Live, Laugh & Love Books discussion

Topic: Summer
Write about a summer vacation, a summer fling, a child at summer camp - ANYTHING related to summer.


Genre: Any (But no fanfiction.)


Length: Unpublished short story of 2500 words or less. Please edit your story to the best of your ability.
I do not consider stories posted to GoodReads or FictionPress to be published. Contact me if you have any questions about other websites. Generally, if you were paid for it, it's published. Otherwise, it will depend on the website. Obviously, if it's for sell somewhere, it's published, so don't send me questions about amazon or smashwords or the like.


Deadline: 31 August 2014
Judging Period: 1 September - 15 September
Winners Announced: 16 September
Time frames subject to change depending on number of entries. Any updates will be posted here.

If anyone would like to assist me in judging, please send me a PM. Just keep in mind, if you are a judge, you can not enter!


Prizes: Prizes do not have to be redeemed right away.
First Place: Comprehensive editing of up to twenty pages of any manuscript.
Second Place: Line editing of up to ten pages of any manuscript.
Third Place: Line editing of up to five pages of any manuscript.
Everyone: Feedback on the story. What works, what doesn't. Any particular areas that need improvement. You can opt out of this part if you don't want my honest (and potentially tactless) opinion.
Please Note: I reserve the right to not award all prizes. For instance, if there are only three entries and one of them hasn't been edited, I will only award first and second place. I will still give feedback on the third story.

Depending on the number of entrants, I may divide the judging into two age groups.


Submission Guidelines:
- Create a new topic in the Writing Contest Entries folder, using your story's title as the topic title.
- Copy your story into one (or more) posts.
- Close the topic to new posts to prevent outsiders influencing the judge's decision. You may still edit your posts until the deadline. PM me (or another mod) if you can't/don't know how to close the topic and I'll take care of it. (Which will include deleting any comments from others that may appear before the topic was closed.)


I think that's everything. Please let me know below if anything needs to be clarified or if I missed something.

I can't wait to enter!!!!

Iesha (In east shade house at...) wrote: "I can't wait to enter!!!!"

How did I know you'd say that? ^_^

I'd like to enter, but is there like an app or something that counts the words?? (because I wouldn't want to count that many words)...:p

Carina wrote: "I'd like to enter, but is there like an app or something that counts the words?? (because I wouldn't want to count that many words)...:p"

MS Word will count your words for you (I don't remember where to find it in Word as I haven't used it in years). As will most other word-processing programs. If you don't have one, I recommend Apache OpenOffice. That's what I use.

Updated the first post with prizes.

Oh, thanks, but my laptop isn't working so I don't know if I'll be able to enter this... :p

Carina wrote: "Oh, thanks, but my laptop isn't working so I don't know if I'll be able to enter this... :p"

Ah.

Well, if it'll help, I can do the word count for you if you email me the story. I'll PM you with my email address when you're ready for that. ^_^

If you don't mind me asking, what are you using to get online now? There might be an app for that. ^_-

^^ Thanks.
Right now I'm using my tablet.

Have you looked for a word processor app? I'd be surprised if there wasn't one.

If your tablet runs android, there is an android port of OpenOffice. ^_^ (I just went and checked the website.)

I'll look for one..

Updated the first post: genre - no fanfiction, clarified my definition of published, added a time frame for judging. Working on submission guidelines now.

Updated the first post with submission guidelines.

Question: So my story has some cussing in it. Is that allowed or would you like for me to take the cuss words out, or just use "***" for them??

Ooo that's a good question.

Cussing is allowed, just don't overdo it. I.E. Don't have every other word being the f-bomb.

Question: can we enter more than one?

Iesha (In east shade house at...) wrote: "Question: can we enter more than one?"

I'll have to think about that. I'm leaning towards no, but give me a couple of days and I'll post my final decision. ^_^

We only have two entries --_--

There are still three weeks left. Hopefully more people will enter.

Still only 2 entries :/

Carina wrote: "Still only 2 entries :/"

Yeah. Looks like that's all I'm going to get for this one. Oh well.