Summary

The Authentic Eclectic is hosting a Love Story Writing Challenge in February with a cash prize and a video promo for the winner.

Abstract

The Authentic Eclectic (AE) has announced a writing competition open to its writers throughout February, focusing on the theme of love. Participants are encouraged to submit stories of at least 600 words, with the chance to win $50 and a promotional video. The competition is judged blindly by the publisher's two adult children, ensuring impartiality. Entries will be evaluated on their ability to engage and evoke emotion, with the winner announced by early March. The contest aims to celebrate the diverse interpretations of love and support writers by featuring their work prominently.

Opinions

The publisher acknowledges a delay in fulfilling a promise to do something nice for followers upon reaching 500 followers and is now making good on that promise with this competition.
The competition is designed to be inclusive, allowing multiple entries and the use of previously written stories, provided they are not withdrawn from other regular publications.
Privacy concerns regarding the promotional video are addressed, offering the option to opt-out and transfer the prize to the runner-up.
The publisher emphasizes the importance of following the publication if one decides to write for it, mirroring the courtesy by following all AE writers.
The judging process is transparent, with the publisher's children serving as judges to avoid bias, and they will not be influenced by the writers' identities or the popularity of their stories on Medium.
The judges' diverse backgrounds and tastes are highlighted to assure a fair and multifaceted evaluation of the entries.
Small typographical errors will not affect the judging, with the focus being on the story's impact and quality.
The winner's story will be prominently featured and accompanied by a cash prize and a professionally made promotional video, which will also be shared on the publisher's YouTube channel.

The Authentic Eclectic

A Prize For Your Best Love Story

Enter The Authentic Eclectic Love Challenge in February

Remember when I promised I’d do something nice for everyone when The Authentic Eclectic reached 500 followers? And then I sort of didn’t even though we’re now at 518 followers?

Sorry. I’ve been pretty busy. So here it is, better late than never. A chance to win some cold hard cash and a promo video.

As a writer for the Authentic Eclectic, submit a story based on the theme of love, any day throughout February for your chance to win.

The Prize

There are two prizes for the winner. Fifty (American) dollars in cold hard cash, sent directly to your Paypal Account. And a video promo of you and your work, made by yours truly — see below for examples.

Note: if you’re worried about the promo video for privacy reasons, you can skip that part, and I’ll offer it to the runner up. Not everyone wants their bio and links added to YouTube.

If you want to become an AE writer to join the competition, please have a look at the submission requirements and add a comment either here or there.

Apologies for the length of the submission article — but having edited for large publications before I was trying to cover every conceivable point.

Write For The Authentic Eclectic

Submission requirements and a wee chat

medium.com

Your story will also be featured, tweeted and live at the top of the page for 14 days — in honour of February 14th.

Please do me the courtesy of following the publication if you write for it. I follow all my writers.

Love, Love Is A Verb

What Are The Rules?

I’ve added some updates, based on questions asked by writers.

Since this is an American site, the prize will be in American dollars. I’ll just work out the exchange rate on the day.
You can enter as many times as you like.
It does NOT have to be a draft. Feel free to enter an old work, makes no difference and the judges won’t know. However — please don’t pull it out of a publication you submit to regularly and submit it to the AE. I mean you CAN do that and I won’t know — but publishers do get a notification when someone pulls a story. And it might cause you issues with the other publication.
The theme of the competition is love. Good, bad, philosophical, futuristic, political, happy, sad, motivational, uplifting, beautiful or horrifying — whatever you like so long as you introduce the theme of love. It can be fiction, non-fiction, this happened to me — any genre.
I would like a minimum of 600 words. Maximum probably around 2000. That’s not hard and fast, just a guideline.
Please use the hashtag #TheAuthenticEclecticComp within your five hashtags. If you don’t I’ll add it for you. It’s probably easiest to copy paste it, in case you miss a letter. Adding the hashtag automatically adds you to the feature page “All’s Fair In Love and War”, and consists of the current entries to the competition.
Might be nice if the entrants had a read of one another’s work and supported one another with a few claps. But that’s entirely up to you, the judges won’t know (or care!) either way.

How Will Your Work Be Judged?

I won’t be judging it. This is to avoid bias on my part, I do have my favourites and friends here, like everybody else. And if I am not judging the work I can’t make a compassionate decision to give any of you money because I know you’re skint.

I’m asking my two adult children to judge your stories, blind.

They won’t know if your story was written by a man or a woman, your age, ethnicity, political leanings, culture or creed. All they will have are the words of your story (and the images) and the title, which I will print out on old fashioned paper and share with them right here when they come to visit The Garrulous homestead.

They have agreed not to confer with one another.

My children are male and female, 24 and 21 — and they’ve been bibliophiles for most of their lives; they’re both well educated, literate and have hugely eclectic tastes in books.

They also have distinctly different political stances and beliefs, vote differently to one another, watch different shows, listen to different music and often disagree outspokenly on many current issues. One works in web design and is studying a creative arts topic, one is an AV tech studying the secret world of cabling and IT.

Neither of them reads my work on Medium (the ungrateful little sods). Indeed neither are Medium members so they can’t accidentally happen upon your tale and tie it to you.

It seems to me a reasonably fair way to find a winner — and at least, unlike other writing competitions, I’m being fully transparent as to how your work will be judged.

I’m asking them to judge solely on the basis of the story that hits them the hardest. That makes them feel the most, or that they found clever, funny, thought provoking, or that was just beautifully written. The one that they find most fascinating.

In short, the story that they like the best.

And The Winner Is

I’m going to assume all entries will be reasonably well written. Everyone who writes for the AE should already be accomplished in the basics of writing — so it’s all about how engaging, how “good” your story is.

Small typos or errors won’t count against you.

Once the two judges have each picked one favourite, I’ll toss a coin to decide the final winner.

The winner will be announced by the end of the first week of March and the money will be paid straight into the winner’s Paypal account, also by the end of the first week of March.

The video will take 2–3 weeks to make, depending on time available.

It’s a process. I can make a promo video in two days — if I have two quiet days. But two quiet days in a row is a rare occurrence.

Depending on how much information you have about yourself freely available, I may need to ask you a few questions.

Here are a couple of videos I previously made for my fellow writers. I’ll add the winner’s video to my somewhat neglected Youtube channel — but I’ll also email you the original so you can use it elsewhere if you like.

Any Questions?

How To Enter

Become a writer for the AE, if you aren’t already one of our writers.
Submit your story to the AE using the hashtag #theauthenticeclecticcomp at any point throughout February.

Feel free to ask for further clarification in the comments below.

I think this should be fun and I’m looking forward to seeing what you come up with. I’d like lots of entries of course, but if there’s only one entry I guess that person wins by default!

Fair winds and a following sea.