The Jar

What it is and what it isn’t.

We have a tradition on here: The Jar. It’s a little like a traditional swear jar, except you’ll see it chucked around when someone has said something particularly deprecating about their work (or sometimes even about themselves).

Paying the Jar involves either writing a 100 words on your WIP, saying something nice about yourself or your WIP, or doing absolutely nothing.

Nothing, you say? Yeah. Nothing. Because the Jar is meant to be playful and doesn’t come with any sort of obligation. At all. Ever. It’s also not meant to be used aggressively against people who just want to vent. Sometimes when we vent we say unkind things about ourselves and that’s fine.

Unfortunately, we’ve had a few instances now where the jar was used aggressively and with stern demands of “payment” following the jarring. And yeah, we get it. We’re all here to be supportive of each other, but that doesn’t mean we need to be pushy about “Be nice to yourself – or else.”

So we’d like to ask you all to keep this in mind when you see someone saying something unkind about their work or themselves and to especially respect it if someone asks not to be jarred at all.