GUIDELINES AND RULES FOR THE 
WRITERSWEEKLY.COM QUARTERLY
24-HOUR SHORT STORY CONTEST

You are now entered in the next WritersWeekly.com 
24-Hour Short Story Contest. To confirm the contest date, please
refer to the email receipt you received when you paid your
entry fee. 

We have pasted the guidelines and FAQ below.

Please print and keep them on-hand for start-time, which
will be at 12:00 pm (noon) CENTRAL Time on the date that is 
listed on your email receipt. 

Have a beautiful day!
Angela

CONTEST GUIDELINES - PLEASE READ!

1. If, on the date of the contest, you're checking the
website for the contest topic and word count, don't
forget to click "REFRESH" on your browser so it'll
pop up after we upload it.

2. The contest topic will be emailed to all entrants at start-time
and will be posted online here:
http://www.writersweekly.com/misc/contest.html 

Some ISPs filter our list mailings (which is what the contest
mailing is) as sp*m. Therefore, you may not get the contest
email. If that happens, pull the topic and word count (and rules!)
from the web page above and start writing.

3. Compose your short story and e-mail it back to our office
before the deadline. All entries are due at our office, in our
emailbox, within 24 hours after the "start-time" listed above, 
which is at 12:00 p.m. - noon - CENTRAL time on Sunday.

Late entries will be disqualified. E-mail your
entry to: angela@writersweekly.com

EMAIL YOUR ENTRY EARLY SO IT ARRIVES HERE ON TIME.

Even if you send it a few minutes early...if it arrives here late,
your entry will be disqualified. This requirement is mandatory
because some entrants have been known to falsify the time
on their computers to make it appear as though the entry was
sent on time. Therefore, ALL ENTRIES MUST ARRIVE HERE,
IN MY EMAILBOX, BEFORE THE DEADLINE. We can't be
held responsible for communication difficulties, late emails,
etc.

4. Your story must contain your name, address, phone number, e-mail
address and word count AT THE END OF THE STORY. Please
include your story in the text of your e-mail. Do not send e-mail
attachments. ALL STORIES MUST HAVE TITLES. Type the
title of your story at the top of your story.

*Very Important* Type "24 Hour Contest" in the subject line
of your email entry! This will enable us to pull any wayward
entries out of our sp*m filter.

General Rules: Entrants may be located anywhere on the globe.
Only single-author stories are permitted. No co-authored stories
or teams, please. Reprints are not permitted. All entries must be
composed within the contest time frame. By entering the contest, you
certify that you have read these guidelines in their entirety
and that you agree, on winning first, second or third place in the
contest, to allow WriterWeekly.com to publish your winning entry
on the WritersWeekly.com and WritersMarkets.com websites. 

WritersWeekly only asks for the non-exclusive electronic right to
publish the top three winning stories on our website. We don't take
any rights at all from other entrants. Winners and others may, of 
course, publish their stories elsewhere 

WORD COUNT: The word count varies per contest. You will receive the
word count when the topic is released at start-time. 

-----------------------------------------------------------

MORE HINTS AND RULES

Your story must touch on the contest topic in some way to qualify.
During each contest, several writers ask if they must quote
from the topic directly. No, you don't. You are even
permitted to change the gender and age of the characters.
But, it must be obvious to us that the story was written
specifically for the assigned topic.

If you submit your story early, be sure to check your email
about an hour before the deadline on Sunday to ensure we've
sent you a confirmation (so you'll know your story made it).
Don't wait until the last minute! Also, don't want until the
very last minute to send your story. Some ISPs (yahoo in
particular!) take too long to send out emails and your story
might arrive late.

We do *not* use an autoresponder to confirm receipt of 
stories. That is too risky. Angela personally and manually
sends a confirmation out to all entrants. However, Angela does 
not stay up all night. If you send in your story in the middle 
of the night, you won't receive a confirmation until the 
following morning. 

Even if you are a past-participant, please read these rules
in their entirety!

Rules:

1. Your story does NOT need to quote the exact topic. 
It must only touch on the topic in some way
to qualify. Lots of writers ask this question during each
contest, so we want this to be perfectly clear. You don't
have to quote the topic word-for-word, but you may if you
like. It's your decision. Yes, you may change the gender
and/or age of the characters in the topic above. You may
make the characters any age you want them to be.

2. Don't forget to name your story!

3. The word count varies per contest. You will receive the
word count when the topic is released at start-time. 

4.a. *Very Important* - Type "24 Hour Contest" in the
subject line of your email entry! This will help us to
pull any wayward entries out of our sp*m filter.

4.b. Type your name, email address, mailing address, phone
number and word count (not necessarily in that order) at 
the **END** of the story. (Lots of people break this rule. 
Breaking this rule is grounds for disqualification.) We 
will only use your phone number in case there is an 
emergency regarding your entry or if, heaven forbid, 
your winning check is returned undeliverable.

And, we never, ever share emails, phone numbers, addresses,
names or anything with any other person or company. We do
publish the email addresses of the winners on the
WritersWeekly site so our readers can compliment their
stories and send congratulations. You can request we not
publish your email address if you're a winner. No problem at
all.

5. Send your story in the text of an e-mail message. DO NOT
SEND EMAIL ATTACHMENTS unless it is an emergency (your
email starts cutting off parts of the story). If you must send an
attachment, it must be a TEXT-ONLY file. All other
attachments will be deleted. No fancy formatting, please,
even in the body of the email, and no html emails permitted.
Text-only emails and attachments. Italics may be indicated
by using underscores around the italicized area _like this_.

6. Submit your story to angela@writersweekly.com by
the deadline, which is 12:00 p.m. Central Time on (Sunday) of
the weekend of the contest (check your email receipt for the
specific date.

7. Very Important. Please don't submit your story early and
then continue to make corrections and submit your story
again... and again...and again. Do not send your story more
than once. We will use the first version of the story you
send in. The occasional typo will be overlooked, so don't
get stressed if you find one in your story later. We're
looking for good writers, not editors. Everybooty makes
typos, especialley under presshure, and we understann dis.
However, if a few stories are finalists and we're having a
hard time making a decision, a story with few or no typos
will come out ahead of one with multiple typos.

8. For easy reference, guidelines (and hints) and the date of
the next contest are online at:
http://www.writersweekly.com/misc/contest.php 

9. Sometimes writers submit their stories and later find odd
characters, or that they are missing vast chunks at the ends
of paragraphs because they have cut and pasted to their mail
program from their word processor. (Please write your story
in a text program, NOT A WORD PROCESSING PROGRAM,
if you're not using your mail program as this will cut down on
the possibility of missing chunks and odd characters appearing.)
Typing the story in the body of your email is the best way
to send it without problems. But, remember to save often!

Please make sure your entire story appears in your email
before clicking "send." When we email you to confirm that we
have received your story, your story will be included in
that confirmation email. Please make sure the entire story
is there...because that will show you what we received on
our end. We can't be held responsible for partial entries.
If you find part of your story missing, try sending us a
text-only attachment. If you find odd characters appearing
in your story, but it's still readable, don't worry. We can
work with it.

10. Late stories are disqualified. During every contest, a
dozen or so entrants submit their story late with an excuse
(I was working in the garden, the baby spilled juice on my
keyboard, my mother in law made me go to the mall, I got my
time zones confused, I forgot today was contest day, etc.)
and ask us to accept it anyway or ask if they can get a
refund or be moved to the next contest. We can't do that. To
be completely fair, everyone must follow the rules. Stories
are due here by the deadline. Many contestants simply send
in their stories late with no explanation. We assume they
think we won't notice the story is late. Those stories are
also disqualified because they are late. All late stories
are disqualified. No exceptions.

If your email to us bounces back to you and does not arrive
on time, we still can't accept it. Computers can easily be
manipulated to make it appear something was sent before it
actually was. However, the headers of each email contain
info. which is difficult to manipulate, including when your
ISP actually sent out the email and when it arrived on our
server.

Sending in a late story with the headers from your original
submission won't work. If your story arrives late, you need
to complain to your ISP, not to us. Threatening to sue us
over late stories (yes, we've had a few jerks in the past) 
won't work either. 

Stories must be IN my in-box prior to the deadline. If your
email program tends to send items out late or if you
occasionally forget to release the mail in your queue or if
your ISP has ever sent items out slowly or even if you're
expecting bad weather that might cause you to lose your
power or Internet connection, you should send your story
early to accommodate for these possibilities.

AOL.com, comcast.com, CS.com, yahoo and several other 
large ISPs filter more than 30% of legitimate email. If 
you use one of these services, you might want to consider 
giving us an alternative email address to use for corresponding 
with you.

If the deadline passes, please do not email asking us to
accept it late, and please don't send in late stories. We
can't include them anyway. Please don't send irate emails to
us claiming you sent the story in on time. If you sent your
entry in long before it arrived here, you'll need to
register a complaint with your ISP. Our rules are firm in
this area. In fairness to everyone entered, we can't break
the rules for one. All stories ~arriving~ after the deadline
will be disqualified.

11. Sour Grapes - After the results of each contest are
distributed, we almost always receive a sour grapes email 
from a contestant who claims that their mom (or friend, 
neighbor, etc.), thinks their story is far better than the 
winners' stories. Sadly, every time this has ever happened,
the story in question was not even among the top entries.
Friends and relatives are the worst to judge a writer's
work. They just won't be honest because they don't want 
to hurt a loved one's feelings. The decision of the judges 
is final. 

12. And, finally...please, if you love us, give us a good
ending! 95% of the stories we receive fall flat at the end.
It's very depressing for us when this happens. The ending
can make or break your story. :)

What are the 10 most common mistakes writers make during the
24-Hour Short Story Contests?

10. Exceeding the word count, or submitting a 100-word story
(obviously not even trying and simply hoping for a door
prize).

9. Not naming the story.

8. Putting their contact information (and name!) before the
story instead of after.

7. Making the story about a writer, or about someone named
Angela (my name). These ideas are far too common and make
the stories unoriginal.

6. Tons of typos, misspelled words and grammatical errors.

5. Using what was obviously a pre-written story that has
nothing to do with the topic (but adding a sentence or two
about the topic to try to fool us into thinking the story is
about the topic).

4. Using a word processor to create the story, then pasting
it into an email (causing odd characters to appear and large
pieces of the story to get cut off).

3. Not writing "outside the box." Too many writers use the
first idea that comes to mind when reading the topic. This
always results in several similar stories being submitted.

2. Turning in the story after the deadline passes and then
trying to convince us we received it on time and are lying
to them about that (it's easy to prove when an email arrived
by the headers on the email!). Also, trying to convince us
to accept their story late because they forgot the contest
was today. And, blaming us for emails not received (it's
best to send the story early and then get confirmation that
it was received rather than emailing us after the contest
ends to ask us why confirmation wasn't received).

And the #1 most common mistake writers make in the 24-Hour
Short Story Contests is:

1. Giving us a bad ending. :(