2008 News & Views: Discussion and Announcements for the Survivorphile

[BOSTONFICTIONWRITER]

Get a life

"Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah."

Someone is hanging around children way too much. Tattle tale.

Actually, it doesn't matter, 363 points is my current score. I just didn't have the time to post all those stories.

At this rate, I figure I'll have somewhere around 600 to 800 stories submitted by the end of the year, well over a thousand points.

I'm just here to write stories. If I win $500 bucks, I'll just donate it to the shelter like I did last year.

Some people are so small. Get a life. Get away from the computer. Go outside. The sun is still shining. Why be so mean spirited. We all are here to write stories. It's not about scores or contests. It's about becoming better writers.

 

[BOSTONFICTIONWRITER]

Oh, well

Has anyone seen MungoPark III hanging around here?

I've been looking for him or her. I haven't seen any trace of last year's winner.

Oh, well, I guess I'll see 'em around September.

 

[Boxlicker101]

Quote:
Originally Posted by SunrockSin
Actually, the rules do not address when the stories can be added to the scorecard. While the points don't count until the story or poem is published, nothing in the rules precludes adding the stories to the scorecard when they are posted. Since we are encouraged to keep the scorecards up to date, it just seems easier to score stories as they are posted than have to scan the new stories and poems every day to see if any outstanding ones have finally been published.

Obviously any rejected stories or reclassified stories will require a correction to the scorecard but the contestant has until January to make those corrections.

I refer you to this post in the FAQ by Lauren.

I think The Sinner is right, Crim. The rules give us a lot of leeway on keeping our scorecards, and I don't see anything wrong with entering a story that is pending, as long as it is identified as "pending" and no score is included for it. The note from Lauren just says "should", not "is required to" and goes on to say the stories can be listed as long as they are marked as pending and no score is included.

Personally, I think that is pointless, and I enter stories after they they are available to read, but that is my preference. As long as the final total is correct, that is what counts.

ETA: I am assuming that The Sinner is confusing or misusing the word "posted". I think of a story as being submitted when I copy and paste it in the entry form, and only I can see it in my index, where it is listed as "pending". About a week later, assuming it is accepted, it is posted, meaning it is available to read.

 

[CrimsonMaiden]

Guys (and gals), I'm just going by what's in the FAQ, and by what I've been told as a previous contestant. I'm not going to argue semantics. Like the FAQ says, if you just must put pending stories on the scorecard, then note them as such and do not count them in the points total.

Someone has been putting pending stories on their cards and going ahead and adding the points in, and you aren't supposed to do that (per the reasons stated in the FAQ). That is why I posted the reminder.

 

[starrkers]

I wouldn't count on it.

You win.

 

[PrincessErin]

.....

 

[Lauren Hynde]

I just want to apologise to everyone for not keeping the scoreboard updated. I've been having some very busy times. As soon as I have a break I will do it, though.

 

[BOSTONFICTIONWRITER]

By the way

I think, Starrkers, that you'll have to make another flash showing of your dual full moons to scare me away, again (lol).

By the way, they are a nice example of what women's breasts are supposed to look like.

While on that note, there is a certain someone who has a nice rack, too. Only, I wish she'd change her top once in a while. She's been wearing that lavender top for weeks now.

 

[PrincessErin]

.....

 

[BOSTONFICTIONWRITER]

lol

I can't argue that point (lol).

 

[Boxlicker101]

Of course I'm wearing the same clothes. According to you I never leave my computer and don't have a life. Why should I change clothes?

Erin

I'm certainly not going to complain about what you are wearing. Look at my AV, at what the people there are wearing or not wearing, and it has been around a lot longer than your AV has.

 

[RedHairedandFriendly]

I'm certainly not going to complain about what you are wearing. Look at my AV, at what the people there are wearing or not wearing, and it has been around a lot longer than your AV has.

And YOUR's IS VERY DISTRACTING!

 

[KarennaC]

If I looked in a top the way Erin looks in her lavendar top, I wouldn't want to change it either! Alas, I have microscopic rackage...

Has anyone else been completely unmotivated to write lately?

 

[PrincessErin]

.....

 

[starrkers]

I think, Starrkers, that you'll have to make another flash showing of your dual full moons to scare me away, again (lol).

By the way, they are a nice example of what women's breasts are supposed to look like.

While on that note, there is a certain someone who has a nice rack, too. Only, I wish she'd change her top once in a while. She's been wearing that lavender top for weeks now.

Nope, seems someone just had to blast you with reality again. The following was posted on the Scouries Reader thread in the Authors Hangout. Reprinted here due to relevance and the fact that so many have scouries on ignore.

Hi, I am the writers co-op known as MungoPark, or actually mungoparkiii. For those of you who are interested, the name Mungo Park came from the Scottish explorer of Africa (not from the golfer as someone once asked). Mungo Park III was a penname I used while in high school when something like a pen name was a cool thing for a writer... at least a wannabe poet in high school.

I said "cool" so that might give you a picture of when I was in high school and chose that name. I was a junior in high school at Stephen D. Lee high school in Columbus, Mississippi. That year I worked on the school literary magazine and happened to win the best essay contest for 1972. Some of my football stories were fictionalized accounts of my sports triumph's playing for a team that went 1-10 for the year.

I could write essays but my poetry was pretty bad at the time, although I did get a couple of my poems into the school magazine. I did write a poem that I particularly liked at the time... it was about a strange park a park called Mungo Park. I took the name from Mungo Park an explorer I happened across in my World History books. Anyway, I felt the poem marked a passage for me, for the first time I wrote something poetically that, in my opinion, worked, so I became Mungo Park III.

As for the other members of the co-op I am afraid they are only me, myself and I, yes, I wrote all those "crappy" stories, if I may quote from another writer here at lit. If anyone was really interested in this co-op thing they can very easily read my stories, they are all still there for anyone to read, compare, analyse, or bash (either on the comment page of the story or in the forum). I think you will probably find that the stories are generally similar in style, with, sadly, the same errors, blips, and screwups re-appearing again and again.

Read them all... I'll give you a hint, try as I might I cannot figure out how to use lay, lie, laid, laying... so you will see 99.99% of my stories avoid using the verb. Embarassing as that is, I freely admit it to help any doubters.

I approached 2007 Survivor with a mind to perhaps try and get one of the gift certificates. You see, I win a $25.00 gift certificate to Amazon and I get my favorite thing... books. Ah, but much like Pygmalion, if I win something substantial like $100, $200, $300, $400, etc. the first thing that happens is my wife says "Oh boy, what are we going to do with the money?" "I thought I'd buy some books," I'd reply. "Books, you already have too many books, by the way, did you sell those I told you to sell last week?"

I concentrated on my poetry first, writing an occasional story to take a break. I write a lot of poetry, I write a lot about poetry, so I have some pretty good stuff. Most of my poems received a favorible mention in the poetry forum daily poetry reviews.

My next task, after finishing up all my poetry, was to work on the long story... yes, the 7500 minimum word story for the Novels, Novella's, etc. category. By the way, my car is still missing the hubcap I describe in the story, just in case you thought that one was written by someone else. Anyway, it took me some time to get this one together.

After finishing the long one, I worked on a few stories while watching the scores. I watched the scoreboard but also kept the scores of the top ten competitors, including 3 who hadn't entered Survivor (Danielkitten, SR71plt, and SamuelX). While it quickly became apparent these three would not be strong contenders because they were posting to mainly just a few specific categories, I continued keeping their scores, eventually dropping SR71 off the radar, but still watching the other two.

Seeing where the leading competitors were at, I felt their scores were vunerable, so around September I decided to make a concerted effort to get myself into the top two or three positions. Fortunately Sexyvixen wasn't writing a whole lot in the second half of the year, so though I knew she was capable of winning, I thought I might catch her.

I began writing two, three, and more stories a day, writing during the day and posting them each night. My real job had suddenly gone slow, so I had time to write at times during the day and I would quickly proof each story and post it in the evening. I simply did that pretty much every day from September to December, increasing the output as I realized I had a chance to win it all.

Oddly, the leading writer pulled a number of stories and then quit posting them. There was a period of 42 consecutive days where he had no stories published... a period that I wrote well over 100 stories. It appeared complacency set in for some of the writers, while I continued writing story after story.

How does anyone write that much? It has to do with free time and ideas. For most of the time I was writing, I was traveling for my company, so after work I went home and instead of doing the dishes, taking out the trash, and other chores, instead of eating dinner and watching TV with my wife, I was in a hotel room. The TV was on, but my internal schedule was screwed up, so I missed a lot of what I normally watched on TV, instead I wrote.

Ideas... ah, during my travels I was in Washington DC a lot, riding the Metro there gave me many, many ideas. Why practically every person I saw there, pretty or ugly, fat or skinny, white or black, rich or poor, suddenly became an erotic possibility and there were the ideas. Now yes, I did read some too then and you will see some of the influence I got from my reading... you'll see Kafka in some of my stories, Dorothy Parker in others, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, perhaps even some Calvino in a story or two.

As for when the stories were written... no, alas anyother interesting but untrue claim was that the stories were written throughout the year and then dumped in the last months of the contest. No, sorry. I did have about four stories I had started in the spring but abandonded them for a while that I finished in the fall, otherwise, the stories were pretty much submitted on the day I wrote them.

As everyone knows, when you submit a story there is a lag of between one week or two prior to the stories being published, longer if it is a Audio Story or Poem or an Illustrated Story or Poem. With this lag or queue, someone submitting four or five stories a day will see their stories begin to pile up (at one time I had well over 30 stories in queue) and with Laurel committed to getting all stories noted as survivor stories published before the end of the contest these stacked up stories will appear in a short period of time.

Regarding the scorecards for the stories, everyone's published stories were clearly shown on their own page, along with the dates of publication. Funny, even though one of the contestants carried a huge mathematical error on his scorecard for some time, I had no trouble tracking the true progress of the competitors.

Amid all the forums and discussion groups, the Survivor Contest does draw some attention to the contestants, much of it not good which some may argue can unfairly erode scores on stories as people downgrade ratings either to discourage a competitor or simply based on the belief that a contest based upon quantity cannot not also offer quality. I wanted my stories judged upon simply the story, not it's connection to any contest, style, content or author so I did not announce my entry into the contest at the end of the year.

This decision also allowed me employ a powerful strategy in the contest (stealth) which I will admit was another reason to hold off entering the contest until just before the legal deadline. While I was writing through the year, I kept a close watch of who were submitting stories and I knew where I would stand if say SamuelX or Danielkitten or any other prolific writer had elected to enter the contest just before the deadline, frankly I saw that as simply being a smart competitor.

As far as quality goes, anyone is welcome to read what I wrote and judge for themselves. Funny thing, the one writer who called my writing crappy was very proud of the green E he earned, which happened to be exactly half of the green E's I earned while writing for Survivor. One Survivor contestant had more green E's than I earned, Lauren Hynde, whom I submit is an exquisite writer and deserving of many more accolades.

Of course, greenies are what you want to make of them and I won't fool myself into thinking the Pulitizer is coming soon, I am speaking more toward the one writer who called my stories "crappy." I guess to continue this specific comparison, he had some E-book publication which is good. I don't read E-books, I won't submit to E-Books... call me old fashion. As far as the Big Bad Ass Book of Sex, gosh I guess I will be sharing space in that book with the writer who calls my stories "crappy."

Yes, apparently one of his stories has been selected for the anthology which is due for publication in the fall of 2010 (after a number of delays). Strangely, five of my "crappy" stories were selected for the book, three of which were written in the same day. Additionally, the editor commissioned me to write three additional stories, paying me a nice sum for each (the original five stories, because they had been previously published, earned me a few copies of the book when it comes out).

Okay, yeah it's not the New Yorker and certainly not a book I'd give my mom for her coffee table, but it does place my "crappy" stories in some context. My eight stories in the book will be published under the name JM Thompson. Not my legal name, alas a famous writer already absconded with my legal name...

Regarding the length of stories I would have hoped that anyone making a point or accusation would actually research the point so they could make an accurate statement. Unfortunately, with the internet the way it is, this just doesn't happen.

For the 2007 Survivor Contest I submitted stories ranging in length from 764 words to 8,413 words with an average story length 1,339. Considering that before I found Literotica I spent a lot of time at AOL on their poetry and story boards competing in weekly contest which featured short stories of no more than 250 words for one weekly contest and short stories of no more than 1,000 words for another weekly contest, it is fair to say that I learned to write concise, very short stories in the several years I wrote there. I guess here at lit I perhaps rambled a bit, lengthing my average story up to 1,339. Gosh, perhaps if I could have raised that average to 1,340 or even 1,350 words they would be that much better quality.

In all fairness, the writer who called my stories "crappy" who said I wrote stories ranging in length from 751 to 1100 words wrote stories ranging in length from 762 words to 8,101 words. He did average 2,324 words per story.
Perhaps the extra 900 plus words elevated his work above "crappy," perhaps it was something else. I really can't offer my judgement on the work because of the very few stories of his I read, I don't recall them.

I must apologize to everyone who must be sick to death of the 2007 Survivor thing, to all those who really couldn't care less about the contest and to all those who I have bored with my story here. I tried to remain out of the ruckus, figuring that I shouldn't dignify the claims and allegations with any comment, but frankly when it continues now into its fifth month I figure maybe this will calm it all down.

As far as all this goes, I understood what it was all about from the start and I am happy to ignore the baseless claims and allegations, however when they drag Lauren Hynde into this senselessness I figure it has to stop. Lauren has gratiously spent many hours of her time in moderating the contest for several years, she has maintained her integrity throughout that time and in doing so returned an integrity to the game that seemed lost the year before she began moderating. She is outspoken and will not take crap from anyone... she may hurt some tender feelings, but she is fair, truthful and I can only hope she continues to moderate the game.

Once again I apologize to those I have bored, but hopefully the foolishness will end now. If anyone has any questions on my stories, of when they were written, of who wrote them, please feel free to PM me. I have every story and poem from 2007 saved on a USB Drive and if anyone wants to visit me in the Houston, Texas area, I'll even let you look over the drive and my stories on my laptop.

Hey, if you are interested in reading my stories feel free to do so. I think you might find many are a bit different than normal lit fare, whether that is good or bad.

Sincerely,

Mungo Park III
MP3

 

[MagicaPractica]

If I looked in a top the way Erin looks in her lavendar top, I wouldn't want to change it either! Alas, I have microscopic rackage...

Has anyone else been completely unmotivated to write lately?

So very unmotivated.

 

[KarennaC]

Erin, you're welcome. I hear ya about finding time to write. That's been part of my motivation issues lately.

Magica, glad I'm not the only one... I hope motivation finds both of us soon! I think I just need to give up a couple of the series I've been working on and focus on doing some new stuff; two of my series are struggling in the votes, and it's making me lose interest in them.

 

[MagicaPractica]

Magica, glad I'm not the only one... I hope motivation finds both of us soon! I think I just need to give up a couple of the series I've been working on and focus on doing some new stuff; two of my series are struggling in the votes, and it's making me lose interest in them.

I hear ya. I've lost interest in a couple of mine and I just need to write the ending and let it be, but I've got something else demanding my time (and writer's block) right now. *sigh*

 

[PrincessErin]

.....

 

[BOSTONFICTIONWRITER]

How dare you?

Who is your audience? Who are you trying to impress? Not these bunch of perverts and nitwits, I hope.

Write for yourself. Write to improve your writing. Then, they (your audience) will come.

I have a secret following of admirers. Readers who dare not show their support for my work for fear of being bashed, as I am and as you are.

Apparently, you are doing something right, as I have done, because now you are in their sights and a target.

Ignore the bashers and write for the one that matters...you.

I am lucky to have found this site. I virtually stopped writing before writing here. Now, I write every day. It doesn't matter that I'll never win a contest here no matter how many stories I enter in the contest. I know in my heart that many of my stories are better than those that have one contests here.

It doesn't matter how many bashes I receive, I never make them win and story writing here.

I know my writing is good. I know my writing has improved from last year. I love creating characters and writing stories. That's what it's all about for me. I don't write for accolades. I write because I must.

Persevere. Writing is a lonely art.

You are a good writer, Erin and shame on you for allowing them to fool you into thinking less of yourself and not believing in your talent.

How dare you?

Besides...if you think the Survivor contest is difficult now...give it a few more month (lol).

Good luck.

 

[BOSTONFICTIONWRITER]

I'm psychic

Besides...I'm psychic, you know.

I see a number...#11.

I predict you'll win an immunity today.

 

[Boxlicker101]

Deciding to do this survivor contest was the worse decision I've made in a long time. No matter what I do I can't win. Every story I write I'm told is crap because I'm writing too many stories. If I delete anonymous comments I'm told I'm being delusional and if I keep that anonymous comments I'm told I only keep the positive comments.
I've had the same message emailed to me anonymously for the past five days.
I'm going to sink into the shadows. I wish I could go back to January and not tell everyone I was doing this contest. Maybe then my stories would be evaluated a little more fairly.

Erin

I hope you don't do anything of the sort. I, and all the men and many of the women really love seeing your AV, even if it is always the same top.

You can delete whatever PC you want. If they are just insulting or are dumb, delete them and don't worry about it. Some of my favorites that people leave on my stories are the dumb negatives that I can laugh at.

Don't worry about your scores either. Before you started here, the scoring was a lot more generous. A "5" meant "excellent". Now, a "4" is "excellent", and a "5" is "one of the best". If you have a story just over 4.00, it means it is an excellent story in the opiniona of the readers. Since there are always trolls around, a 4.00 story is about as good as a 4.50 story used to be.

 

[KarennaC]

Erin, I hear ya on being discouraged. I've gotten slammed on some of my stuff, but I finally decided that right now, it's not about getting good votes, it's about writing the stories I want to write. BFW has a good point; write for yourself.

Of course, if I could find the time and energy to write, I'd be doing a whole lot better myself... lol

 

[Boxlicker101]

Apparently, SunrockSin has droped out of the contest. He was a contender. Of course, he might drop back in at any time. I don't think there is any rule against that.

 

[starrkers]

No, there isn't. BFW publicly announced he was dropping out last year and asked his scorecard be removed.

At that time Lauren said:

As for having your name removed from the contest, as is stated in the FAQ, no ScoreCards will be removed for whatever reason. If you no longer wish to be a part of the contest, all you have to do is edit yours to delete the registry of submissions and stop tracking your scores... And if you change your mind before January 4, 2007, you go back there and edit them in again.

As we all know, Boston did change his mind and came in second.