It's about time I hosted another competition. A very, very good friend of mine with exquisite taste and a delightful countenance suggested that the theme should be 'dream journal', and I agreed. Read on for more details.

Dream Journal

I'm going to be away from keyboard for roughly two months. So what better to greet me when I return than a whole bundle of poetry and prose to read through? Nothing, that's what*. So without further ado, here's the specifics you need to know:

Entries are due by the 10th of January: I know that's a very long time to get things written by, but that's roughly when I get back from my trip.

Accordingly, I'm looking for a high quality of work on these ones: What that means to you, dear participant, is that if there remains any spelling mistakes or grammatical errors in your piece when I read it, it's going to be automatically disqualified. No questions asked. Harsh, but I think it's fair given the time interval. Now I don't want to appear elitist here (that dreaded word), so I highly recommend that you spend some time revising it, asking people to critique it, that sort of thing. #getLIT is the place to be at the moment for literature related chat, or ask in the literature workshop forum for advice from elders and readers alike.

How to enter: Note me, *apocathary with the note subject 'Dream journal entry'.

Restrictions: This contest is open to poets and prosists alike. Poets, you can go wild, but keep in mind that anything longer than 200 lines I generally consider overkill. Prose writers I'm giving you a soft limit of 4,000 words, and a hard one of 6,000. What this means is that if you do write 6,000 words worth of prose and I don't feel that the first 4,000 justifies this, then you're out of luck. Only one entry per person, and remember the point about quality!

Prizes: There will be prizes awarded to the winner and the first runner-up. I'm looking at donating a 6-month and a 3-month sub accordingly, but I'll be attempting to raise some extra stuff as well. Keep an eye on my journal for any updates on this.

A final word: I don't want to see a whole bunch of actual dream journals bing kept and submitted to this. You can just take the prompt and run any which way you please. I'm not suggesting you can't use dreams as your inspiration, but don't just jot them down scene for scene. That's boring and probably won't make sense to me anyway. Dreams are a oft-used cliche in stories, it's your job to make them fresh and interesting again, whether via an interesting technique, mechnism in the story, or just plain good story telling.

So tell your friends, tell your family, give this news article some pimping love in your journal, and get started! Oh and if you feel like donating prizes for this, send me a note with your intended awards. Anything is welcome; journal features, commissions, love ballads recorded over skype, anything.


Good luck!






*with the exception perhaps of a Nobel Prize and Neil Gaiman as my personal writing tutor for a year.