Except that he's got only 32 posts to his name.Quote:
Originally Posted by hillwalker
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Except that he's got only 32 posts to his name.Quote:
Originally Posted by hillwalker
Ah, it's a shame but I'll never get all the posts I need to vote by December 31st.
Good luck to all participants anyway!
Visit our Games section if you want to increase your post count! ;)
Going once...
Voted!
Beautiful stories all of 'em!
I am casting my vote. Thank you to the writers in the final five, I have enjoyed them all. A little sci fi, a lil kafkaesque, confessional and some fairytale. Good luck!
Due to popular demand, the voting period has been extended.
The competition will now end on January 1st.
Thank you all for voting and making this one the most popular competition yet. :)
Thankyou for asking! I do think that we should not have been able to see poll results until after the winner has won. I purposely did not look at the poll results when I voted.
...You've got to be kidding.
No, why? Don't you think that looking at poll results before you vote has an influence?Quote:
Originally Posted by JuniperWoolf
Okay then, maybe you're thinking that I am a sore loser because I voted for a story that got the least votes so far? I am willing to listen to
honesty and criticism.
Those few who might be driven by poll results are part of the democracy. It's the way things work.
Wow. A tie?? What happens now?
I suggest putting the top two in a football field. Give each one a helmet, spear and shield. Let them duel until there's only one alive, and that will be announced as the winner.Quote:
Originally Posted by DocHeart
p.s. Throw in some lions for more excitment.
You are probably right. Even if I had looked at the poll results I probably would have voted my way, I hope. Something to think about though. Do we subconsciously vote the way our peers do? That's another thread. I am excited to find out who wrote what story.Quote:
Originally Posted by cafolini
Congratulations to the writer of "Forever Young", MarkBastable, the winner of 2011 Short Story Competition.
I would like to thank everyone who took part in the competition as well as those who have been reading and voting throughout the year.
Looking forward to reading more stories in 2012!
Congratulations Mark.
Mark is a good writer (whatever that means) and hits the targets he aims for. His story was a good read. Even though he didn't vote for it, it's easy to understand how it could win.
The other stories were good too.
J
Great Job Mark, wow, who would have ever guessed that the professional writer would have won two years in a row....
Scher, are we going to have a competition next year, or just give Mark the prize at the onset.
No, we would like to pretend that there is a fair competition open to all so we will wait until the end of the year... As usual.Quote:
Originally Posted by soundofmusic
Well the professional writer barely eeked it out, so competitive 'twas.
J
Nice story, Mark.
Two years in a row I've voted for your story in the quarter-finals, and then for someone else in the play-off game. (Uh, sorry)
Rock on, Mah brothah, and
¡Muy Feliz Año Nuevo!
@Mark--Congrats, Mark! If one has to lose, at least it doesn't burn so much when the winner's entry truly was an excellent piece of work like Forever Young.
Now, you see, if I had said something like the above, people would accuse me of sour grapes...but mom gets away with it.Quote:
Originally Posted by soundofmusic
Quote:
Originally Posted by Scheherazade
Congrats, Mark!
Can we have the names of the writers of the other stories?
Ah yes, well after years of being assigned "Jonathan Livingstone Segal" andQuote:
Originally Posted by Scheherazade
"Atlas Shrugged", I have given up the idea that all writers are created equal...I still think, though, that we should have a roasting or something for Mark so he quite feels like one of us :smash::grouphug:
I don't know Sancho, if we had published our girl scout cookie caper last year, I think we might have given Mark a run for his money...who can resist a chocolate chip story with a sexy ingenue?Quote:
Originally Posted by Sancho
That's because no one takes me seriously; there are advantages to being the court jester! :crazy:Quote:
Originally Posted by SilentMute
Yes, I do want to know who wrote Kim and Me (then I want to know who the slutty sister is and if she is on litnet:brow:Quote:
Originally Posted by mona amon
Really though, Mark, it was incredibly well written...totally sick of course, scarier than the bible, bloodier than any of the Saw movies...Thank God you are a sane man; I'd hate to think what you could do as a serial killer...
Congratulations, Mark, and felicitations to all who wrote and entered! Well done, my friends, well done!
Actually, I kind of thought Forever Young was Mark's as it was another take on yet another myth, but he certainly did an outstanding job with it.
Hahaha. So true. And I did not make the Prometheus connection until reading qimissung's comment below. Perceptive I am. I have to say that though I voted for Forever Young I was greatly impressed with every entry and am now shaking in my boots, intimidated at the thought of possibly challenging any of these awesome writers for the prize next year. I don't know if I have it in me to muster such audacity.Quote:
Originally Posted by soundofmusic
Congratulations Mark - and indeed to the runner-up (whoever he or she may be - the story I ended up voting for). It was such a close run thing this time.
H
Oh, I don't know Mona Amon. I think that is like unmasking a super hero.Quote:
Originally Posted by mona amon
Sometimes I wonder about you, mum.Quote:
Originally Posted by soundofmusic
Congratulations Mark. :thumbs_up
Good stuff, Mark. I wish I knew who wrote Kim and Me. And all the others, of course. I kinda knew it was you with Forever Young because of the questions and style of presentation. There were just a very few others that could have been, except for the temper necessary to write it without reactionary foreigneerings. Good stuff, again.
That is perceptive. No, actually I hadn't drawn that connection. I, on the other hand, was married to two huge sci fi readers and television watchers, so I picked up all the bits that had landed in the twilight zones, outer limits, and other episodes. Of course, Mark took it much further than, as Califoni mentioned, our American sensitivities would stomach or phathom:patriot:...still, it is an amazing story and I had nightmares all night after reading it...actually, I stopped after the dog came...enough said...understood:cold::sick::beatdeadhorse5:Quote:
Originally Posted by Darcy88
:ihih:Always good to keep a bit of variety in the household; did I ever tell you that people on litnet once thought you were my second identity:smilielol5:Quote:
Originally Posted by SilentMute
Yes, I figured, you want to date the sister :smilielol5: It is an odd thing about us "foreigners"; we are too sensitive to write books about the stuff we wouldn't blink at doing. ON the other hand, other countries tend to write about things they think about doing but always stop short of the action.Quote:
Originally Posted by cafolini
Congratulations Mark!
I straddled the fence between the top two for some time, but eventually dropped down on the side Forever Young.
Nice piece.
.
Thank you very much to all sixty-odd who took the time to read the stories and vote. That was a damn close-run thing, and I'm delighted to have won by a nose, whilst being fully aware that - when it's that close - it's practically a toss-up. If the voting had carried on another day, I could just as easily have been one behind.
Can I just address this 'professional writer' thing? First, I guess it depends what you mean by professional. I've never made a living from writing - I've always had a 'proper job'. And I haven't written anything for money for over a decade. I might try to go back to it this year. But the point is, these days I write on a whim.
So it might be more relevant to say that I'm a published writer. Thing is though, being published doesn't necessarily make you a shoo-in for this kind of game. I know many published writers who'd struggle to write a story for this contest, just as I know many unpublished writers who are naturals for it. So I don't think I'm at any advantage in the contest because I've been published. I think being published and doing well in the contest are both effects of the same cause - which is that I wrote something that readers liked.
The question really, I suppose, is do we want a new rule saying that the competition is open only to unpublished writers? The organisers could easily make such a rule - the only slight problem would be defining 'published'. But in principle, it's easy to do.
Well, El Sancho votes that Mark stays. I know these forums are not a democracy, but I’m going to vote anyway, so I vote he stays.
I mean you can’t kick the championship team out of league – that would cause a race towards mediocrity, or as Hunter S. Thompson put it, “A downward spiral of dumbness.”
Also, I like reading his stories. And I don’t know about you guys, but every once in a while I get a burning desire to write something, and then I go at it until it’s down on paper, in some sort-of form or other(coherent or not), and then the pressure is off and I can go on with my life – mow the grass or change the oil in the car or something. I think a lot of us are like that and it’s nice to have a thread where we can throw our stuff out there and get a critical assessment of it.
Enough of that. Hey Mark, I found this really cool picture that could serve as illustration to your 2010 story:
http://i971.photobucket.com/albums/a...thoficarus.jpg
Death of Icarus, by Brueghel, 1558
If I’m not mistaken, that’s your protagonist’s leg sticking out of the water in front of the ship.
Thank you.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sancho
Yes, the painting is the subject of a poem by Auden, which was in turn alluded to in my story. The title comes from the poem, and three or four lines from it are slid into the narrative. And the setting described in the story is, in effect, the landscape shown in the painting. So it's a story about a poem about a painting about a story.
I figured some people would know the painting and some would know the poem, and some both, and that they'd be tickled by the allusions. But the idea was to make the story work as a standalone - and I rather liked the idea that some readers would come across the painting or the poem later and think, "Hang on a minute..."
Well said, thanks for the explanation. Figuring out what went into the creative process is sometimes as interesting as the final result. Also thanks for the links.Quote:
Originally Posted by MarkBastable
Congratulations, MarkBastable! A nice little story, but my heart went another way. Congratulations to all the finalists, each of you deserved to win. But in the end, there can be only one... The Litnet has spoken! Again, congratulations, Mark on well deserved win!
It is hard enough to get people to read the rules we have, so I don't think that adding more would be helpful. Besides, when you have so many rules, contests can be rather a drag. And I don't know how the moderators could enforce them anyway. For instance, I've been published--but in very obscure magazines and in one equally obscure collaboration.
The only way I could see that someone could have an unfair advantage in this contest is if they have several identities on LitNet that vote for them, or they tell their friends to vote for them.
However, I don't believe that happened here. I believe everyone liked Forever Young, and I can't blame them--it was a fine story.
I am curious about the author of Kim and Me too, but I understand wanting to remain mysterious. After all, the problem is that if people start recognizing your writing style, it could go against you. Of course, it might help too. It would depend on the person.
So, what I really want to know is...when are we starting the next short story competition? And are the rules going to be the same?
Well, given the anonymity of the internet, we're all just assuming the other authors aren't 'professional' or 'published' authors. Maybe the author of Kim and Me is a very bored Joyce Carol Oates come to troll us on these forums.
So we can't possibly regulate that. But what's more important is that if we implement that rule anyway we can single Mark out and drop a lil' bit of hate on him. And that would be very cathartic. We could just rephrase the new rule for convenience's sake: The competition is open to all forum members with 100 posts or more and who are not MarkBastable.
J
I have to start by saying that I am rather disappointed to see that a thread which remains open to congratulate the winner of 2011 Competition has turned into an inexplicable display of bitterness.
This competition is open to all members who have accumulated 100 or more posts. If we are to consider adding limitations on participation and voting, should we also consider banning native speakers because ESOL speakers like myself can very easily claim that those who are native speakers have an unfair advantage over us? How about writers voting for themselves? Or friends and family voting for them?
It would be impossible for us to "police" all these criteria and, demonstrating mutual trust and honesty, we will be able to carry on with minimal restrictions on the stories and contributors.
As it was mentioned above, the only thing we object to is members creating multiple accounts (which is a bannable-offence on its own as well) to be able to vote repeatedly in the competition, which is the reason why the voting cannot be annonymous. I am glad to add that this has happened only couple of times since the competition started.
I would also like to remind that I am not at liberty to reveal the identity of the contributors. If they choose to do so, they will, I am sure, come forward themselves.
I hope my post will lay some of the issues raised to rest so that we can now offer Mark the congratulations he deserves and look forward to reading more stories both by him and other members who are willing to take the challenge in 2012.