Zen and the art of the Project Log

5. Work in Stages

Mod for a week or two (or three, or four, or…), then post an inspiring update. Daily updates and pictures are unnecessary (really), unless you’re working on your mod full-time and making significant progress each day. Another approach is to work on modding a particular component part, or area of your case, and then post an update to your project log when it’s done, showing the entire start-to-finish process.

However you go about it, dividing your project and log into manageable stages makes it a whole lot easier for you and your audience. And remember: think ‘quality’ NOT ‘quantity’ – big updates of quality are far better than constant small updates of not-very-much-modding.

6. Keep Checking on Feedback

Even if you don’t make any posts at the time, regularly check for any feedback your log may be getting, even if you haven’t posted an update for a while. There are often good suggestions made, and there may even be a dreaded “where’s the ‘on’ switch”-type of question, which you won’t want to miss. Also, read your PM’s or email when you’re running a project log – there may be an invite there to show your mod in a print magazine when it’s done, or a more considerate and privately asked “where’s the ‘on’ switch”!

7. Don’t Feel You Have to Answer Every Single Question or Comment

If you do get a good response to your project log and are asked a lot of questions, don’t feel pressured to answer them all, or to respond to every single comment. This is some advice that Dave (macroman) Williams passed on to me, when my Orac3 project log started melting our servers and I was feeling overwhelmed – he’d been through it before with his project ‘Macro Black’.

If you’ve documented your build well in the first place, people who follow your project and know what you’re doing (ie. who actually read what you write) will often answer questions for you and set the questioner straight. If your log gets popular, it can be a simple case of just not having the time to reply to every comment, and trying to do so could have you doing nothing else but posting on forums all day, taking valuable time away from what people want to see: modding.

It took me a while to be able to sit back and not reply to everything. If you get a lot of positive feedback, you want to thank each person individually, but usually a group acknowledgement of thanks for helpful comments is all you can manage. Just tell yourself that people would rather you got on with modding and updating your log, than sitting around all day posting replies.

8. Get it Right Before Posting

Delay an update by a day or two, if you have to, to get the writing or pictures right. When you feel you’ve just done some awesome modding on a part of your project, it’s easy to get excited and want to upload pics into your log straight away. Fight it – make sure you’ve got the best pictures, they’re resized, in logical order and you’ve written enough description (see below).

9. WRITE Something!

For goodness sake – write something in your project log! At least, a description of what’s going on in your pictures; ideally, with some detail. This seems to be the most common failing in project logs today – modders who take ‘a picture tells a thousand words’ a little too literally.

If your first language is not that of the forums you’re posting on, you can be forgiven of course, but I’ve still seen some great efforts made by non-English speakers to describe their pictures. Language is a barrier, indeed, and many amazing modding projects never see the light of day in English-speaking websites or magazines, and those foreign-language projects that do well here are usually ones with English text or translation. All this says to me that, however fantastic your mod, pictures alone just don’t cut it.

Writing more description will also save you time later. Explain yourself well enough and you’ll get fewer questions, and many of those following your project, who’ve properly read what you’ve written, will answer them for you anyway.

Whatever you write, try to make it interesting. Not everyone is a word-smithing Wordsworth, but try to avoid a dreadful monologue of “…and then I decided…and then I decided…and then I did…and then I did…and then I decided…”. This can be a challenge, even for the experienced. Be enthusiastic in your writing and your readers will be enthusiastic about your log.

Interesting things that happened while modding, difficulties you had but overcame, tools that broke, stuff that turned out better than planned, great ideas you had halfway through, not just what you did but why you did it, what inspired you – all this is the stuff of an interesting project log. Remember, people do still enjoy reading – especially the editors of other websites, print magazines, and potential sponsors.

10. Make the Modding the Priority

Whatever your plans for your project log, from elaborate to modest, make the modding work the priority. The project, not the log, should be number one in your world. Avoid getting caught up in maintaining a project log thread and spending hours answering comments while your garage or workshop sits idle. Still take pictures while you work and make notes of course, but do what you need to in relation to modding work before you think about working on that next update.

I know it sounds odd for me to say this in an article on project logs. In an ideal world, the modding would happen and the log would be updated regularly. Sometimes time presses, however, and when faced with a choice, I’d always opt to complete more modding work – you can always reward your readers with an extra good update later.

Just as there are things you can do to make your project log better, there are also some you shouldn’t do in your or other peoples logs…