Decision Coming
Posted on May 16, 2008 Posted by John Scalzi 23 Comments
So, there are 278 entries in the Zoe’s Tale ARC contest that got in before the deadline, and a lot of you folks wrote actual short stories, so the finding of a winner might take a smidge longer than I expected (especially since I have some real work to do today). So to cover my ass, let me say that I’ll announce the winner Monday. Also, to make up for the delay, let me say that there will be at least one runner-up position, who will also get something for their troubles. Sound good? Okay then.
Ah, fudge! I missed the deadline. And I had a whole thing lined up about Harry Belafonte and alien gay marriage.
Looks like once again I will have to buy one of your damn books.
All the entries were just AWESOME and I do not envy your choice. But alas I will wait till monday to see who the winner is.
Great contest. I’ve had a lot of entertaining and thought provoking reading for days. I wouldn’t mind a published ‘best of’ collection if that’s possible.
Ditto. I’d go for some links to Honorable Mentions, and I bet the author would consider that a prize in itself. I read a bunch, and lots had really fun first person voices, plus the style homages were nice.
I’m sorry, it ended up longer than intended (and not anywhere CLOSE to the original plan; that was Elder Gods). Oh, quite enjoyed both Old Man’s War and Ghost Brigades.
I tried for short but story-like. My longest clocked in at 184 words, my shortest at 61.
Usually my “flash” fiction ends up at 1100 words. This is sort of a first. :)
(And at the end I was just typing stuff in. And I was on a combination of meds and herbal tea….)
I felt kind of bad about managing to write 800-and-some-odd words at first, but then I remembered that I’ve been writing 3-6,000 word essays roughly twice a week for the past month, and decided that the residual diarrhea of the keyboard wasn’t too bad.
Part of me wants to apologize for stringing a story out to four separate entries.
Another part of me wants that first part to shut up because it was wicked fun, in the “oh, wait, what if…” sense, and I just…couldn’t…stop adding more. It demandeded! Demandeded, I tell ye!
A third part of me is thinking the other two parts should just get off it, because if John didn’t like it he’d pull it.
Another part of me wants ice cream.
oboy – would a red pony suffice?
Michaelg: So long as you don’t wait until after I’m dead to get said pony, yes. A red pony will do nicely.
All in favor of trying to get a publisher to pick up the entries as an anthology? 8-)
If they can make the permissions work out, sure. That would be a riot.
Trying to get the permissions for something like that would be enough to make brave men run for the hills, naked, gibbering and howling unspeakable blasphemies to the wilding moon.
…not that I’m trying to discourage anyone.
Also: To John I have to add a thank you. I’ve been unable to make myself write anything for *fun* for the last couple of years, instead spending all of my time writing corporate BS and marketing materials.
Something about that challenge jarred the gears loose in my head, however. I’m actually writing something else, now, that seems to be picking up creative steam from the incoherent posting that I left on the contest entry comments. Who would have thought?
Not to cause an anxiety attack or anything, but it looks like there are 73,073 words in the comments (if you count every string of characters with whitespace at the beginning and end as a word, and you don’t include the “posted by” data). That’s easily novel-length.
Now you know why I’ve delayed.
This was the sort of random writing challenge people used to throw out all the time on the talk.bizarre Usenet newsgroup, with varied results. This one seems to have worked out well.
Well, you know. I have excellent commenters.
I had a short story all outlined and everthing. I was just about to write it when I had a realization: I (a person who hates to write so much that I avoid classes with essay finals) am about to write a short story trying to best people (many of whom may even write for a living) in a competition. And I only have 16 hours to write it and about 17 hours of engineering homework.
I guess I’ll just write it later…
ScalziNation–Come for the porked mammals–stay for the commenty goodness!
Nathan, you can keep your mammal porking to yourself.
I’m shocked, you mentioning such things with younguns in the house!
Good luck with the decision, John. Some of the entries blew me away, and it’s not going to be an easy read. Looking forward to Monday!
I love the idea of an anthology of the posts. Maybe it would work if
a. you give all the posters (me, for example) an opportunity to clean up certain grammar challenges
b. you offer the profits (or a portion of them) to a charity of your choice and
c. we all meet at John’s house one Saturday morning to sign each others copies of the book.
sometimes i also have anxiety attacks and when it happens, i just breathe slowly and deeply to help me relax.”:;