Writings in the Sand

Really Good, Just Too Short

I wondered if it's alright to moan a bit on my blog. Blogs are random and spontaneous, no? Therefore, they should be outlets for all sorts of things - within reason, of course, this is a family-friendly blog. And I fully expect these musings to be largely ignored before they are washed away.

I know we all have a love/hate relationship with reviews. We love the good ones and hate the bad ones. And I do moan a lot over bad reviews, but that is mostly because I am an undisciplined brat.

But some reviews just leave me scratching my head.

I enter a lot of contests. I enter a lot of contests with short windows and tight word counts. So, I often have quite a few items that are short - very, very short.

For instance, the "Tweet Me a Story" contest requires a character count of no more than 140. Total. And there's a 25 word contest and a 24 syllable contest, etc. There are flash fiction contests with strict word counts. I try to be clear when things are written to prompts and word counts.

So, it leaves me completely puzzled when a reviewer of a 24 syllable poem tells me it would have been better if I had made it longer. Or a 300 word flash fiction is marked down because some background needed to be expanded, etc. The answer, of course, lies in the description of the item. The poem, or whatever, cannot be made longer. But I can be made crazy.

I hope that when I review things that were contest entries that I consider the form and word count and prompt limitations placed on the author and try to appreciate the work within those guidelines.

Okay, moaning over. We return you to our regular programming.