March Write-Away Contest

2007 presses onward and it's time for another edition of Scribbit's Write-Away Contest.

This month's writing topic is childhood memories. Your favorite childhood memory, your earliest childhood memory, ways you're working to build memories for your own children, however you'd care to address the theme.

Entering is simple, just follow these steps:
1. Write a post or find an archived post that applies, you may submit more than one if you wish.
2. Provide a link back to this contest at Scribbit either in your entry post or through a separate post.
3. Send me an email at scribbit at gmail.com with the permalink to your entry before Sunday March 11th--that's only ten days so get writing.
4. Check back here on Tuesday March 13th when I will post the winner along with a list of all entrants and links to their submissions.

My judge for this month's contest is DeeDee from It Coulda' Been Worse. She will judge the entries based on the quality of writing, applicability to the topic and overall ability to engage the reader. This will be a blind judging, she will know neither the entrants' names nor the names of their blogs, but will see only the text and title of each post.

Now having said this may I offer a few suggestions to those who may be serious about winning this most prestigious of contests?

* Part of my intent with this contest is to introduce bloggers I enjoy. Each guest judge has preferred styles of writing, their own favorite topics, tones and pet peeves. If you are not familiar with DeeDee's writing visit her blog, read several of her posts and get a feel for her style and interests. This is guaranteed to give you an edge as you tackle the topic.

* As with all good writing, the editing process is critical. Anyone can write but not everyone can edit--many of the previous months' submissions could have been shortened. Yes, I know one of the beauties of blogging is its lack of editorial tyranny, but remember: "To be verbose is often gross, all is nice when a man's concise."

* While I welcome lists and memes such as the Thursday Thirteen as submissions--I'll take nearly anything that is clean and on topic--a list may not allow you to achieve the depth of writing necessary to provoke an emotion in your audience, namely the judge. Remember, you're trying to wow her with your prose and that's hard to do with a list, though not impossible.

* If you fail to enter your submission before Sunday March 11th--that means by midnight Alaska time on Saturday night, heading into Sunday--I will still accept it for publication with the other submissions but it will be ineligible for judging. In short, if you don't make the deadline you can't win though you'll still get a link.

* If you happen to have a copyright protection feature on your blog which doesn't allow for copying your text--I cut and paste the text into a Word doc to send to the judge--don't make me re-type your post. Just include the text in your email or attached as a Word document. Please save me that torture, though I do type fast--111 wpm with 2 mistakes thank you very much. And if you have this feature please tell me how you got it because I love it and want it for myself.

That's it. Oh! Pardon me! I nearly forgot--for this month's prize I'm offering a selection of six items from Brighter Minds Media, some of which I reviewed last month. Included are: The Brain Quest DVD Game, Diner Dash computer game, one joke book, a chapter book, PBS's Fruit Salad board book and a Care Bears Sing and Play Piano. Total retail value: $73.90. Here's hoping you have kids!

Plus, as before, the winner can take home this exquisite Write-Away Contest Winner button in a lovely shade of gray, guaranteed to match nearly every web design. Good luck and good writing.

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