This week: Challenge or Contest? Edited by: Annette  
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"You wanna know what scares people? Success. When you don't make moves and when you don't climb up the ladder, everybody loves you because you're not competition." - Nicki Minaj
"Competition is great. And as long as it's friendly and not a malicious thing, then I think it's cool." - Janet Jackson
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| ASIN: B085272J6B |
Product Type: Kindle Store
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Amazon's Price: $ 9.99
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Challenge or Contest?
Contests are pretty self-explanatory from the writer's point of view: Find a contest that sparks your imagination and write for it. Give it all you got. Write, edit, polish, revise, ask for reviews from your peers. Submit it and hope for the best. If you're lucky, you'll get a least a cursory review for your efforts from the host. Or even a very good, detailed, and helpful review. If not that, you'll at least see how your writing stacks up in contrast to that of other writers once a winner or winners are announced.
Contest are hard work for hosts.
 The contest has to address a type of writing and a genre that isn't already used up several times over somewhere else on the site.
The contest page has to have all the necessary information, but not be bogged down with too much either. It can get confusing.
A contest needs a lot of presence on the side of the host. Entrants deserve some form of feedback. Even if there aren't any reviews promised, the entrants want to know who won. This means, a contest host has to read all the entries.
Sometimes, a contest host has to decide about rules and how strict they are. Bend one rule? Bend them all? Don't care about rules?
Challenges are hard work for participants. Challenges frequently ask for a higher level of commitment than a contest. Challenges are rarely a one-and-done. Here, you are often on the hook for weeks, months, or even the whole year. Frequently, there is a participation requirement. For instance, you are supposed to comment on the writing of the other participants. Blogging challenges ask that you read and respond to others' blog entries. Writing challenges ask that you review one or more fellow writers. While this makes more work for the writer, it helps to create a tighter-knit community. You get to know other members here much closer and you might end up finding online friends that you would have overlooked otherwise among the many people here.
Challenges are a lot of administration for hosts. A. Lot. Of. Administration!
Get everyone rustled up to get started.
Give help, suggestions, directions on how to use the challenge.
Keep track of everybody's efforts.
Praise those who do well.
Keep reminding stragglers to stick with it.
Communicate with everyone on a regular basis with updates and forecasts.
Ultimately, writers benefit from participating in both contests and challenges. If you are on the fence whether to join one of the challenges, don't hesitate to email the host your questions. Be precise. Show that you read over the rules and ask only for clarification about those parts that you couldn't figure out. The same goes for contests. You don't lose anything and you could win big in experience, badges, awards, and reviews.
Do you prefer the competition of a contest or the comradery of a challenge? |
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| ASIN: B07RKLNKH7 |
Product Type: Kindle Store
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Amazon's Price: $ 0.99
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Replies to my last Contests & Activities newsletter "Explain Yourself" that asked How much description do you put on your activities and contests?
rupali wrote: It is a challenge to earn an MB. If any author submits 15 entries in a calendar month, he/she will get a Merit Badge. "Invalid Item" |
| ASIN: B07N36MHWD |
Product Type: Kindle Store
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Amazon's Price: $ 7.99
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Contests & Activities: April 19, 2023 Issue [#11889]
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