I'm thinking of ditching my account with this website on the basis that I've not had anything from it that has been remotely useful to me.
Also, the 2013 & 2014 short story competition entries were NOT ALL read by the judge OR any other resource. I have asked them for an explanation for this and hit a blank wall. If anybody can shed any light on either of the above I would be much impressed.
@Admin: On both occasions (2013 & 2014) you had a blog opened up by the competition judge. On both occasions I asked if / how they could possibly read some 2500 to 3000 entries? I asked if they had a team of helpers, I asked if they had any criteria by which they judged the competition entries. I even did the math; this showed that it would have taken them something in the order of 3 or 4 months solid work just to read all the entries.
On each occasion neither of the judges responded to my questions and neither did Admin.
The 2013 winner was a ridiculous piece of purple prose and a massive letdown to short story writers.
The 2014 winner was a poorly constructed, badly written piece that looked as if it was based on a film (can't remember the detail but somebody pointed it out).
May I suggest that, for the benefit of Susan Russell, Paul Garside & Helen Jones that you reproduce both the 2013 & 2014 blogs HERE so that they can formulate their own opinion?
In defence, I did receive an email from one of your staff who defended the 2013 winning entry and the judges decision.
OR you could just publish here the process that each judge (and helpers) went through to arrive at the winning entries and their justification of A WINNING SHORT STORY ENTRY IN A SHORT STORY COMPETITION.
That's all I ask.
Dear Oliver,
Thank you for your feedback and we are sorry to hear you haven't found the website useful.
However, we must point out that every single entry submitted to us - in all of our competitions - is read by the judge, without exception.
We also haven't received any questions from you in the past, but would be happy to answer any query you may have about the website or the competition. Please feel free to contact us any time at writersandaritsts@bloomsbury.com.
Kind regards,
The W&A Team
I've put up a couple of pieces of writing that attracted zero comments, yet some other pieces did - I think it just depends on how active members are at that time. I've also asked a couple of questions and had some great answers, so for me the site has been a good resource. I'm sorry to hear you've had a bad experience - and yes, like everyone else I'm interested to know how you found out all the entries weren't read.