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 Contests & Activities: July 03, 2013 Issue [#5754] |
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  Contests & Activities This week: Edutainment Edited by: NaNoNette   More Newsletters By This Editor   1. About this Newsletter 2. A Word from our Sponsor 3. Letter from the Editor 4. Editor's Picks 5. A Word from Writing.Com 6. Ask & Answer 7. Removal instructions 
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You take the time to find a contest that sparks your imagination. As soon as your imagination comes to life, you are entertaining yourself. 
You read the rules and figure out how to fit the deadline into your schedule, how to fit your story or poem into the allotted word count. As you do this, you learn about this contest, you can use deductive reasoning to assume that many contests might follow a similar pattern. You challenge yourself to think about something that you didn't think about before. You are educating yourself. 
You begin the writing process. As you put words on paper/on screen, you entertain yourself with the plot developing. As you check your text for typos, grammar, spelling, plot holes, you might open up a dictionary and educate yourself on a new word, or something you need to know to make your story more realistic or informed. 
Once your entry is submitted, you wait for the host's review. Is that contest host going to be somebody with a Masters in English? Most likely not. The contest host might not even have English as his/her first language. However, are you really going to dismiss what somebody has to say about your writing just because they can't judge it from a professor's point of view? Peer to peer reviews have their drawbacks when you're hoping for an edit of your work, but really anybody can tell you how your writing "felt" to them, what they "saw," and why they liked/disliked it. That is something you can't get from yourself. So, a review that'll give you feedback - good or bad - educates you as it shows you your words through the eyes of somebody else. 
Even the most basic raffle, where you send in GPs for tickets and then never check the page again until you find out if you won or not, is an interaction with rules, deadlines, and reasons to participate. You might find out about a group to join, a group to support, or a contest to enter from going over the raffles on the site. 
Auctions are pretty cool because you get to test your reflexes. Have you ever been in a last minute bidding match? I have. I won some and I lost some. Each time, I had a ton of fun. Winner or loser of a bidding war, reach out to your "adversary" and extend a virtual handshake for a good fight. The best part: if you won, you were entertained, plus you've got some goodies coming your way. If you lost the bid, you were still entertained, and you really didn't lose anything since you don't have to pay for the package. 
That's amazing. 
