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OMG I love all of these stories. I am so glad I am not a judge. Magnificent!

[post deleted.] will send better draft by email shortly.

I'll be happy to take dictation just for your epitaph if you don't actually give facing P'cat a respectable level of effort . . .

Now that's fighting form.

It totally does mess with my head and influence what comes out. The trick, I think, is to know my character's voices. It's hard to write like Ray Bradbury or Ursula leGuin or Kage Baker when I'm really focusing on trying to write in the voice of my protagonists, and to make sure they each have...

I just remembererd: there is one other trick I use in "making up the guest suite for my muse". Just before pictures are posted, while I'm nervously waiting for the starting time to tick around, I usually read. I try to pick something really powerful and evocative that I haven't read before by...

In my case, I usually spend months before the competition filling up on cool ideas I am going to get around to writing about someday when I have time. Sometimes I even jot them down in a list so I won't forget them. Then, when the pictures go up, I stare at the pictures and try to figure out...

Mythago, that is one of the greatest opening paragraphs you have ever written. I can see why you feel this one is still a bit rough, but I liked what you tried to do with it. It took me someplace unexpected and I liked being there. I loved the narrative voice, and the setting. I just wanted a...

Comments on Piratecat v Berandor. Babykillers, I agree mostly with what Gulla said. Additional comments: Piratecat, I think you have in past competitions created stronger narrators with more personality --as with your first round story this competition, I think the story holds together well...

CarpeDavid, apologies for being late in getting around to reading your story. Even though everyone has already told you it's brilliant, I wanted to add my two cents: It's brilliant. And also, you've gone and gotten the song "The Ash Grove" permanently stuck in my head now. (MaxfieldJadenFox...

My muse gets perverse glee out of writing to the judges-- I love the focus I get from writing to a specific audience, as if the story were almost a private conversation between me and someone special and intimate. Different parts of my brain work when I write here. BSF, if I were judging, you'd...

Reading and writing for Ceramic GM has undoubtedly been the best writing lessons of my life. As far as "inner truth" goes, there is no reason emotional connectedness has to go to the heart of pain, or be about some great philosophical undertext. Think about Order of the Stick. OOTS...

Mercy, I hope the judges aren't as hormonal as I am. This is one of the many reasons that I'm a heckler and not a judge.

Piratecat, (caution: critique below and I'm counting on the fact that you know I love you and your writing to soften the tone 'cause I'm too tired & cranky to think of a sensitive & humorous way to say this.) 1. Why the heck is your narrator interested in marrying a woman who doen't share...

Plainly, you need more lubricant.

Right--misery, melodrama, and mushy not required. Bleagh. What I meant is, your writing is always excellent, but this felt so distant from anything you actually care about, that it seemed kind of Lego-like. Here's Mythago's usual set of elements ready to snap together, and we can already guess...

Miles, I think yours came closest for me, actually--it certainly had the ring of truth about it. I think what failed was the "telling" the conflict instead of showing it: We heard that these affairs usually go badly, but we never saw this one teeter on the brink, or felt fallout from the...

A nice batch of first round stories, and I enjoyed reading all of them. Pleasant distractions all. That said, there was not one that touched on a personal truth so intense that it kicked off the hormonal "weepy" response. Couldn't tell you exactly what triggers that, or, indeed, whether it's...

And for the first time in several weeks, I'm profoundly glad to be too sick to be writing in this contest. Thanks for making me feel better, Yangnome! Now to get to scrounging around that palette looking for some images worthy of this kind of company . . . "Bon chance" to the contestants...

p2g1 Thank you for congrats and kind wishes. Yes, it's true, I'm expecting. And yes, the san loss has already begun. I'm looking forward to being mightily distracted by brilliant prose. Anybody who makes me weepy gets extra points.