BSF
Explorer
Piratecat said:I'm not a judge, but if I may, I'd like to say a few words about competing from back when I used to judge.
1. If you sign up here to compete, write your stories. All of them. Two days into your three day writing time, you're going to panic and try to find some way out of the contest. In doing so, you'll consider finding an excuse or not showing up on time to post it. Please don't do this. By joining the challenge, you're making a commitment to your competitors, who are also sweating bullets trying to write. If you default for ANY reason, you do them a huge disservice and cheapen their win.
2. It's okay if you aren't happy with it, post your stories. I'd much rather see a partially finished or unedited story posted (with that note) than nothing at all if a competitor runs out of time. Never post nothing, always post something -- and when you hit the point when you realize that you really have to write, often the ideas start coming fast and furious.
3. Editing takes time. I've found that it really helps to run a spellchecker over the story, and I always read mine out loud to myself before posting. Hearing the cadence helps me find awkward sentences. When you're done, put it down and come back to it later. Leave a couple of hours to edit.
4. Add manual paragraph breaks. MS Word adds paragraph breaks for you, usually, but they don't copy over to here. You need to add hard paragraph breaks and lines between paragraphs yourself. You aren't allowed to edit your story once you post it, but a useful trick is to find an old post of yours in another thread and edit that post, pasting in your story and seeing how it looks. If it looks great, remove it from that old post and paste it in to this correct thread.
5. If you sign up here to compete, write your stories. All of them. I said this before, but holy cow is it worth repeating.
Excellent advice! It is OK to be nervous the first time you compete. It is OK to feel overwhelmed and start thinking you are in over your head; that this is insane, and really it is just a bunch of messageboard people and how are they to know if you come up with some excuse not to post a story. But when you feel like that, just push yourself a bit harder and finish the story. Everybody that has written in Ceramic DM knows what you are going through. We don't know you, but we want to know you through your writing. We will all read with interest.
Many people, especially the judges, will post criticism and advice. Don't take the criticism personally. Nobody is posting with the intent of tearing you down. We will post with the desire to help you become a better writer. Take the intent personally, we want you to benefit from improving your writing, but don't take criticism toward any particular element personally.
It is OK to talk smack! This is supposed to be fun and it is a competition. If you have some smack to talk, unleash it.
As a general rule, don't read your opponents story until after you have posted yours. Obviously that can't be easily enforced, but the time you spend reading a story is time you could have been writing yours.
As Piratecat said, post whatever you have done. I have a tendency to stumble about trying to find a story to write for 60+ hours and then run out of time trying to finish something up. I have written a story in as little as 4 hours and posted without any editing and barely made it in at the last minute. It shows, really it shows. But for me it is more important to get that story in, symbolically. I am not the only one trying to finish the story and post it. My muse is a bit lackadaisical at times, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't put the story up. Besides, maybe the story isn't as bad as I am making it out to be in my mind. I have also found that right after I post a story, I have a tendency to focus and nitpick all the little things I think I could have done better. I come to loathe the story and I need to step back and let it sit for a while. Other people might enjoy it, and that perspective helps. Whatever you have, post it!
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