#FFXivWrite2023

[sea-wolf-coast-to-coast]

FFxiv 30 Day Writing Challenge SEPTEMBER 1st - 30th, 2023

Welcome to YEAR 7 of our annual FFxiv 30 Day Writing Challenge, folks!

Last year we had 11,165 total entries! Which brings us to a total of 42,947 unique written entries over the last 6 years. That is just incredible! And something that I think that we should be super proud of as a creative fan community.

Whether you're new to the FFxivWrite community or a 6-year writing challenge veteran, if you'd like to give perfectionism in your creative writing process a swift kick in the butt, then this challenge was designed for you!

More info is below the cut~

Here’s the gist:

Runs from September 1st - 30th, 2023. During that timeframe:

Visit sea-wolf-coast-to-coast​ once a day at 12:00pm (noon) PDT for the prompt of the day. Convert to your timezone accordingly. All prompts will be one word or brief phrase that you can interpret however you please.

You have 24 hours to write something for that prompt.

Submit the link to your entry post via this Google Form: https://forms.gle/ixGUFKnYqKLz64Cw5

There are no length or skill requirements (short & sweet is fine!).

There will be no 24-hour deadlines for the first week, September 1st - 7th. The deadline will go into effect on September 8th at 11:59am PDT.

Makeup/extra credit days every Sunday.

Every entry posted within its 24-hour deadline will count toward a participation prize raffle at the end.

You can join any time with any prompt #! There’s no need for latecomers to start with prompt #1. Picking up with the most recent prompt is A OK.

If you’re an artist and you would like to volunteer to do a simple black & white illustration as a participation prize at the end of this challenge, you can volunteer here!

RULES & MORE INFO can be found here: https://ffxiv-write.carrd.co/

(( banner art - by @dantinmikannes ))

Rules & Info || Prompt List || #FFxivWrite2023 || kofi

[nightambre]

FFxivWrite2023 Participation Prize

FFXIVWrite 2023 Prize for @lemoncotte of her very pretty-in-pink lass. Congratulations, and thanks for being my first miqo!

[deathflare]

FFxivWrite2023 Participation Prize

a portrait for @karoiseka! congrats to everyone who created for ffxivwrite~ i'm happy i had time to contribute prize art this year ^^

thank you to @sea-wolf-coast-to-coast for organizing!

[velnica]

Reading the rules for FFXIV Write and I'm just reminded of how much fanfics, for whatever reason, is held at a much higher standard than fanart. Like no one cares if an artist spits out a rough sketch for warmups, but a rough fic is treated so much more poorly. Which I get, really, reading a fic is way more effort than glancing at a fanart so if you think it isn't worth the time you just spent, then of course you'd feel negatively. Still, imperfection in writing feels like it's so scrutinised compared to visual medium.

Maybe it's just my personal feeling bleeding out as an ESL writer with a bunch of grammatical mistakes, but this isn't a new sentiment either; and I'm one of the lucky ones who could, and did, weather those 'little criticisms' people threw my way. I wish people would be more encouraging to those imperfect fanfic writers because in the end we do this all for free and out of love 💖

[puckarooni]

A prize for sagewren_ on twitter! This is a make up prize from last year's event. I wanted to get it out before this year's event started Thank you for joining & for having an awesome character! Thanks @sea-wolf-coast-to-coast for organizing the event!

[valeriannnn]

FFxivWrite2023 Participation Prize

@grumpy-limsan-customs-cat, here's your boy! Neyha'li was a lot of fun to draw, and I hope i did him justice :3

Thanks to @sea-wolf-coast-to-coast for hosting the challenge!

[cosmodynes]

FFxivWrite2023 Participation Prize for pocketpanda Organized by @sea-wolf-coast-to-coast

[eemamminy-art]

FFxivWrite2023 Participation Prize

FFxiv Write 2023 Participation Prize for @paintedscales ! This is their lovely WoL Nomin! It was wonderful to have a chance to draw her! :D Thank you for participating in FFXIV write this year, and big thanks to @sea-wolf-coast-to-coast as always for putting it together!

[dicenete]

FFxivWrite2023 Participation Prize

I volunteered to draw a prize for one of the FFXIVWrite event winners and here it is! Anne belongs to @teiraven ^^ I had so much fun doing this and being part of this event. Totally gonna volunteer again next year if I have the time!

Go check out Tei's twitter as well ^^ (I have a twitter but I'm not active there anymore :P )

Thank you for @sea-wolf-coast-to-coast organizing this lovely event!

[saisissa]

FFXIV Write2023 Participation Prize

This is my participation prize art for @maxima-priscus for entering FFXIVWrite 2023, hosted as always by @sea-wolf-coast-to-coast! 🥳 They naturally requested (a very cutely freckled) Maxima! I had a lot of fun drawing, and though I was worried about maintaining his likeness, I hope I did him justice! Enjoy!

[dennydraws]

FFxivWrite2023 Participation Prize

I was volunteer artist for the FFXIVWrite event once more ~ :D Big thank you to @sea-wolf-coast-to-coast for organizing this for yet another year! This cool bun is Hakan Camoa who belongs to @cfs-melkire ~ and I had so much fun drawing him! Such pretty hair ...

Thank you all who participated!! Until next year! o7

[sea-wolf-coast-to-coast]

7,935 total entries were submitted in 2023!

This includes all entries that were submitted via the Google Form, including late entries (and excluding duplicate entries).

Which brings us to 50,656 total recorded entries since we began this challenge in 2017! 

And, we had 109 volunteer artists in 2023!! Which means that there are 109 prize-winners!

A breakdown of the stats + announcement of the Participation Prize winners are below the cut ~

Want to see all public entries? Here’s a link to the Master Spreadsheet. This omits entries that people requested to keep private between them and I.

There's a lot to be gleaned from the data this year. Firstly, this is the first year where we see a real dip in participation, numbers dropping to the pre-2020 range. There are a couple of probable causes for this dip: this year, I chose, a) not to promote the challenge in any discords, b) not to repost any prompts to twitter, and c) not to post reminders throughout the challenge for folks to submit their links.

I was curious to know how much my own direct participation effects the challenge these days, and the numbers seem to point to "quite a bit!" So, that's good to know.

Secondly, we have finally approached the "data visualization salad" limit in which there are enough data points to confuse the visualization of the data overall, rendering them a little tough to understand at first glance. So, next year will probably see some fine-tuning of the data so that it's easier to digest.

Now, onto the good stuff!

Total Participation Year to Year:

Prompt Participation by Year:

NOTE: The big dips are Make-up / Extra Credit Days. Lots of folks choose to take a break over writing Extra Credit. Legit!

Prompt Breakdown by Week:

Submissions by Day:

NOTE: Day 7 was the day before the 24-hour deadline went into effect. Hence, the big ol’ spike.

Submissions by Platform:

Participation Prize Winners

Winners were selected via a random raffle dice roll made by Moen and span all online writing platforms, including Tumblr, Ao3, Google Docs, and others (like Twitter). This writing challenge is not a contest - no one’s work was being judged for length, skill, etc. The prizes are based on participation only! The more entries that you wrote and submitted within its 24-hour deadline, the higher your chance of winning a prize.

Prizes are a simple black & white portrait of the winner’s character. Most are shoulder up but the artists are free to take liberties if they’d like. Prizes are not commissioned work, so ultimately it’s the artist’s choice for what they’d like to do for the piece. Some artists (not all) accept commissions and might be open to colorizing a prize piece, after it’s been posted, at their normal rates.

Due to recent changes in Discord's username format, this year (and this year only) all winners will be notified by yours truly (MoenMoen) via a friend request and message in Discord. Next year I'll be teaming up with some folks to find a better, more streamlined process for informing and connecting winners with their volunteer artist.

So, keep an eye out for me in your Discord friend requests/inbox over the next week or so (it will take me a minute to get to everyone):

As always, there are a few winners whose artists may need to drop out for personal reasons, and that’s ok! In those cases, the winners will be carried over into 2024′s pool of winners where another artist will pick up their prize and complete it.

Congrats to all 109 winners, and I'll see you in September 2024 when we do it all again!

[captainbasch]

.:: FFxivWrite2023 Participation Prize ::.

A prize for @acidxshark of his WoL for the FFXIV Write 2023 event organized by @sea-wolf-coast-to-coast! Congrats to everyone who got a piece and thanks so much for all the writers who participated! Hope to see you all again next year!

[nichroous]

FFXIVWrite2023 Participation Prize

for @saesama!

Thank you @sea-wolf-coast-to-coast for organising this event once again!

[alphavanilla]

FFxivWrite2023 Participation Prize

for @thatmiqolune

Thanks to @sea-wolf-coast-to-coast for organising as always, it's a pleasure to be one of your artists each year!

Hope you like it~

[mevras]

FFxivWrite2023 Participation Prize for @lady-lissette! Thanks for letting me draw your character, it was a lot of fun! Thanks to @sea-wolf-coast-to-coast for organizing this event!