Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/contest.ez?contest_id=580

First let me apologize for my absence. From illness to family situations, and then to having family with us that evacuated from Katrina, I've been completely swamped. Midrael has gotten the September Challenge ready to go. This is our first round with our new way of challenges, so feed back on topic, as well as likes and dislikes about the commenting thread we will make are welcome. That way we will know how to continue to make the challenge something everyone will look forward to. The Theme this month is is: Journal - A Glimpse Into A Life Midrael and I both look forward to seeing all the entries. We will be doing a second smaller challenge a bit later in the month for poetry as well. If you do have suggestions about the way this challenge is set up or topic ideas, please leave them in this thread, or message Midrael or myself. :) Diana

Great to see the challenge return. More importanlty, great to see you back. Hope you are feeling much better. jon

So glad to see you are back online! Hope you are stronger now. Hugs to you.

Just read the Challenge and I would like to say congrats for an excellent one. This is what a writing forum should be about. Good luck to all.

Good to have you back. I like the new challenge set up, and I do hope that it will catalyse the improvement of all our writing as time passes. Personally looking forward to the poetry one. :) Regards.

We'll likely have the poetry challenge set up sometime around midmonth to kind of stagger the challenges a little bit :) I'm personally looking forward to what everyone comes up with for these challenges! That's what will let me know if it's successful or not :) David L. Writer's Coord.

Since there is no voting, and therefore no winners or losers, I see no reason why we cannot include our names with our submissions. We used to post our submissions with our names on them, and it never seemed to be a problem. The reason I think this is a good idea is that of the implied copyright, i.e. as the original author you own the copyright whether or not you have taken the bother (and expense) of registering it with the Copyright Office. However, since the first time the work has ever appeared in a public fora (the Challenge), it appears with no claim of authorship. Granted, Renderosity could substantiate the submitters claim that they indeed posted it, but who knows how much trouble and effort that would take. It's not that I think I'm going to post some Pulitzer Prize worthy piece in a Challenge here, but I still don't like the idea that my work (no matter how humble) is just hanging out there with no claim of authorship attached. If my memory serves, the whole point of making the posts anonymous was to prevent popularity contest votes. Since there are no votes, what is the point now? Just some food for thought. jon

I like the idea, Jon. For me, reading something is not just an intellectual exercise, but a view into somebody's heart and mind, and often life. I, for one, would like to know who wrote what, because that connects me to the person, and not just the writing, and I'd like people to know that what they're reading was written by me, as well. And since the competition is now out, having the names on makes a lot of sense. hanevi.