The Story of the Month is chosen from the Story of the Week winners announced on the previous month. The finalists for July were:
Dream by Azarin Sadegh
Sitting by Jennifer L Freed
Blood Diamonds by Patricia Albela-Silver
Paper Crosses by J Ian Manczur
The winner of the July 2014 Story of the Month, and the $10 prize, is…
Paper Crosses
Congratulations, Ian!
Last week’s winning story is Through the Window, by Alex Mascarenhas.
The story does a really good job of making us think about our fear of death. Ultimately, death is an inherent part of living. How would our lives change if we treated death as the final adventure, the last story we get to tell, rather than something horrible and terrifying? Great work.
Last week’s winning story is Paper Crosses by J Ian Manczur.
I chose this story because of its strong use of juxtaposition. On the one hand, we see the apparent emptiness of “an essay and a check” and some simple paper crosses. Who does this pastor think he is, playing around with these useless credentials and empty symbols? And then on the other hand, we have the pastor’s incredible willingness to “forgive what the dead never could”. That offer of forgiveness is truly noteworthy, and is way more meaningful than the paper crosses themselves.
And yet, naturally, perhaps, the prisoner is a skeptic.
Well done, Ian!
Last week’s winning story is Sitting by Jennifer L Freed!
Last week’s winning story is Blood Diamonds by Patricia Albela-Silver!
This week’s winning story is Dream by Azarin Sadegh!
I’m excited to announce a new Top Stories feature for 50WS that I think both the site’s readers and writers will really enjoy. Here’s how it’s going to work.
Story of the Week
Each week, on Saturday, I will announce my selection for the best story posted that week. That story will be tagged as a Story of the Week, so that readers can quickly navigate back to find all of the best stories if they want to explore the archives that way.
I will be selecting the best stories myself, based on my own criteria. The story with the highest average reader rating won’t always be picked!
Story of the Month
Early each month, I will announce my selection for the best story posted in the previous month. Only stories picked as a Story of the Week will be eligible for Story of the Month.
The author of the Story of the Month will receive a prize of $10, to be sent via email transfer or PayPal.
As with the Story of the Week, I will be selecting the winning story based on my own assessment, not just on average reader rating. But the ratings may influence my decision, so vote away!
Story of the Year
Each year, in January, a Story of the Year will be selected out of the pool of winners of Story of the Month. There will be a further prize for Story of the Year, but I haven’t settled on all the details yet.
Congratulations to the winner of the Spring Stories prize draw, Ted Knoblach!
Thank you to everyone who entered the contest and shared the word about it.
Back to regularly scheduled programming tomorrow!
In many parts of the northern hemisphere it’s probably been spring for a few weeks, but here in Edmonton it’s just starting to feel like winter is truly over.
Let’s celebrate with a spring-themed 50WS contest and give away some gift cards for Amazon!
The Spring Stories contest will be open to your entries from April 14, 2014, until May 2, 2014. All submitted stories must be related to the spring season in some way. They can be funny, sad, artistic, adventurous… It’s up to you!
PRIZES
The best submitted stories will be posted to the site during the week of May 5 to 9, 2014, at the rate of two stories per day.
Grand Prize
The best story from all of the entries will be posted as the second story of the day on Friday, May 9. The author of this story will receive a $15 Amazon gift card!
Draw Prize
A draw will also be held for a $10 Amazon gift card.
There will be two ways to enter the draw. First, everyone who submits a story will automatically receive one entry into the draw. Second, another entry into the draw can be earned by either a) sharing a link to this contest announcement using the #50WordSpringStories hashtag on Twitter, b) retweeting the contest announcement tweet from @50WordStories, or c) sharing the contest announcement post on Facebook.
The winner of the grand prize will not be eligible for the draw. The draw prize winner will be selected using a random number generator, and will be announced on the day the grand prize-winning story is posted.
MORE RULES
I look forward to seeing all of your entries! Let’s make this the best 50WS contest yet.
One of you wonderful writers recently pointed out to me that the star rating plugin the site has been using for years, GD Star Rating, has become well known in the WordPress community as a resource hog. You may know that 50WS has struggled lately with getting flagged by our host as wasting server resources, resulting in downtime while I tried to improve the site’s performance.
It looks like GD Star Rating was probably the culprit all along. So I’m switching the site to a new ratings plugin that will hopefully prevent any future issues.
The downside of the switch is that there’s no automated way to import the old ratings right now. I’m confident that I’ll be able to find a way to get the old ratings converted to the new plugin, but it may take me some time.
So in the meantime, we’re going to be starting fresh on all of the story ratings! Eventually the old ratings should return, but for now I hope you enjoy the blank slate.
Thanks for your patience!