January-February 2010 Short Fiction Contest

**Daddy Darth** · February 13th, 2010, 07:43 PM

Well I made it. Hope it was worth the effort b/c I sure do love my pirate.
I am looking forward to reading the other entries - soon. My flash fic is also mid completion - what a busy month. Oi!

Cheers fellow writers.

And now I give to you A Tale of Black J'oh

http://www.sffworld.com/forums/showthread.php?t=25837

**DailyRich** · February 16th, 2010, 03:09 PM

Did this get extended again?

**Daddy Darth** · February 16th, 2010, 03:17 PM

Good question Rich - the Beav seems to be MIA.

**Sterling13** · February 16th, 2010, 03:34 PM

Yar, what's goin on here Fung? Finish that story of yours and kickoff this here contest!

**DailyRich** · February 16th, 2010, 03:55 PM

I've seen him posting today so I know he's around, so I figured I'd just nudge gently.

**Sterling13** · February 16th, 2010, 03:58 PM

Originally Posted by DailyRich

I've seen him posting today so I know he's around, so I figured I'd just nudge gently.

Meh - nuts to "gently". I think we're on to stage 3: A swift kick to the pantaloons.

**Fung Koo** · February 16th, 2010, 04:31 PM

Hark! Someone has assaulted my pantaloons!

I've gone delinquent. My bad.

As supreme high dictator, I'm giving myself (and any lingering entrants) until tomorrow. (I have to admit -- I'm not hopeful that I'll be entering my story.

) Once the voting thread is up, no more entries (I expect it'll be up before noon, EST, tomorrow).

**DailyRich** · February 18th, 2010, 09:56 AM

Originally Posted by Fung Koo

Once the voting thread is up, no more entries (I expect it'll be up before noon, EST, tomorrow).

[Lines up pantaloons for a good swift kicking]

**Fung Koo** · February 18th, 2010, 10:48 AM

Ok ok!!! It's up!!!

http://www.sffworld.com/forums/showthread.php?t=25897

---

Well, even though I didn't get my story to a submission-ready place, I feel I learned a lot from the exercise anyway. For one thing, I've learned that just because you get more words doesn't mean you automatically get more wiggle room.

I also learned that it's very difficult to maintain focus as the story lengthens. It gets harder and harder not to go into extraneous detail, and it likewise gets harder and harder to tell what's extraneous from what isn't.

And, I learned that I need to allow myself a lot more editing time for longer pieces (especially where, in this case, I was headed for 13k words -- so I started editing before I had finished because I had the word limit in mind, which, I think, is why I couldn't finish.)

Anyway...

Let's keep the voting thread for the voting and discussion of the stories. If anyone has any thoughts on the setup of the contest itself (do we need more/less time? bigger/smaller word limit? do the genre limitations make sense? etc...?), let's discuss it here.

How the next one is run is up to the winner, of course, but it might be a good idea to discuss how we think this one is going/went.

From this one sample, I suspect a 3-month cycle might make more sense than a 2-month cycle. The genre restriction may have scared a few people off (and the topic, likewise, but there's no accounting for that) -- but I think it's a good idea as a way to keep the playing field a bit more level. Are there other ways?