I confess I'm curious... I entered the writers cramp on a whim today, something I rarely do. It was a slow day at work, so I knocked this out in an hour or so. I'm wondering how the judges evaluated it's merits - or lack thereof - without actually looking at it.
We all have that one friend. The one who talks too much. The one who makes a short story long. Those friends tend to get annoying if not taken in small doses. Yet they're the storytellers of the world. In generations past, they would have been revered shaman. Today they're a minor annoyance. I started playing around with that concept and realized I was being a storyteller telling a story about a storyteller telling stories. Our modern storytellers - the ones we listen to anyway - are singers. They're storytellers but we call them rock stars. This is a tale about a singer who didn't quite make the big time. Enjoy:
Storyteller (13+) A renegade singer risks the wrath of the bar owner by playing original music.
I have an idea. One of those ideas that consumes your mind until the story comes out. I know the setting, I have a feel for the characters, conflict, dramatic tension, and even a large chunk of the plot. The problem is, everyone dies in the end. That part is historical fact. It's actually the singular piece of information in the entire story which can't be changed. I thought about changing perspective, making the villain the hero, so the hero lives in the end, but it just isn't interesting that way. All of the drama happens on one side of the story, but they happen to lose. Has anyone else found themselves in a similar quandary? If so, what did you do?
This reminds me of something my high school English teacher said about Shakespeare: In a Shakespearean comedy, somebody dies. In a Shakespearean tragedy, everybody dies.
The results are in for the latest edition of The Lodestar Contest, and what do you know? My little story won second place! Seems somebody out there must have liked it. So thank you to the judges, I'm glad you enjoyed the story. And for the rest of you, maybe you'd care to give it a look:
STATIC
Beacon to Nassau (E) The new Governor battles to arrive and tame the Pirate Republic of Nassau
I'm not really a blogger. The idea of an online diary just isn't my thing. More power to you if you're into it, but I'll pass. However, the Soundtrackers Group (I'm sure there's a way to link them but don't get me started on bitems right now) is doing their 12 Days of Christmas. So here's the first three entries (9 more to go). If you want a respite from schmaltz, here you go:
It's been a month or two since I wrote anything. I'd seen the Lodestar contest with it's suggestion of a lighthouse as a prompt many times, yet it never sparked any ideas. Then I thought "pirates!" I ended up not using pirates as anything more than background, but at least I was off and writing. So if you happen to be the sort who enjoys tales of the high seas, here you go. Enjoy!
STATIC
Beacon to Nassau (E) The new Governor battles to arrive and tame the Pirate Republic of Nassau
FYI - for Americans anyway - looks like satellite radio is doing it's free trial week this week. Just hit the SAT button on the car stereo. Especially if you have a long drive coming up for the holiday.
I haven't written any fiction lately, but I have been writing haiku. They're challenging because I usually prefer to read/write longer works. The detail makes the story for me. With only 17 of them, it's not just every word but every syllable that counts. I didn't want to share just one, but now I've accumulated a couple dozen on a variety of themes. Some follow traditional rules fairly closely, others less so. Enjoy!
STATIC
Haiku Collection (E) My haikus. Rather than creating new items each time I'll continue to add as I write more.
It's that time of year. Authors are receiving their Quill Award nominations, and I'm proud to say I received one for Jomsviking. I only completed 8 works this year, and only two of them received any real effort, so being nominated at all is quite the surprise. It's actually the second time the story has been recognized - I wrote it for the Musicology Anthology contest, where it won second place. It's rewarding to see that people are enjoying my work. If you haven't read it and your curiousity is piqued, here it is. Enjoy!
So as to not bury the lead, I wrote another story yesterday. Hopefully you'll enjoy it.
Unfortunately, it turned out to be a very disheartening experience. I wrote it for the writer's cramp, which I rarely enter. For me, 1000 words is too limiting. But the prompt seemed interesting and within an hour I'd knocked out the thousand words. The prompt was posted at noon and by 3PM I'd already entered. It didn't win, and I agree with the judges. The story that did win was far superior to any of the other entrants, including mine. But what left a dour taste in my mouth was that this story got disqualified. It wasn't even considered. Why? Because apparently, I used the "wrong" ML tag when posting it. It was posted, the link was there to click on and read. Yet instead of reading it the judges threw it out. I used an ML tag - just not the "right" one. They had 21 hours between the submission and the deadline where any of them could have said something, yet they all chose not to. I won't pretend that didn't leave a sour taste in my mouth. It'll be a long time before I enter again.
When I posted it, it felt incomplete and at the time I intended to go back after the judging and rework it. Entire scenes are reduced to sentences. There are no supporting characters. The ending is abrupt and lacks drama. All of this could be addressed now that I'm not hamstrung by the 1000-word limit. But I'm disgusted enough that I'm just not motivated to go work on it further.
The irony there is the story got more reviews in the first two hours (none from judges) than my entire portfolio combined in the last two months - and the reviewers LOVED it. From their perspective I'm being far too harsh on my work. So here it is and hopefully there's a silver lining - at least I got this story out of it.
Enjoy!
Edit: It would help if I included the link! Once again, my ML skills are a work in progress to say the least...
Good story and likely to be the way things would turn out. Sorry about the disqualification. It can be frustrating to have a little mistake mess you up. I remember expecting to win a contest I only thought I had entered. I spent a good deal of time writing my entry and publishing it to my portfolio. Turns out I had entirely forgotten the bit where you post the link to your entry.
Good evening. There is a new addition to my portfolio. The other night, I thought to myself, "self, it's been a mighty long time since you've written about bigfoot." In fact, it's been almost 20 years. The first novel I ever completed was about bigfoot, and the first 80% was great (at least, I thought so) but the ending was horrible. It never saw the light of day, and alas, the manuscript has been lost over the years. Even if it did exist, I'm still not sure the ending is fixable. Anyway, I let the idea bounce around the ol' noggin and within a couple hours the Roosevelt story popped in. A day later I had the entire first draft completed. I've made a couple passes at editing, but I'm sure fresh eyes will pick up mistakes I've missed. This is the part that I can't do alone. So I leave it in your hands, readers. Hope you enjoy it. I know when the story comes out with this little effort, its a wonderful reminder of how much fun writing can be!
CJ - It's a topic that's fascinating to me as well. There's another story I may tackle at some point that I considered writing, and that's Lewis & Clark. William Clark is also convinced he met one face-to-face, only in his case it wasn't by proxy. Clark kept a journal of the trip and his actual journal still exists. I want to say it's in the Smithsonian maybe? And here's the part that makes the conspiracy types lose their mind. There is one volume of his journals which was lost sometime after it reached President Jefferson's desk. I bet you can guess which volume that is. There's a story there that deserves similar treatment one day.
I rarely do the Writers Cramp contest but I had a slow day, wasn't in the middle of any other project, and the prompt seemed interesting, so, here you go:
I've been busy lately even if it doesn't show. Today I made public my entry in the Musicology Anthology contest.
Presenting: Jomsviking, based upon the Amon Amarth album of the same title.
I'd been looking for an excuse to write about this time period again but didn't have a story. Then I saw the contest and immediately thought of this album (and about 20 others). I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.
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- It's a topic that's fascinating to me as well. There's another story I may tackle at some point that I considered writing, and that's Lewis & Clark. William Clark is also convinced he met one face-to-face, only in his case it wasn't by proxy. Clark kept a journal of the trip and his actual journal still exists. I want to say it's in the Smithsonian maybe? And here's the part that makes the conspiracy types lose their mind. There is one volume of his journals which was lost sometime after it reached President Jefferson's desk. I bet you can guess which volume that is. There's a story there that deserves similar treatment one day.
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