The Contest:

Write a story or poem with a theme traditionally associated with the New Year. Possible themes include (but are not necessarily limited to) winter, changes, decisions, resolutions, and deaths/rebirths. All genres/styles are welcome.

Categories:

There will be 2 categories - poem and prose. Any one who is interested can submit one entry in each category.

Contest rules:

1. All entries: by entering this contest, entrants agee to grant first publication rights to Renderosity (i.e. display it on the Renderosity web site.) All other rights are reserved by the writer.

2. Each story or poem must be a maximum of 3,000 words in length, written in English, and must be relevant to the stated theme.

3. One submission in each category will be accepted per Renderosity member, not per screen name. If there are multiple submissions by the same person in a category, only the last submission will be entered into the contest.

4. Explicit descriptions of anatomy, violence, or sexual acts are not allowed.

5. The story or poem must be an original creation by the submitter and not be published previously anywhere, including on the Internet.

6. The contest is open to all members of Renderosity, excluding the judge.

7. Submissions will be accepted until December 24th 23:59, 2002, Renderosity Server Time.

8. The winners will be announced on 1 January, 2003. (Barring any unforeseen disasters.)

Submission format:

Submissions may be e-mailed to retrocity@renderosity.com as a .txt attachment.

At the top of the entry, please include the following:

Screen name
Real name
Title

For prose:

Please single space lines, with a double space between paragraphs. Please do not hit Enter between each line - let the sentences word wrap without truncating to screen width.

For poems:

Whatever formatting suits the poem.

Prizes (to be awarded for each category):

First place: $25 gift certificate at Barnes and Noble if the winner is in the US or the equivalent of US$25 at Amazon.com or the nearest Amazon site for non-US residents. (E.g. Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.ca, etc.)

Second place: $15 gift certificate at Barnes and Noble if the winner is in the US or the equivalent of US$15 at Amazon.com or the nearest Amazon site for non-US residents. (E.g. Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.ca, etc.)

1st and 2nd place in each category will also be featured in The Library.

Judging:

Crescent will be the judge of this contest. The winning entries will be picked based on originality, appropriateness to the theme, and the quality of writing. No authors will be identified to the judge until after the contest is over and the winner picked. retrocity - a fellow Renderosity moderator - will accept all submissions and forward them anonymously to Crescent, indentifying the authors after the winners have been picked.

Questions:

Any questions about the contest can be addressed in the Renderosity Writers' Forum. If there is a specific question about genre/theme, you can submit the question to retrocity@renderosity.com, who will forward it on to Crescent then forward the reply back to preserve the anonymity of the entrants.

Wow! Great contest, Crescent. You should get plenty of entries to this one....what a nice way to end the year and start a new one. :)

I forgot to add, please indicate in your submission if you want it to be entered as a poem or a prose entry. (I've seen epic poems and itty bitty stories, so I don't want to guess wrong.) Cheers!

new years was 18 days ago, unless you are part of that newfangled religion called christianity. ~lol~ the closest celebratory date to the one you picked is the midwinter festival, which is december 21. ~grumbling~ danged christians thinking they own the world when all thier celebration days are stolen from older religions...and they can't get the dates right. ~wink~ just teasing, even if the facts of all christian ceremonies ( Christmas, easter ect ) are that they are where they are in the year to get people to have a celebration on those days and not the old days.

I'm going by modern calendar year. I know, it's not close to the Chinese New Year, either. I can't afford to hold multiple contests for multiple New Years, so I picked the one that is most recognized - or are you implying Hallmark is wrong? ;-) So phhhttt! ;-}~

Umm...did I miss where to submit entries?

It's under "submission format": Submissions may be e-mailed to retrocity@renderosity.com as a .txt attachment

hallmark? wrong? you bet ya. ~l~ chinese new year is even odder.....it moves around over a six week period...sometime it's on my birthday, sometimes it's on my deathday ( the day I died )

Gets tricky if you believe in reincarnation, doesn't it? Multiple birth days and multiple death days. I don't think I'd want to have to keep up with all that. Seems to me in all this is probably someone's entry for the contest though.

hmm, reincarnation...never concidered that aspect. I was reffering to the fact that I have a grave, with my full legal name on it and remains that would genetically test to be me in it. from jan 24 1994

Ahhh... so that's what happened to your twin... Interesting. ;-) "Crescent will be the judge of this contest." My condolences Crescent. You'll have your work cut out for you. :-) jon

nope, no twin, I just figured why bother staying dead, much more fun to be wandering around still. ~grin~

Ty dialyn, must have been in my blind spot, as I saw everything else, lol.

Just a bookmark... nothing to see here... go about your business people. Jack

You've raised an interesting storyline, Jaqui. Do dead people celebrate New Year's Day? Sounds like a good start for a horror short story or poem. Could also have a short sci-fi story where the exact moment of the New Year is a very important moment where something significan might happen. Or..

Great contest idea. Just one quickie Q. Did you mean to say a min. of 3,000 words or was I correct reading that the story or poem had to be a max of 3,000. Sorry but I am just having one of my blond days today :) Dee-Marie ladynimue

I hope I said a maximum of 3,000 words for prose or poetry. If not, well, I seem to be doomed to one major idiotic statement in each contest. :-( Thanks!

Daaaaaaaaah, Geez Like I said I was having a very confusing day. Your guidelines were prefect it was my reading that was Wonky :)

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I don't think that's considered a bribe....unless you offer Crescent chocolate too! Glad you're entering. It will be fun to see the results. :)

Chocolate? Chocolate? Where chocolate? ;-) Chocolate - it's not just for breakfast any more.

We now have entries in Prose and Poetry.

Don't forget, there's only 14 days until the deadline! Take pen to paper, fingers to keyboard, blood to parchment and submit your entries. With a chance to win up to $50 in gift certificates (if you win 1st place in both the Prose and Poetry categories), it's worth it.

You won't see another Writers' Contest with this many prizes the rest of this year!

*Wanders off to detox all the sugar .... * ;-)

I sent in my entries today - one for prose, one for poetry. Just wondered if we will get any kind of e-mail verification that the entries arrive OK? Or can I assume that since I did not get an 'undeliverable notice' from Mr. Postman that everything went through just fine. Just being paranoid. :-) jon

I got three more entries today, so I can't be sure which ones are jstro's. (Well, I can figure what one of the entries has to be using deductive reasoning, but I'm trying to keep this one so I don't know who sent what.) I received Bipartite Night, Cup of Kindness, and Mintaka and the Christmas Rose, so if none of those are yours, you need to resend them. If some of these are yours, then everything's okay. If all of them are yours, then there's a problem. ;-) Cheers!

All OK by me. Thanks. jon

Someone just pointed out a typo in my poetry entry. Doh! Anyway, I was wondering if we can submit revisions before the deadline. No is a perfectly acceptable answer, as far as I'm concerned. I can see how it could pose logistical problems. But just in case, I thought I'd ask. jon

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