The results for the Arboreal Yearnings Contest are now out, and as I'd expected We Are the Everfree didn't get anywhere. Well, okay – in the interests of strict honesty, I thought it maybe had a very outside chance on account of being more tree than some of the entries – but though I'm happy to have finally turned that long-standing idea of mine into a story, and although it's had a good if limited reception from readers, I'm not going to pretend I think my effort has been robbed of its rightful recognition as an utterly outstanding piece of ponyfic.
There were 18 entries for the contest, all of them short, which is the kind of thing that makes me interested in reading and reviewing the lot of them for Ponyfic Roundup, as I did with the Thousand Words Contest a while ago. Watch this space!
It's an interesting dilemma, contests having less entrants these days off the site's gradually shrinking traffic, to the point we assume our chances are greater. What's easily missed is most of the skilled pro and veteran writers are still entering them same as they always do, long as their muse is struck and they're not judging, so while there's less people, the top spots are as competitive and cut-throat as they've always been. Mostly, we're just getting far fewer stragglers and curious folk submitting stories they'd already been doing that happen to fit the requirements. I observed that first-hand, both in my entering of Imposing Sovereigns III and judging the Ancestral Tribute contest, which both had 31 entries. And also reviewing all the entries for the Who Crossed Over My Little Pony? contest.
ReplyDeleteI'd say if you want to review all these entries, go for it! You'll certainly get in and out quickly, and the shorter length of those weeks will give you the bandwidth to do another spotlight on a novel sooner, if that's to your liking.
By the way, I've read your entry, and… I liked it. That's all I'll say for now, you'll have to wait until the review get published to hear the rest. :P
Thinking about it, if you exclude small pre-FF150 flashfic contests, in 11 years I've won a grand total of two writing "prizes", albeit neither in a contest with actual physical prizes. The EFNW Rarity Award with The Book of Ended Lives and the UK of Equestria fanfic contest with It Doesn't Matter Now. Otherwise I've never done better than the occasional honourable mention. So with that track record it would have been a bit of a surprise if I had placed here!
DeleteI'm going to go ahead with reviewing the treefics, probably before too many more weeks have passed. Actually only 16 to do (since one was mine and one was an anthology) with none above 6,500 words and many much shorter. So yeah, at some point reasonably soon it's happening.
By the way, I've read your entry, and… I liked it. That's all I'll say for now, you'll have to wait until the review get published to hear the rest. :P
Well, I'm never going to be unhappy that someone liked one of my stories, so yay for that! It'll be interesting to see how much of what you have to say about it matches a) what I think about it, and b) what I guess you'll say about it. :)