Finally! :D
We've received a literature submission to the RED contest. I was starting to wonder if we were going to get any. It's only mid way through the contest duration. We've got 3 more weeks to go. Today, we finally got one entry! *awe* And I got an inquiry from another writer about what to do with a piece that is twice as long as the 800-word limit. XD I could only suggest that she send in an excerpt of the best part. I hate to impose limits like this, but I was afraid of super long, torturous reading sessions that might result from wide-open, anything-goes kind of approach. And sometimes, boundaries do produce interesting results by pushing us in another way than our usual.
One thing for sure though is that I was keeping the rules intact and I wasn't going to change the 800-word limit even if we saw no entry with one week to go before the deadline. It's against my principle about those kind of things. And I'm not allowing late entries, either.
I come from ballet background where rules of the technique are clearly spelled out and people are judged within these boundaries on a level field. I just was a part of an art contest where an organizer changed the rules without notice just to allow more entries into the contest. Then stupid voting phase began and it turns into a popularity/pandering contest (another thing I'm NOT doing with the RED contest). The end result was so totally irrelevant from the original theme it was disgraceful. I was tempted to send in a public comment, but in the end, I sent him a PM with my two cents' worth. It may not matter to a whole bunch of people who never read the rules, but for those of us who did, it's a huge let down. And it damn well reflects poorly on the said individual who allowed it to happen.
One thing for sure though is that I was keeping the rules intact and I wasn't going to change the 800-word limit even if we saw no entry with one week to go before the deadline. It's against my principle about those kind of things. And I'm not allowing late entries, either.
I come from ballet background where rules of the technique are clearly spelled out and people are judged within these boundaries on a level field. I just was a part of an art contest where an organizer changed the rules without notice just to allow more entries into the contest. Then stupid voting phase began and it turns into a popularity/pandering contest (another thing I'm NOT doing with the RED contest). The end result was so totally irrelevant from the original theme it was disgraceful. I was tempted to send in a public comment, but in the end, I sent him a PM with my two cents' worth. It may not matter to a whole bunch of people who never read the rules, but for those of us who did, it's a huge let down. And it damn well reflects poorly on the said individual who allowed it to happen.