I’ve been absent here due to general hectic life stuff. I’ve been revising Wren in depressing little stretches, and it’s been making me a little blue. I’m looking forward to things evening out so that I spend less time in the car and more time being productive in concrete ways.
In the meantime, I’ve been trying to come up with a contest. I have a secret dislike of contests, mostly because I’m the least winning person in the history of the world. Give me a contest in which 99% of contestants win, and I’ll be the one getting the pat on the back as someone whispers “not sure how she could have lost that one.”
But I have a copy or two of Phoenix available, and I’d like to figure out how to offer them up. Perhaps the answer is this: the contest should be coming up with a suitable contest. Give me a contest designed to highlight skills that are under-appreciated or all but unknown, or that involves clowns and monkeys. Give me a contest that allows those who never win to win.
And give it to me at some point in the next week. I’ll leave this post open to comments about contests, either a design or your least/most winning moment, until next Thursday evening (May 31). After that, I’ll invite my kids to help pick a winning entry in some random way, one most likely involving blindfolds. The winner(s) will get a copy of Phoenix in their format of choice. (If the number of entrants is higher than I suspect, there will be two winners.)
May 25, 2012 at 9:26 am
I would very much like to enter a contest for the “least creative meal plan”. I would win that .
May 25, 2012 at 9:34 am
Ha! You think you would, but I might actually beat you at that one. “Least appealing floral decoration” would be another contest I could clean up in.
May 26, 2012 at 12:27 pm
How about the “I walked the dog today” contest? If, like me, you have a dog, this is a daily activity, so I’d stand a good chance of winning.
May 26, 2012 at 12:37 pm
I do have a dog, though at this point in her life taking her for a walk involves getting halfway up the hill and then feeling I should carry her old arthritic bones home, which makes for an entirely different kind of contest.
I’m seeing glimmers of a whole new kind of Olympics…
Thanks for entering!
May 27, 2012 at 8:46 pm
how about a contest where we list all the contests and give-aways we haven’t won?
May 27, 2012 at 11:26 pm
I want to say I could do that one justice too, but I have a dirty little secret when it comes to my losing streak — I won something this year. I know! I’m a fraud. My forty-one years of losing came to an end with a $20 voucher at Trader Joe’s. You may have hit on a foolproof contest!