Authors' Spotlight Season 5 Tasks

Author's Spotlight Season 5 Tasks

Season 5 of Authors' Spotlight had a different person at the helm instead of our friend Earl. I am talking about yours truly. Owing to a funds crunch, the contest could not be adequately advertised, and hence, kept getting postponed due to a dearth of participants. Eventually, we had a full house and we started on the 15th of July, 2009.

The eleven participants (and the books they created) were:

01. Meeple "Invalid Item" 

02. Sara - will be back soon "Invalid Item" 

03. Annette "Hodgepodge" 

04. CandyStaiNeCane "Invalid Item"  Welcome back!

05. Sairyn Raine "Invalid Item" 

06. darkskye "Invalid Item" 

07. JoDe "Invalid Item" 

08. Jewel Busy Busy Busy! "Invalid Item" 

09. Outasync "Invalid Item" 

10. Indelible Ink "An Imperfect Spotlight" 

11. Cinn "Sunshine & Hissing Bleed Valves" 

The judges for this contest were:

Dr Taher writes again! - Host Season 3 winner.
A Christmas Carol St.Ann - Season 3 runner-up
ShellySunshine - Season 3 placed.
emerin-liseli - Season 1 winner.

SEASON 5 TASKS

In the matter given below, D stands for Day and T for Task. There will be two tasks every day. D2T1 will stand for Day 2, 1st Task, and so on.

Group Task: The group is to come up with a song. The title of the song is "My Crazy AS Group". Write a song using all the names of the people in your group. You can use the handle name or the real person's name, but not both. Each member will write a few lines and it is up to the Group Leader to put them together and present the song. You can create a private forum to create the item. Post the song in its entirety in the main AS forum on the final day with the post title being "Group __ Song".

D1T1: Write an essay on what life for you would have been like had there been no Writing.com in less than 500 words. Put a word count at the bottom. This is essential.

D1T2: Write a poem not exceeding 20 lines (minimum 14 lines) which is inspired by the nursery rhyme "Baa Baa Black Sheep". Either the theme, or the format, or both, should be related to the original rhyme.

D2T1: Write a mystery story about you getting lost on Mars while on a reconnaissance mission. Keep the story over 300 words and under 1000 words. Accuracy of space-related terms and topography of Mars will fetch more points. The rest can be imagination!

D2T2: Interview any two senior moderators (violet cases) with just five questions. The mail you send to them must be appended to the task so that we can see your communication skills (just copy the mail body and attach the name of the moderator to whom the mail is sent. We will allow you one extra day to submit this task as the senior moderators could be busy and take some time responding. The questions can be anything in nature, but not boring ones like "how is the weather where you live" or "what is your age/sex/location" stuff. The more creative the question, the more the senior moderators will enjoy answering them. However, no abuse or insult will be tolerated. Please be courteous and patient.

D3T1: Write a story containing the six words listed below, and end this story with the phrase: "And that's where I stand in history." The words: concord, apple, squirrel, vermouth, tupperware, vase. The story should be a minimum of 500 words. Try and think out of the box while thinking up the uses of these words. Use the "underline" WritingML tool to highlight the six words. As all the six words are nouns, you would be hardpressed to conjugate the words in some other way, though I can think of "squirelled" and "concorded".

D3T2: Write a funny article/monologue on the following topic: "You know you are addicted to Writing.com when ..." Use the title to create as many funny things you can think of that you have either done yourself or seen others do. For example, your spouse calls you to bed and you say "No darling, I've got a headache" as you are still enjoying WDC, your other "life-partner". Minimum 350 words.

D4T1: Write a newspaper report about a political or environmental issue that occurs in a small town where you work for a sensational yellow-journalism type of paper. Your job is to exagerrate the event/s so that the paper will sell the next day! Try to make the readers of this task laugh, and if the judges do so, then you have hit the mark! We need a headline, a sub-headline, a fictitious journalist name, a newspaper name, a town name, a report and "editor's take" on the report. Minimum 300 words. Try to be as humorous as possible, but the writing style should be journalistic jargon.

D4T2: Interview any three of your own group members. No questions related to personal or Writing.com issues. Anything else goes. You can even send questions and answers to each other. Only three questions per interviewee. The same questions cannot be asked to all the three friends. So, we need to see nine questions in all, with nine best possible answers. No humour here, please. We want this to be as sanguine and serious as possible. This is important.

D5T1: Write a story for children aged 6-10. The setting should be on a beach or at an amusement park. It should feature children, fun, a little scary, and at least one adult and one animal, not an insect or an arachnid, but a mammal. No fantasy, no magic, and no adult themes. Rating under 13+. Minimum word count 500. Maximum 1000.

D5T2: Review five of the following seven items and paste the reviews with the WritingML into your task with the bitem link of the item reviewed at the top of each pasted review. Keep reviews nice and helpful. Be creative, not kitschy. Suggest a few editing errors (if any). Don't let the review turn into an editing correction. Create a rating using the WritingML below each pasted review so that we know what rating you gave them. Make each review public and add the following line at the bottom of each review using your own WritingML creativity: "Review done as a task for {litem:1349008}."

Items are:

The Nearness of You  (E) It is about the love I have for someone very very dear to my heart.. #1573752 by jblackgloves number 35.

Invalid Item  This item number is not valid. #1581785 by Not Available.

Invalid Item  This item number is not valid. #1414695 by Not Available.

Invalid Item  This item number is not valid. #1499363 by Not Available.

Invalid Item  This item number is not valid. #1572410 by Not Available.

My Love  (E) Tracing the path from illusion to reality… #1193643 by Christina~Thanks StoryMaster

Invalid Item  This item number is not valid. #1190576 by Not Available.

D6T1:Write an essay, not exceeding 750 words, on your writing journey through life. Tell us when you began to write, what you wrote, who were the teachers or mentors or relatives who guided you, who discouraged you, which authors' work stimulated you, inspired you to write, how you went about improving your work, and so on.

D6T2: Write an impassioned account of the experience you got in this contest (Authors' Spotlight). Tell us what you gained, what you lost, in short, everything you can remember. Try and make the item light-hearted, honest, and heart-felt. Minimum word count ... oh, it does not matter. It can be a poem, a dialogue, a monologue, a story, an article, a news-item, or any darn thing you want. Just enjoy writing about it! Thanks.

The contest was a keenly fought one. The judges had decided to split up the contestants among themselves for judging, and to rotate these from day to day so that there would be no bias.

WINNERS:

Watch this space for a few more days to see the results.

© Dr. Taher Kagalwala, July 2009.