The Contest Challenge

Well, look at you! Starting from 2017?!? Way to take the bull by the horns! Don't mess around, just grab hold! YEEHAW!!!

I know it's more fun to win if you have competition, but for my challenge, I don't care. I don't even care if the refuse to post a winner because only you entered (some contests are like that). We can't control what other folks do, so I give you credit so long as you post a legitimate entry--win, lose, or nothing at all.

So, I see you're going for the whole shebang! NICE! It won't be easy, but I believe in you! (I mean the task isn't easy. Believing in you is! ) I have some suggestions to help.

1. Try your best, without burning yourself out, to catch COMPLETELY up to January 2024 by January 2024. That's when the big celebration is for those who have done every single month since the challenge started. You'll get 500k GPs, 100 or so MBs, and lots of other goodies, depending on my mood and what's available. If you're semi-close-ish, but not caught up to December by the 1st of January, don't fret! There are some things I can't replace like a Newsfeed Celebration. You'll just miss out on that. BUT, things like the 500k GPs, yep. Finish everything by January 31 and you'll get what I can legitimately give you as a winner.

2 Skip around if you need/want to. Just so long as you post the month and year like you did, you can do the entries in any order you want. Note that I did start adding in really long contests in August in the last year or two, so while you are still fresh, you might want to do those now-ish. You definitely don't want to have nothing left but 1 contest that requires a minimum of 2500 words and it's December 31. Actually, TBH, you really need to be caught up before Christmas, if possible, because SM often runs some MB sales between Christmas and New Years where we can send MBs for half price every 24 hrs so I generally run the beginning of the celebrations then.

3. If you find a contest that's not open, but you really want to enter that one (or it's the only thing even left semi-alive for that month), reach out to the owner. Sometimes they closed it because they were busy, but they aren't now. Maybe they've been pondering opening it and your request is just what they need to do it. Or maybe they're done and it's good to know that so you can move on. If there's nothing available for a month and nothing that's going to be open soon-ish, then I'll find you a replacement option. Now, if it's something that will open in October, I'll probably ask you to wait until then unless you're pretty much caught up except that October. If the only thing open is something you find offensive, such as a sexy story contest, you can ask for a replacement. But no, poetry isn't considered offensive, nor is romance, though I'm on the edge about agreeing with that. It has to actually be offensive, not just something you don't like writing. I didn't want to write steampunk, but when I finally did, I actually enjoyed it more than expected. As for when I had to write romance , I wrote about 2 zookeepers with one being a new one being taught about all the mating habits by the other zookeeper who he (the 1st one) had a crush on. Turns out all the mating habits were really gross ones like hippos who fling poo with their tails to attract a mate. Yeah, I'll show you what happens when you make me write romance!

4. Do the math so you know how many you need to do each month/week to keep on track. But don't feel like you HAVE to finish this year. I mean, there was a threat a while back that this might be the last year, but I was also really struggling to get everything on my plate finished and now I'm doing better. So, at least for now, the danger is over. I'll do my very best not to end this with anyone actively working on catching up.

5. See if you can combine any prompts to write only 1 item and enter it twice. Say there's a romance prompt (ick) and a dog prompt. You could write a story about a romance between 2 dogs. BAM! 1 story, 2 entries! Contests will often say it has to be newly written for that contest, but I've never seen "newly written for only this contest."

6. Sometimes a contest allows multiple entries. See if that contest has been highlighted before and enter several times that month to knock out several months at once. You can do this by opening all the dropnotes for the Previously Highlighted Contests, then using Ctrl F, use the Find function to look for that contest by name. Note that it will also find the contest if someone has posted it as a forum post title on the 1st page, but still, it might be easier to search that way than to cross your eyes reading all those contest names.

That's all the advice I can think of for now. You did a great job posting your 1st entry! I'm super impressed! I like to think that with the examples just above the forum, it's easy to do, yet it seems every month there's someone who doesn't know what they are doing. I just try to give them credit if at all possible and then explain how to do it and where to find the example. Sometimes, in desperate times, I'll even post a link to another person who did it right so they can see. Yet, I once had a person who posted all 12 entries wrong. I have NO IDEA HOW! But yes, they did. I could see they were actually entering the contests. They just weren't able to figure out how to post for some odd reason. But the challenge is supposed to be to enter the contests, not to figure out how to post, so when I can give credit, I do my best to, no matter how incorrectly it's posted.

Anyway, good luck! I'm super excited to have you on board! Let me know if you need any help!