Promoting the Flow, Paying Attention and Playing Nice.

One thing that works well for collaborative efforts is something called version control. I understood this concept before but only recently learned it had a name and a fairly standard way of working. I think this practice is useful because it fosters trust and stimulates interest in a project.

It is a simple idea. There is an original which is available to all participants. Each time someone has their turn at adding to or editing the original it is "checked out" and cannot be altered by anyone else, although all participants continue to have access to view it as it exists so far.

Creativity does not necessarily follow a linear path, and this allows the creative thought for a project to percolate along for everyone simultaneously, while not holding up the movement of the whole piece when one person has it checked out for editing or additions. I believe this can create synergy which is not necessarily quantifiable, and without which a project can stagnate or otherwise be high-jacked.

In a blog circle situation the simplest way to achieve this is for each participant to publish the story so far once they have done their edit. This creates a record of progress, and if there is interest in the story, a need for readers to progress on to the next writer's blog to get the next bit of the story. Each time a part is published, the original could be considered to be "checked out" by the next writer until they publish their own edit.