This week Tanya over at Salted Caramel asks a couple:

Do you like reading posts written for prompts? If so, what kind?

If I take part in a particular prompt, I try to commit myself to reading other people’s responses. I sometimes miss one or two but I’m usually pretty good. So, reading prompt responses comes with the territory.

That also means:

• if I don’t think I’ll have time to read other responses, I’ll usually skip the prompt.
• when I do sit down to look through other responses, I’m going to be reading ten, twenty, maybe even thirty responses to that prompt. So, however long a post is, multiply that by thirty, say, and that’s how long it’ll take me to plough through the bunch. Bottom line, the kind of responses I like are short ones!

Poetry is a good one there, as poems are usually a quick read. But here I must admit to being a bit simple – I prefer direct language and I often don’t understand some of the poems I read. I do write some poems myself – you can’t beat a good limerick – but I deliberately try to be obvious, in your face. It’s very “schoolboy” stuff.

For long posts, whether I even try to read them depends on how much time I have abailable to me.Bearing in mind that WordPress is not my main activity.

When you publish a piece in answer to a prompt, do you read entries by other bloggers? If so, do you read them before or after you have written your own?

After. I try to catch up with my daily prompts the same day, but weekly prompts. I tend to wait four or five days. This is because responses tend to come in dribs and drabs, so I try to wait until “most” have come in. I don’t get stressed about those I miss.

Especially with the music prompt I used to take part in, I used to think of a response and think “that’s so obvious, everybody will think of that one”. But, they never did! It was rare, anyway.

I’d tag onto this that I’d expect the person who issued the prompt to read the responses, even if nobody else does. If people have taken time out to write a response, then I think the prompt-issuer should at least take the trouble to read them. In fact, I once stopped taking part in a prompt for that reason. But… it won’t be anybody who finds themself reading this, this goes way, way back. I think that’s really the committment you make when you decide to host a prompt.

Addendum

The next day. I’m sorry, I really don’t like adding to posts, once they#re live. But I realised there was a glaring hole above.

Some bloggers will say, I’ll read other responses if I have the time. My view on this: if there’s time to write a post, then there’s time to read a post.