Thursday, November 17, 2011

Horrorthon Announcement! We're pushing back the deadline!

Greetings, fellow inmates! You are all to be commended. Amazing output this year, and I'm still having a great time.

I conferred with my fellow blog geezers and they endorsed my wish to push the deadline back one week, to the Sunday after Thanksgiving. I could whine about the life circumstances that make this convenient for me, but instead let's look at the larger picture.

First of all, I think having a deadline is awesome. We're trying to avoid the annual Horrorthon burnout, which can kick in as early as mid-October and results in an attitude of "I'm too shagged to write a review tonight, I'll just watch another flick" followed by "It's too close to the end of October to write a review tonight, I'll just watch another flick." Then in November the pressure to watch movies is gone but the pressure to write remains...

The deadline is great because it cuts off the next part, which is when that pressure just slowly seeps away and turns into a vague guilt. The deadline has also goaded me into action. Although I've only posted two reviews this month, I've written a bunch more that remain in the vault. (One thing that always slowed me down was my obsessive need to write my reviews in the same order I saw the movies. Thanks to the deadline I've ditched that rule and it's helped a lot, but I still feel the need to post the reviews in the order that I saw them. It's my new rule that was once just a side effect..)

Here's some good things about making the deadline the Sunday of T-day weekend. 1) It's nice and easy to remember, 2) It lends something to Thanksgiving, which let's face it is the awkward Jan Brady holiday stuck between Halloween and Xmas, 3) Burnout's not the same for everyone, but these last few years I've consistently had between 15 and 20 reviews to catch up on, and the math works out better with the extra week, especially because 3.5) I think I need that first week of November to not do ANYTHING Horrorthonnish, except for comments. Or at least to be content getting to it when I get to it, and not feeling quilty because I spent two hours sorting Lego, or whatever.

Let's hear some input. I think with one little tweak the deadline experiment is a total success, and a good thing to add going forward. You may argue that Horrorthon 2012 will be the last one because the world explodes December 21st, but I'd say that's all the more reason to have your reviews in. I mean, can you imagine? "My apartment's sinking into lava... and I never reviewed Night of the Creeps! (shakes fist)."

8 comments:

JPX said...

"Thanksgiving, which let's face it is the awkward Jan Brady holiday stuck between Halloween and Xmas" HAHA, love it! I have about 5 reviews writeen that I'm still tweaking and I have a few more to write so I have no problem extending the deadline.

Crystal Math said...

I love that your business announcements include a picture of a suit-and-tie Cthulu.

Octopunk said...

Thanks! I already used that pic in one of the Countdown to Horrorthon posts but I thought it was too appropriate not to reuse.

Catfreeek said...

Wimps! I am a twidget hair from posting my final review! Ha!

Just yankin' yer chain, I say push it to the end of November and call it a day:)

Johnny Sweatpants said...

This might be a good place to announce that I updated Scorrorthon so that you can now link directly from the individual lists to the reviews. It makes it easier to go back and recap. Pain in the arse but totally worth it!

AC said...

i love the deadline concept overall, as it minimizes that ghastly, endless (yawn) review-trickle phenomenon. i don't care which week it ends.

Octopunk said...

I meant to add a note that most of my burnout description does not apply to our superhuman members (Cat and Abby).

Abduscias said...

:D

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