Whoever is going to post the stories can set up an email addy for the stories to go to, and another id here to use to post them, if they need to be anonymous. It's simple enough. Some email limits the number of words/characters per email, but if you have one of those accounts and you exceed your limit, you can break your story down into parts and whoever is doing the posting can reassemble them in a Word file and copy and paste to post it. It's not that hard to do.

 

Oh shit, my story starts the same way, too!

I 'Googled' electric candle and came up with all kinds of decorative battery & house current lighting devices. People used to put a candle in a window if waiting for a loved one to come home. Maybe they use electric ones now.

 

I have taken the electric candle as more metophoric, since non-electric candles have been put to a wide variety of uses (you all know what I mean). Could not the electric candle just mean battery operated.

Thinskin

 

This quest for anonymity is admirable, but I can see all sorts of problems if one person is tasked with converting, formatting and paragraphing hundreds [thousands? ] of pages of text from a variety of Word and Word-like sources and ensuring that they are all posted just as the author intended. What are the chances?

Seems to me that the stories site is the best place for authors to post their entries--especially if the rating and comment features are not restored. That way, authors could send contest-entry link to ejls [as she originally proposed], and she could start a contest voting thread [or threads if there are more than 25 entries], and the readers would not be influenced by the ratings and/or comments of others. [Not sure if a thread can be locked to comments while keeping the poll open for voting, but that would be ideal.]

 

Now there's an idea! Electric candles! Not the plug-in variety; the amperage could make things a little too smokey. But batteries???? Mmmmm.

A.P.

P.S. Why do I persist in lurking here? I'm not even competing! Sheesh.

P.P.S. BTW, in retrospect I agree with DC that my idea for posting the stories has some fatal flaws. The anon-email idea is much better. Here I am, lurking again. Sheesh.

P.P.P.S. THANKS, ThinSkin, for still being here! So glad I didn't scare you away! Going now. Sheesh.

 

Those are some very good points. I'd suggest that all submissions be sent in plain text, but inevitably someone will cry, "but I need my italics!" (and if nobody else does, I will)

Perhaps we can get more than one volunteer to format and post the stories, ideally one for each thread that we split the poll into. Then it won't be too much work for any one person (I'd be willing to reformat and post 5-10 stories). We can say that whenever possible, entries should be submitted in plain text, but if that's not possible then the typical word processor formats (.doc, .docx, .odt, .rtf) are fine.

As far as ensuring that they're posted just as the author intended, we could make a few simple rules: everything will be posted double-spaced between paragraphs, first line is the story title and will be bold-face centered, scene changes must be marked with a series of asterisks, no hard returns except to separate paragraphs, etc. I doubt anyone will complain if there's a consistent formatting standard like that.

 

I have an idea!

Alright, so, I think I have an idea to fix this problem.

Why not make a website on freewebs and dedicate it to all the stories? I make freewebs websites all the time, and would be more than willing to post all the stories there. We could then post the link to the website in a thread called "Collection of Stories for the Competition." Then have each individual thread for the 8 stories in a single poll, then people can go to the website and just click on the tab for that particular story, in all its glory.

Also, if people can save the story in a format like Microsoft Word, and attach the file into an e-mail to send to the person collecting them, there won't have to be much editing done to fix them up. And if there is, then the source for all the text formats will be right there.

Like I've offered numerous times, I have no problem doing this and I could totally knock out a big portion of the stories myself. This seems to be the easiest and most efficient way to get all the stories in one place without having to worry about not being able to get rated on the story section of our site for a while.

 

There are an awful lot of ideas here, and I am not an expert. This started out as a small challenge to the most talented writers I've come across. This is a lot for me to digest. I'm not ignoring your ideas, just trying to take them all in. I can't please everyone, so my apologies for anyone I piss off.

 

I agree. My head's a spinnin"!

 

XD very nice story

 

No apologies necessary. Do whatever you think is best, and if anyone doesn't like it, the rest of us will back you up.

 

Too much hassle I think!! I'm sure that when ejls first suggested the competition, she didn't envision having to upload - or copy/paste anything except the links!! Because you know, you just know <<<leave my italics alone mister!!>>> that someone is going to submit a story with the incorrect formatting, which ejls will have to reformat otherwise it 'may affect the votes' either up or down!!

I quite like the following idea from Sahara

Let's give ejls some time to actually enjoy the thrill of her idea becoming a reality instead of giving her nightmares of the amount of hours that would be needed to format!!

Oh, and umm - don't think I didn't notice the comment about 'free websites'!! Come on!! This is a simple - that is S.I.M.P.L.E. competition, started out on an idea by someone to while away the time until the admin can fix the site!! All of a sudden, we're talking setting up some sort of competition FOR this site, not just ON it? WTF guys - get your head out of the clouds, relax, write, cum and have fun!!

 

The shepherdess raises good points. Let's keep it easy for everyone.

Things were a lot simpler when ejls authortatively informed us of the rules, and we simply lowered our eyes submissively and said, "Yes, Mistress."

 

All that hanging around with sheep must cause a person to gain a lot of common sense.

 

Not to mention some very "common" scents.

 

*sniffs pits* Hay!! What are ewe trying to say about me??

 

I hoped someone would catch that.

 

Well said. Although I'm in favor of anonymity, if we have to surrender such things for the sake of simplicity, so be it.

The only problem that isn't addressed by the original rules is how to select between 40 options in a poll, since the max is 25.

Kinky! I like the way your mind thinks.

 

I'll deal with the poll when I see how many entries we get.

 

What a lovely mistress.