Cemetery Dance Writing Contest

[Ben Staad]

This is my biggest fear as well. Not winning the competition, or not being accepted somewhere, as disappointing as it may be, isn't all that bad. But I'm always concerned that my writing is so bad that an editor would laugh it out of the office for me thinking it even had a chance.

I just had a couple people go over mine today, generally positive reviews so far. Still needs some last minute tweaks, and I'm finding that I want to rewrite entire sections and I just don't have any time left to do that.

The main thing for me is that I wrote a story that I liked. Maybe this kind of thinking won't ever make me rich but it sure makes me happy!

[RJK1981]

I've never submitted a story before to anyone so I just hope I'm not laughed out of the competition. Either way it will be cool to get some honest opinions and see how my work stacks up against others.

Similar to how I feel. I've been in writing classes in high school and college though. Was docked 10% on my HS creative writing final story because she said I ended it too quickly, despite her seeing I was on page 9 of a 5 page requirement for the story and said to end it in within another page because she had so many to go through, lol. Oh well, instead of getting 100% I got 90%, so it was still an A. In my college class I had to submit the start of a short story for peer review, and those who read mine liked it, but didn't really do much of a review with suggestions. That is story I considered for this, but way too far from being done, and might not fall into the right category anymore.

Started writing in grade school after having to write a short story in 4th grade I think, and ended up writing a bunch since I liked it and so did others in my class. Don't have those anymore, would be nice to see how bad those actually were, lol.

Finished my story for this last night, but have to cut it down more. Wrote it mostly in the span of 2 or 3 days. This will be the first time submitting anything for publication, but hopefully I'll get lucky and be published, or if not that someone will notice and be interested

[geojazz]

What a fantastic opportunity. Cemetery Dance is the best!

[Eldritch]

It works similarly to how the italics work. You have to select the whole area you want indented. So if it's just the first line of a paragraph just highlight the first word of the paragraph then hit that indent button. If you want to indent the whole paragraph, highlight the whole paragraph and click the button. Just like the italics and bold it uses brackets and then the word indent or /indent inside the brackets to generate the desired result. If you are worried about character count though, I would skip the indents in the final post (leave them in the word doc you're working out of though). I didn't add a ton of extra characters to the count so with all the extra characters generated by the indent code it could really push you over.

Thanks. It still didn't work for me. I'm good though. I'm just going to add line spaces between paragraphs. At just under 9700 characters, it all fits fine.

[Eldritch]

Good luck everyone! I can't wait to start reading all the submissions.

[WesleySouthard]

I'm excited as all hell for this. Really, what it all comes down to is editing. I've spent the last three years writing and completing a novel, which I wanted to land somewhere around 80,000 words--which the first draft did (78k actually)--but when I rolled the second draft out, it came out to a whopping 124,000! I've spent the last several months editing with the help of a few writer friends, and they've completely changed my writing style for the better. They've taught me the importances and how-to's of editing, and as of right now the novel is sitting at 92k, which is something I'm very proud of. Hell, I didn't even begin writing short stories until about a year ago, and have had to learn to write in shorter form (which I find is much more difficult than novels, go figure). And don't be scared, everyone. The hardest part about writing, in the beginning, is having someone read and critique your work--but hey, isn't that what we're here for? I'm damn proud of my story--as should everyone be of their own--and can't to hear what everyone says, even if it doesn't win. Good luck, everyone! See you tomorrow...

[hamount]

Yeah, I finished mine, and it reaches about 7,000 characters. Good thing it's an amateur contest, I fit in perfectly in that department.

[Nik Houser]

I think one of the big challenges of short fiction is the compression of characterization that's often necessary. You have to paint with broad strokes so that the reader will quickly get a three-dimentional grasp of your characters and hopely come to like them or at least be interested in what happens to them. The faster you get an editor or reader interested in the character or situation, the more likely they are to keep reading. At least, that's the way I feel. Having said all that, did I manage to do that in my story? Who knows! I hope so. Haha. A couple of weeks is a hard timeframe in which to write a story AND distance yourself from it enough to edit it objectively. Which all makes it part of the challenge, I guess.

[HorrorScribe]

The submission window looms nigh...

I gave my story a final polish earlier this evening. It can best be described as a character driven piece. My short fiction tends to range from 3,000 - 5,000 words, so I most certainly concur with the other writers who have mentioned what a true challenge it is to completely tell a worthy tale--including a sympathetic main character, a fully realized plot, etc.--in less then 2,000 words.

Thus far, two of my flash fiction pieces have been published of the dozen or so that I've composed and submitted since June 2009. Keeping my fingers crossed with this one. Once again, to all of those who plan to enter the contest, I wish all of you the best of luck. And many sincere thanks to the folks at CD, especially Mr. Hocker, for devising and running this exciting competition.

[bsaenz24]

Ok, this may not be in good taste, but I am now offering my vote for whoever wants to pay me ONE MILLION DOLLARS (pinkie finger held up to the corner of my mouth)!!!!!! LOL!!

[Dan Hocker]

Ok, this may not be in good taste, but I am now offering my vote for whoever wants to pay me ONE MILLION DOLLARS (pinkie finger held up to the corner of my mouth)!!!!!! LOL!!

Nice Austin Powers reference Brad!

[Antmusic]

Hmm, maybe the stories should be posted anon so people won't be tempted to pay Brad.

[bsaenz24]

Hmm, maybe the stories should be posted anon so people won't be tempted to pay Brad.

Fine, for you,the price is now ONE MILLION AND ONE!!

[Antmusic]

Fine, for you,the price is now ONE MILLION AND ONE KISSES!!

Brad!

[peteOcha]

Just a quick question, will the voting be open to any forum member, even those who register after the voting begins? Or do you have to be registered before voting opens in order to be able to vote?

Good luck everyone! C'mon US timezone, be wednesday already!