Short Story Contest: The Debrief

In today’s Journal

* Short Story Contest: The Debrief
* Of Interest
* The Numbers

Short Story Contest: The Debrief

The short story contest, which ran for two weeks, was FREE to enter, offered cash prizes, and closed last night at midnight. I’m still scratching my head wondering why I wasn’t deluged with entries.

[Tapping the microphone] Is this thing on?

Maybe I’m delusional. I thought fiction writers would leap at the chance to enter their story in a contest that cost nothing to enter and offered (small, but still) cash prizes: $50, $40, $30, $20, and $10.

But as of this morning, I had received only ten entries from only nine writers. If that seems like a lot, consider that I have around 170 subscribers to the Journal.

Two or three of those entries were from first-time short story writers. Congratulations to them for believing in themselves. Believing in yourself is the solid foundation for all learning and improvement.

So a few things:

1. Of course, those nine writers entered in good faith, so I won’t cancel.
2. I’ll read the entries (starting today), and I’ll judge them for Story (readability). I won’t “grade” them for punctuation, etc. I’m no longer an English teacher. However,
3. As a bonus for those who entered, I will offer imbedded comments on their manuscript. Not a full copyedit, but the next best thing.
4. I won’t simply hand out five cash prizes and five honorable mentions. But I will award prizes if prizes are warranted.
5. If the stories are as good as I hope they will be, I might even publish a small anthology. If I do that, given the low number of entries, I’ll pay the writers for granting me FNASR (in addition to the cash prizes, if any are awarded).
6. If I do not publish the anthology before June 30, all rights (including FNASR) will revert to the authors. (The standard for rights reversion is six months, shrug, but I do everything fast.)

I can think of only two reasons I wasn’t deluged with submissions by short story writers:

• It’s a Scam—Listen, if anyone out there seriously thought this might be a scam, please let me know so I’ll at least have a chance to dissuade you of that stupid notion. I don’t do scams, ever.
• My Story Isn’t Good Enough—I suspect this will be the reason most short story writers didn’t submit a story. And frankly, that’s a stupid reason too. Even if you really thought your story was “not good enough,” yours is only one opinion. And you decided for me by not submitting it.

I’ve done that myself, but only once.

Years ago, not long after I started writing into the dark, I told DWS I wouldn’t submit a particular short story to Asimov’s Science Fiction because “it isn’t good enough.”

His immediate response was, “How DARE you presume to pre-judge for the editor!”

As he often is, he was right.

The only way to guarantee your work won’t be accepted for publication (or win a contest) is to not submit it. At least you won’t get a rejection letter, I guess. But you might want to check-in with whomever’s in charge of your self-esteem.

I probably won’t run any contests in the future, unless it’s a fun challenge, like a flash-fiction contest. (Flash Fiction is a complete short story with characters, setting, conflict, and resolution in 99 words or fewer, excluding the title.)

I do have an idea for some other non-contest things I can do. More on that later, but I’ll do that before May 31 so everyone can get in on it if they want.

Talk with you again soon.

Of Interest

Looking Back A great post on events and consequences

Do Not Follow the Woman in White

The Numbers

The Journal………………………………620

Writing of

Day 1…… XXXX words. To date…… XXXXX

Fiction for May…………………….….… 9734
Fiction for 2024…………………………. 313519
Fiction since October 1………………… 616577
Nonfiction for May……………………… 8570
Nonfiction for 2024…………………… 162910
2024 consumable words……………… 476429

2024 Novels to Date……………………… 8
2024 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2024 Short Stories to Date……………… 1
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)……………… 90
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 9
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 239
Short story collections…………………… 29

Disclaimer: I am a prolific professional fiction writer. On this blog I teach Writing Into the Dark and adherence to Heinlein’s Rules. Unreasoning fear and the myths of writing are lies, and they will slow your progress as a writer or stop you cold. I will never teach the myths on this blog.

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