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Fall 2006 Contest
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ScottyDM
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Joined: 12 Feb 2005
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Location: Colorado Springs, Colorado, USA

PostPosted: Tue Sep 12, 2006 6:01 am    Post subject: Fall 2006 Contest Reply with quote

Greetings:

I will announce the fall contest about this time tomorrow.

Watch this space!

Scotty

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Almost real enough to be considered non-fiction, if it weren't made up.
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PrincessB
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PostPosted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 8:17 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

<eyes dry out from watching for too long>
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ScottyDM
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PostPosted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 2:11 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

It's been a zoo here, Princess, and I don't mean that in a good way. My cousin in China had an emergency with his website Sunday and I was photoshopping pictures for two days. Confused


Announcing the Fall 2006 Writing Contest!

The fall contest is ready to roll and the theme is the harvest.

I'm interested to see if anyone will try something daring.

Scotty

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Nadan
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PostPosted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 8:27 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

::has a sudden brainstorm... or brainfreeze::

ow...

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Nadan
AKA AnthonyTiger

"Cats are mysterious beings... symbols of evil, gods of the Pharoahs. You never know if they love you or if they condescend to occupy your house. This mystery is what makes them the most attractive beast." - Paul Moore, 1978
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Tygon
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PostPosted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 10:44 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Oh dear... and I thought the last one was difficult...
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ScottyDM
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PostPosted: Fri Sep 15, 2006 2:52 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Difficult? Shocked

Oh, you're joking. Wink


Most people in modern times are not as harvest oriented as they were in the past. I think for many of us, our personal harvest consists of going to the grocer's and getting something shrink-wrapped in clear plastic.

While "harvest" can be applied to almost anything that people gather up, most traditional harvest is done during a particular time of year. Crops like pumpkins, peaches, and barley are ripe and ready at a certain time and must be harvested, and in some cases preserved. Wild game often has an annual cycle, which gives the locals a particular time of year when hunting (or harvesting) is best. Calamari come together to spawn one month out of the year, and whales have migration paths that will find them in local waters for a short while each year. My father, who is in his early 80s, told me of the ice harvest each winter in Clear Lake, Iowa--they would take horse drawn sleds out on the lake, saw out slabs of ice, then store them in a well-insulated barns for sale during the rest of the year (before refrigerators). Also, many types of livestock bred for meat are slaghtered during this time. Meat salting, canning, smoking, and sausage making are all harvest time activities.

There are many things directly associated with the harvest as well. Preserving the harvest, as I mentioned. But in days of old the time immediately after harvest was a time to relax and celebrate. In medieval villages it was a time for the young folks to take a break from work and check each other over, and it became a time to choose a mate. A good example of the post-harvest celebration was Dr. Kayngi's story The Seedling from the fall 2005 contest. BTW, there really was a Druidic harvest festival to keep evil spirits from infecting an apple orchard (the cool things you learn from Google). Another example of a harvest festival is Bernard Doove's Harvest Ceremony.

Rather than create a story about a harvest or harvest festival, you could create a story about something else that happens to be set during harvest time. A murder mystery perhaps. I remember Sherlock Holmes commenting on the lack of beeswing in the bottom of a wine glass, and that detail lead to the truth. Beeswing is a characteristic of aged wine, but if you know wine-making or the grape harvest, perhaps some detail of that could be a pivotal point in a mystery tale. For one story I wrote I wanted a character to be a beer brewmaster. I found a PDF book online that explained all about beer-making--from simple kits, to roasting barley and selecting hops and doing every step from scratch. Beer, by the necessity of the raw ingredients, is a harvest-time activity. Romance and beer, murder and beer, rebellion and beer, or... you get the idea.

So pick a crop (apples, whales, etc), or pick a product (wine, beer, etc.), or even pick a holiday, and start Googling. For example a lot of things we do at Halloween have their roots in harvest-time activities. Something is bound to pop.

Have fun!

Scotty

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Nadan
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PostPosted: Fri Sep 15, 2006 5:01 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

ScottyDM wrote:
Difficult? Shocked

Oh, you're joking. Wink


Or just ignore physical harvests altogether and think of the emotional or spiritual implications of a 'harvest'.

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Nadan
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PrincessB
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PostPosted: Fri Sep 15, 2006 5:26 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Harvesting has been done since practically forever. Now days crop harvesting is hardly ever seen by most, most of the younger generation has never done any sort of crop harvesting, many of the older parents have but now days we take for granted that the food we want will be sitting on the shelf in our favorite store.
Because harvesting is so old there have been many, many stories bassed around the harvest so coming up with a harvest related story is not hard, coming up with a harvest related story that isn't completly over done is.

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Nadan
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PostPosted: Fri Sep 15, 2006 5:46 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

One thing's for sure. A lot of us are going to have to do some research. =^_^=
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Nadan
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"Cats are mysterious beings... symbols of evil, gods of the Pharoahs. You never know if they love you or if they condescend to occupy your house. This mystery is what makes them the most attractive beast." - Paul Moore, 1978
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Nadan
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PostPosted: Fri Sep 15, 2006 6:08 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

And research pays dividends... Now I've got two stories to write... but which one first?
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Nadan
AKA AnthonyTiger

"Cats are mysterious beings... symbols of evil, gods of the Pharoahs. You never know if they love you or if they condescend to occupy your house. This mystery is what makes them the most attractive beast." - Paul Moore, 1978
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Tygon
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PostPosted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 1:08 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

AnthonyTiger wrote:
ScottyDM wrote:
Difficult? Shocked

Oh, you're joking. Wink


Or just ignore physical harvests altogether and think of the emotional or spiritual implications of a 'harvest'.


You don't want me to go that way. I'd try something along the lines of harvesting souls or something.

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Nadan
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PostPosted: Sun Sep 17, 2006 12:25 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

So Tigon, do you think you might enter this season?
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Nadan
AKA AnthonyTiger

"Cats are mysterious beings... symbols of evil, gods of the Pharoahs. You never know if they love you or if they condescend to occupy your house. This mystery is what makes them the most attractive beast." - Paul Moore, 1978
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Tygon
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PostPosted: Sun Sep 17, 2006 12:59 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'm going to try. Can't promise anything though.
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ScottyDM
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PostPosted: Sun Sep 17, 2006 1:10 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Basic advice to any writer is, "Write what you know."

Some will take that literally and write what soon becomes the same old same old. Most people have limited experiences.

However, there's another way to look at it: come to know what you want to write about before you write about it. In other words, do some research. George Plimpton used to do research by actually doing, personally, what it was he was going to write about. He wanted to write about professional football, so he played a bit of professional football as research (mostly training camp and an early season game). That's a bit extreme.

Anyway, yea. Research.

Scotty

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ScottyDM
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PostPosted: Sun Sep 17, 2006 5:09 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I was doing a touch of research on the scythe (e.g. when it was invented and the various forms through the years) when I found this paragraph on Wikipedia....
Quote:
The scythe also plays an important traditional role, often appearing as weapons in the hands of mythical beings such as Father Time, the four horsemen of the Apocalypse and the Grim Reaper (Death). This stems mainly from the Christian cultural interpretation of death as a "harvest of souls."


Be aware that some people will hate a story that isn't a literal harvest of some crop like pumpkins or rye or something.

Scotty

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