J.A. Marlow

New Challenge: Pirates of FM: Blank Pages Tell No Tales

Posted on February 1, 2024

…we really shouldn’t be left alone in chat unsupervised…

Ahoy ye maties! Yes, you heard that right. We have a new writing challenge! Inspired by C.E. Backstrom, who said, “…the 6yo in me needed a reward based system to keep me motivated. in American schools (and possibly overseas) teachers use these “Treasure Chests/Bags” with goodies in them that you have to earn points to spend to get a goodie from the chest/bag.”

Mooseythehut introduced the name of the challenge, which turned it pirate-themed, NeciaPhoenix mentioned loving the badges in the old FM forum… and the rest is history! LOL

We wanted to make this challenge accessible to a wide variety of people who work and write in different ways. You can do one challenge and never do anything again or you can do lots of things all the time and rack up tons of rewards. This is about goals with deadlines, not numbers of words, hours, scenes, chapter, or so on. This way the challenge works for anyone at any level of effort and commitment.

Pirates of FM Challenge LogoAfter a lot of brainstorming with FM members in our Discord server we finally ironed out (most) of the details. The challenge is now live! 

Here are quick links to the information pages:

Pirates of FM Introduction

PoFM Rules (how it works)

Take a look in the new drop-down menu up above for yet more pages including how to earn Pirate Gold, what to spend it on (Badges on FM are back!), and a list of participants and their goals.

Have fun fellow creative pirates!

Aaaaarrrrggghhhh!