone here seems to have so much respect for other people, it's a real treat to come across that :)
I didn't really find the three-way much different from the pairs to be fair - it was just a case of hitting "reply to all" instead of just "reply" - and it's all been so good.

Which I realise is a very boring comment, but 100% worth saying. Why is everyone here so damn cool?

Also the extension probably saved my bacon tofu this week. I had a uni deadline yesterday morning and the extra day definitely gave me the time I needed to put my entry together to my satisfaction (I have hilariously high standards, which I will not call perfectionism because nothing is ever perfect). I could've done it for last night, but why rush when you don't need to?!

[pixiebelle.livejournal.com]

That's one reason I almost always post last minute. I have ridiculously high standards. I could almost always post something a day or two earlier, but I tweak it and take my time until I'm happy or time runs out on me (it's usually the time thing lol).

[snarkerdoodle.livejournal.com]

Good morning! Nothing too exciting happening for me today -- a conference call in about 20 minutes (I seem to spend an inordinate amount of time lately on conference calls) and then the workday after that.

Based on my experiences with the two-people intersections, I would assume the three-person one would have been harder in terms of coordination but even better in terms of storytelling. More to explore, more ways to look at one character or storyline, etc. So as long as the logistics could be made to work, I'd think that would really be the only big downside.

[pixiebelle.livejournal.com]

Ew at the conference call. I can hardly stay awake (and often don't) during them :p

[roina-arwen.livejournal.com]

No threesome for me, even though I do like them now and then, lol.

Survived a tornado watch unscathed, phew.

My bowling team took 3rd place for the season, so that was a nice surprise!

[pixiebelle.livejournal.com]

I thought about writing about a literal threesome...but I figured my partners were too classy for that ;)

My family has had several tornadoes in the last couple weeks. Scary business. I'm glad I don't have to worry about that (nope, just earthquakes and wild fires for me...on second thought, maybe I'd prefer the tornadoes :p)

[joyfulfeather.livejournal.com]

Good morning!

I really enjoyed working in a trio. Somehow it felt more lively to have three people in the conversation than just two! And my partners were great. We didn't get as involved as I know some teams do - we mostly just agreed on who would do which prompt, shared our ideas for our prompts, agreed that we're all awesome, and wrote. Basically: A++ would trio again!

Also, I loved that these prompts let me indulge my current superhero obsession. I now have two new characters to play with!

[redvelvetgrrl.livejournal.com]

thats basically what we did too, very easy to coordinate topics and give each other some encouragement and generally have a nice time, feel connected to fellowwriters :)

[drjeff.livejournal.com]

Whoa, you mean this whole Idol thing is continuing WITHOUT ME???? That doesn't seem very polite!

[pixiebelle.livejournal.com]

It's hard...but somehow, we keep pushing on without you...hard to believe, huh? :p

[shadowwolf13]

No threesome for me .. at the moment. ;)

I wouldn't have minded but given that I'm home game now I doubted that anybody would be interested.

As for how I'm doing ... better than yesterday. That's progress at least.

[roina-arwen.livejournal.com]

Yay for progress. The next time there's a threesome, I'll snap you up for a HG thread! :)

[lilycobalt.livejournal.com]

I home gamed it this week. I did not put together a trio, because I figured that would be going a bit overboard, but that probably would have been kind of fun. On the other hand, if everyone eventually gets every prompt, I'll probably continue with home game entries that tell other sides of this story. My entry is here (http://nialyind.livejournal.com/313966.html).

[pixiebelle.livejournal.com]

Last season, I did a home game threesome with comedychick and joeymichaels that was a blast! It was late into the season (top 5 or so). It barely got read I'm afraid, but it's one of my favorite intersection pieces ever (well till recently, these last few have been awesome too!)

[beeker121.livejournal.com]

I'm good. How're YOU doing?

My entry is in. I am excited for other folks to read it and my partners', so that's a good sign right?

I think the extra day came in especially handy because it was Easter on Sunday and not everyone spent the day strapped to a computer.

Today was supposed to be my day of nothing before I fly to Minneapolis tomorrow, but somehow my to do list has gotten full of things. I need to get started on that.

[pixiebelle.livejournal.com]

I'm very excited for people to read my groups entries this week too, which is a good thing I think :)

I usually write on Sunday, but you're right, Easter kept me away from the computer. I was totally stressing until my partner told me there was an extension :)

[amenquohi.livejournal.com]

My partners and I have written would could be the start of an epic series of novels. Seriously. This week has been fantastic fun, and I've really enjoyed this experience.

[locknkey.livejournal.com]

I'm so in love with collaborations - they suit me. :) I like the give and take and I think the it works as long as you are not too attached to any one idea. :)

I had awesome partners this week - nyxocity and team_jessie. The brain storming was awesome and I think our results are very neatly tied together while still topical. :) It was a blast!!!!

[cheshire23.livejournal.com]

I am very, very pleased with how my trio's entries came out!

I am also posting from my phone and will have to properly link everything once I am home. :)

[joeymichaels.livejournal.com]

Liked my partners, liked the entries we produced, liked the working together process, but still don't like intersections. They make me feel like, if I fail with my piece, I've messed other people up. That, in turn, messes with my mojo - I stress out about my writing more than I do when I'm just ripping out a regular weekly entry.

I'm not much of a poll watcher until the final day of voting, but I watch the polls very day during the intersections and fret, fret, fret.

I've said it before, I'll say it again - I'm more interested in people reading my stuff than getting votes. Except for intersection weeks. I want to carry my weight for the team, you know?

Anyhow, all of the my intersection partners for the last three weeks have rocked, but if I survive to next week, and if its another intersection, I am just going to sit on the floor and cry for a while.

[comedychick.livejournal.com]

You know, as many people left as there are that I'd be interested in working with for an intersection, those things stress me out, too, and I think I'm ready to move on from them. I haven't even lined anyone else up in advance yet ;)

[comedychick.livejournal.com]

Okay, now I'm in the green room and my husband is not yet awake but I'm watching the baby crawl around the room, I think I can leave my own comment XD

I suppose Pixie has already touched on how well we worked together this week. It really helped that I was already friends with both of my partners this week and had worked with them last season, because I didn't have to stress about the group dynamic - I was pretty sure we'd all be able to work well together. This was probably the first time in an intersection where I actually stepped back rather than taking the lead, due to the fact I was asleep when they did their initial brainstorming, but I found that actually worked really well for me. I liked what they came up with, and I liked that their ideas inspired my own. I'm not sure I would necessarily have had an idea to work with this week if I hadn't been working with who I did.

But I've had simply wonderful experiences with all of my intersection partners, both this season and last. I've been really grateful for that. I think it probably helps that I'm relatively easygoing and flexible, and have been full of ideas that have seemed to match well with everyone I've worked with. I suppose I have plenty of life experience so I can usually find some common ground with just about anyone.

There are still a bunch of folks I'd like to work with if this comes up again, but I'm running out of people I know would work with me, and I'm afraid of asking people when I'm not sure if they'd want to work with me too!

[yachiru]

I found that duos were easier for me at least. I think it makes for easier collaborating. Plus we had that Easter weekend sucking my soul in.

Writing or eating that pie out of the tin with a fork? >_> Pieeee.

Still! I liked throwing strange ideas around and watching some stick.

[vaguelyclear.livejournal.com]

It really didn't differ too much for me. There were still time zone issues to work around, of course, but in terms of the process, we threw out some ideas, picked one and rolled with it. Drafts were sent to one another and small edits made, but for the most part it worked really well, and I'm thrilled with what we came up with :D