Copy

A friend of mine, and a contributor to the now defunct Storyblogging Carnival, is running a Kickstarter campaign to raise money for a television pilot.  Here's the plug:

COPY is a TV show about the student media at an evangelical Christian college: An editor trying to whip his staff into shape, a blogger more TMZ than T.S. Eliot, and a university president obsessed with being “culturally relevant” - negative press be damned. How far will editor-in-chief Meshach Kilbourne and his staff go to secure the paper's independence - and glory - against the machinations of President Constantine Ward?

It's an embellished memoir of our college years. And the pilot script for COPY - which, for reasons beyond us, has been called "Sorkinesque" - reached the semifinals of the Scriptapalooza competition last year.

If you're interested, consider pledging.

Storyblogging Carnival Cancelled

I'm afraid I didn't get enough entries for a Storyblogging Carnival this month.  We'll try again in March.

Storyblogging Carnival delayed

I hate to do this, but I don't have enough entries to do a Storyblogging Carnival.  If I get enough within the next week, I'll post the carnival then.  If not, then I'll cancel this month's carnival and save any entries I have for next time.

Upcoming Storyblogging Carnival

The next Storyblogging Carnival will go up on Monday, February 7th. If you use your blog to share your fiction, then the Storyblogging Carnival is your opportunity. Here we host any and all forms of storytelling in blog format. If you're curious about what this looks like, have a look at some examples of previous storyblogging carnivals.

If you'd like to participate, please e-mail your story submissions to me at dscrank-at-alum-dot-mit-dot-edu (or post in my comments), including the following information:

• Name of your blog
• URL of your blog
• Title of the story
• URL for the blog entry where the story is posted
• (OPTIONAL) Author's name
• (OPTIONAL) A suggested rating for adult content (G, PG, PG-13, R)
• A word count
• A short blurb describing the story

The post may be of any age, from a week old to years old. The submission deadline is 11:59 PM Eastern time on Saturday, February 5th. More detailed information follows (same as always):

1. The story or excerpt submitted must be posted on-line as a blog entry, and while fiction is preferred, non-fiction storytelling is acceptable.
2. The story can be any length, but the Carnival will list them in order of length, from shortest to longest, and include a word count for each one.
3. You may either send a complete story, a story in progress, or a lengthy excerpt. You should indicate the word count for both the excerpt and the complete story in the submission, and you should say how the reader can find more of the story in the post itself.
4. If the story spans multiple posts, each post should contain a link to the beginning of the story, and a link to the next post. You may submit the whole story, the first post, or, if you've previously submitted earlier posts to the Carnival, the next post which you have not submitted. Please indicate the length of the entire story, as well as the portion which you are submitting.
5. The host has sole discretion to decide whether the story will be included or not, or whether to indicate that the story has pornographic or graphically violent content. The ratings for the story will be decided by the host. I expect I'll be pretty lenient on that sort of thing, but I have some limits, and others may draw the line elsewhere. Aside from noting potentially offensive content, while I may say nice things about stories I like, I won't be panning anyone's work. I expect other hosts to be similarly polite.
6. The story may be the blogger's own or posted with permission, but if it is not his own work he should gain permission from the author before submitting to the Carnival.

If you'd like to be added to the e-mail list, please let me know. Finally, I appreciate folks promoting the carnival on their own blogs, and I'm always looking for bloggers willing to host future carnivals.

Storyblogging Carnival coming up

The next Storyblogging Carnival will go up on Monday, January 10th. If you use your blog to share your fiction, then the Storyblogging Carnival is your opportunity. Here we host any and all forms of storytelling in blog format. If you're curious about what this looks like, have a look at some examples of previous storyblogging carnivals.

If you'd like to participate, please e-mail your story submissions to me at dscrank-at-alum-dot-mit-dot-edu (or post in my comments), including the following information:

• Name of your blog
• URL of your blog
• Title of the story
• URL for the blog entry where the story is posted
• (OPTIONAL) Author's name
• (OPTIONAL) A suggested rating for adult content (G, PG, PG-13, R)
• A word count
• A short blurb describing the story

The post may be of any age, from a week old to years old. The submission deadline is 11:59 PM Eastern time on Saturday, January 8th. More detailed information follows (same as always):

1. The story or excerpt submitted must be posted on-line as a blog entry, and while fiction is preferred, non-fiction storytelling is acceptable.
2. The story can be any length, but the Carnival will list them in order of length, from shortest to longest, and include a word count for each one.
3. You may either send a complete story, a story in progress, or a lengthy excerpt. You should indicate the word count for both the excerpt and the complete story in the submission, and you should say how the reader can find more of the story in the post itself.
4. If the story spans multiple posts, each post should contain a link to the beginning of the story, and a link to the next post. You may submit the whole story, the first post, or, if you've previously submitted earlier posts to the Carnival, the next post which you have not submitted. Please indicate the length of the entire story, as well as the portion which you are submitting.
5. The host has sole discretion to decide whether the story will be included or not, or whether to indicate that the story has pornographic or graphically violent content. The ratings for the story will be decided by the host. I expect I'll be pretty lenient on that sort of thing, but I have some limits, and others may draw the line elsewhere. Aside from noting potentially offensive content, while I may say nice things about stories I like, I won't be panning anyone's work. I expect other hosts to be similarly polite.
6. The story may be the blogger's own or posted with permission, but if it is not his own work he should gain permission from the author before submitting to the Carnival.

If you'd like to be added to the e-mail list, please let me know. Finally, I appreciate folks promoting the carnival on their own blogs, and I'm always looking for bloggers willing to host future carnivals.

Storyblogging Carnival?

Since Christmas is coming this next week, and I think people might be a mite busy, I'm going to delay the Storyblogging Carnival by a week.  The normal announcement will go up next Monday, and submissions will be due by Saturday, January 8th.  Of course, if you send me something early, I'll hold it in reserve until I start accepting submissions.

Upcoming Storyblogging Carnival

The next Storyblogging Carnival will go up on Monday, December 6th. If you use your blog to share your fiction, then the Storyblogging Carnival is your opportunity. Here we host any and all forms of storytelling in blog format. If you're curious about what this looks like, have a look at some examples of previous storyblogging carnivals.

If you'd like to participate, please e-mail your story submissions to me at dscrank-at-alum-dot-mit-dot-edu (or post in my comments), including the following information:

• Name of your blog
• URL of your blog
• Title of the story
• URL for the blog entry where the story is posted
• (OPTIONAL) Author's name
• (OPTIONAL) A suggested rating for adult content (G, PG, PG-13, R)
• A word count
• A short blurb describing the story

The post may be of any age, from a week old to years old. The submission deadline is 11:59 PM Eastern time on Saturday, December 4th. More detailed information follows (same as always):

1. The story or excerpt submitted must be posted on-line as a blog entry, and while fiction is preferred, non-fiction storytelling is acceptable.
2. The story can be any length, but the Carnival will list them in order of length, from shortest to longest, and include a word count for each one.
3. You may either send a complete story, a story in progress, or a lengthy excerpt. You should indicate the word count for both the excerpt and the complete story in the submission, and you should say how the reader can find more of the story in the post itself.
4. If the story spans multiple posts, each post should contain a link to the beginning of the story, and a link to the next post. You may submit the whole story, the first post, or, if you've previously submitted earlier posts to the Carnival, the next post which you have not submitted. Please indicate the length of the entire story, as well as the portion which you are submitting.
5. The host has sole discretion to decide whether the story will be included or not, or whether to indicate that the story has pornographic or graphically violent content. The ratings for the story will be decided by the host. I expect I'll be pretty lenient on that sort of thing, but I have some limits, and others may draw the line elsewhere. Aside from noting potentially offensive content, while I may say nice things about stories I like, I won't be panning anyone's work. I expect other hosts to be similarly polite.
6. The story may be the blogger's own or posted with permission, but if it is not his own work he should gain permission from the author before submitting to the Carnival.

If you'd like to be added to the e-mail list, please let me know. Finally, I appreciate folks promoting the carnival on their own blogs, and I'm always looking for bloggers willing to host future carnivals.

Next Storyblogging Carnival

The next Storyblogging Carnival will be going up on November 8th, rather than the 1st.  I'll be traveling next weekend (going to World Fantasy), so it'll be a week later than usual.

Next Storyblogging Carnival is taking submissions

The next Storyblogging Carnival will be hosted at Divas for Geeks.  Take a look at the submission guidelines if you want to participate.

Now accepting submissions for the next Storyblogging Carnival

The next Storyblogging Carnival will be the one hundred and twelfth. It will be our sixth anniversary, and I'll host it here, at Back of the Envelope. The carnival will go up on Monday, September 6th. If you use your blog to share your fiction, then the Storyblogging Carnival is your opportunity. Here we host any and all forms of storytelling in blog format. If you're curious about what this looks like, have a look at some examples of previous storyblogging carnivals.

If you'd like to participate, please e-mail your story submissions to me at dscrank-at-alum-dot-mit-dot-edu (or post in my comments), including the following information:

• Name of your blog
• URL of your blog
• Title of the story
• URL for the blog entry where the story is posted
• (OPTIONAL) Author's name
• (OPTIONAL) A suggested rating for adult content (G, PG, PG-13, R)
• A word count
• A short blurb describing the story

The post may be of any age, from a week old to years old. The submission deadline is 11:59 PM Eastern time on Saturday, September 4th. More detailed information follows (same as always):

1. The story or excerpt submitted must be posted on-line as a blog entry, and while fiction is preferred, non-fiction storytelling is acceptable.
2. The story can be any length, but the Carnival will list them in order of length, from shortest to longest, and include a word count for each one.
3. You may either send a complete story, a story in progress, or a lengthy excerpt. You should indicate the word count for both the excerpt and the complete story in the submission, and you should say how the reader can find more of the story in the post itself.
4. If the story spans multiple posts, each post should contain a link to the beginning of the story, and a link to the next post. You may submit the whole story, the first post, or, if you've previously submitted earlier posts to the Carnival, the next post which you have not submitted. Please indicate the length of the entire story, as well as the portion which you are submitting.
5. The host has sole discretion to decide whether the story will be included or not, or whether to indicate that the story has pornographic or graphically violent content. The ratings for the story will be decided by the host. I expect I'll be pretty lenient on that sort of thing, but I have some limits, and others may draw the line elsewhere. Aside from noting potentially offensive content, while I may say nice things about stories I like, I won't be panning anyone's work. I expect other hosts to be similarly polite.
6. The story may be the blogger's own or posted with permission, but if it is not his own work he should gain permission from the author before submitting to the Carnival.

If you'd like to be added to the e-mail list, please let me know. Finally, I appreciate folks promoting the carnival on their own blogs, and I'm always looking for bloggers willing to host future carnivals.

Now accepting submissions for the next Storyblogging Carnival

The next Storyblogging Carnival will be the one hundred and eleventh. It will be hosted here, at Back of the Envelope, and going up on Monday, August 9th. If you use your blog to share your fiction, then the Storyblogging Carnival is your opportunity. Here we host any and all forms of storytelling in blog format. If you're curious about what this looks like, have a look at some examples of previous storyblogging carnivals.

If you'd like to participate, please e-mail your story submissions to me at dscrank-at-alum-dot-mit-dot-edu (or post in my comments), including the following information:

• Name of your blog
• URL of your blog
• Title of the story
• URL for the blog entry where the story is posted
• (OPTIONAL) Author's name
• (OPTIONAL) A suggested rating for adult content (G, PG, PG-13, R)
• A word count
• A short blurb describing the story

The post may be of any age, from a week old to years old. The submission deadline is 11:59 PM Eastern time on Saturday, August 7th. More detailed information follows (same as always):

1. The story or excerpt submitted must be posted on-line as a blog entry, and while fiction is preferred, non-fiction storytelling is acceptable.
2. The story can be any length, but the Carnival will list them in order of length, from shortest to longest, and include a word count for each one.
3. You may either send a complete story, a story in progress, or a lengthy excerpt. You should indicate the word count for both the excerpt and the complete story in the submission, and you should say how the reader can find more of the story in the post itself.
4. If the story spans multiple posts, each post should contain a link to the beginning of the story, and a link to the next post. You may submit the whole story, the first post, or, if you've previously submitted earlier posts to the Carnival, the next post which you have not submitted. Please indicate the length of the entire story, as well as the portion which you are submitting.
5. The host has sole discretion to decide whether the story will be included or not, or whether to indicate that the story has pornographic or graphically violent content. The ratings for the story will be decided by the host. I expect I'll be pretty lenient on that sort of thing, but I have some limits, and others may draw the line elsewhere. Aside from noting potentially offensive content, while I may say nice things about stories I like, I won't be panning anyone's work. I expect other hosts to be similarly polite.
6. The story may be the blogger's own or posted with permission, but if it is not his own work he should gain permission from the author before submitting to the Carnival.

If you'd like to be added to the e-mail list, please let me know. Finally, I appreciate folks promoting the carnival on their own blogs, and I'm always looking for bloggers willing to host future carnivals.

Now accepting entries for the next Storyblogging Carnival

The next Storyblogging Carnival will be the one hundred and tenth. It will be hosted here, at Back of the Envelope, and going up on Monday, July 5th. If you use your blog to share your fiction, then the Storyblogging Carnival is your opportunity. Here we host any and all forms of storytelling in blog format. If you're curious about what this looks like, have a look at some examples of previous storyblogging carnivals.

If you'd like to participate, please e-mail your story submissions to me at dscrank-at-alum-dot-mit-dot-edu (or post in my comments), including the following information:

• Name of your blog
• URL of your blog
• Title of the story
• URL for the blog entry where the story is posted
• (OPTIONAL) Author's name
• (OPTIONAL) A suggested rating for adult content (G, PG, PG-13, R)
• A word count
• A short blurb describing the story

The post may be of any age, from a week old to years old. The submission deadline is 11:59 PM Eastern time on Saturday, July 3rd. More detailed information follows (same as always):

1. The story or excerpt submitted must be posted on-line as a blog entry, and while fiction is preferred, non-fiction storytelling is acceptable.
2. The story can be any length, but the Carnival will list them in order of length, from shortest to longest, and include a word count for each one.
3. You may either send a complete story, a story in progress, or a lengthy excerpt. You should indicate the word count for both the excerpt and the complete story in the submission, and you should say how the reader can find more of the story in the post itself.
4. If the story spans multiple posts, each post should contain a link to the beginning of the story, and a link to the next post. You may submit the whole story, the first post, or, if you've previously submitted earlier posts to the Carnival, the next post which you have not submitted. Please indicate the length of the entire story, as well as the portion which you are submitting.
5. The host has sole discretion to decide whether the story will be included or not, or whether to indicate that the story has pornographic or graphically violent content. The ratings for the story will be decided by the host. I expect I'll be pretty lenient on that sort of thing, but I have some limits, and others may draw the line elsewhere. Aside from noting potentially offensive content, while I may say nice things about stories I like, I won't be panning anyone's work. I expect other hosts to be similarly polite.
6. The story may be the blogger's own or posted with permission, but if it is not his own work he should gain permission from the author before submitting to the Carnival.

If you'd like to be added to the e-mail list, please let me know. Finally, I appreciate folks promoting the carnival on their own blogs, and I'm always looking for bloggers willing to host future carnivals.

Whence the Storyblogging Carnival?

You may be wondering what happened to this month's Storyblogging Carnival. I apologize for not addressing it earlier... I sent a note to the e-mail list, but forgot to post something here. I'm afraid that I had to cancel May's carnival, since I only received two entries, even after copious amounts of begging on my part. This has me worried, since entries have been harder and harder to come by. Is it time to end the carnival entirely?

Even as I was wondering this, I received a ton of entries for the next one. So I suppose it won't end just yet.

Now accepting submissions to Storyblogging Carnival CIX

The next Storyblogging Carnival will be the one hundred and ninth. It will be hosted here, at Back of the Envelope, and going up on Monday, May 3rd. If you use your blog to share your fiction, then the Storyblogging Carnival is your opportunity. Here we host any and all forms of storytelling in blog format. If you're curious about what this looks like, have a look at some examples of previous storyblogging carnivals.

If you'd like to participate, please e-mail your story submissions to me at dscrank-at-alum-dot-mit-dot-edu (or post in my comments), including the following information:

• Name of your blog
• URL of your blog
• Title of the story
• URL for the blog entry where the story is posted
• (OPTIONAL) Author's name
• (OPTIONAL) A suggested rating for adult content (G, PG, PG-13, R)
• A word count
• A short blurb describing the story

The post may be of any age, from a week old to years old. The submission deadline is 11:59 PM Eastern time on Saturday, May 1st. More detailed information follows (same as always):

1. The story or excerpt submitted must be posted on-line as a blog entry, and while fiction is preferred, non-fiction storytelling is acceptable.
2. The story can be any length, but the Carnival will list them in order of length, from shortest to longest, and include a word count for each one.
3. You may either send a complete story, a story in progress, or a lengthy excerpt. You should indicate the word count for both the excerpt and the complete story in the submission, and you should say how the reader can find more of the story in the post itself.
4. If the story spans multiple posts, each post should contain a link to the beginning of the story, and a link to the next post. You may submit the whole story, the first post, or, if you've previously submitted earlier posts to the Carnival, the next post which you have not submitted. Please indicate the length of the entire story, as well as the portion which you are submitting.
5. The host has sole discretion to decide whether the story will be included or not, or whether to indicate that the story has pornographic or graphically violent content. The ratings for the story will be decided by the host. I expect I'll be pretty lenient on that sort of thing, but I have some limits, and others may draw the line elsewhere. Aside from noting potentially offensive content, while I may say nice things about stories I like, I won't be panning anyone's work. I expect other hosts to be similarly polite.
6. The story may be the blogger's own or posted with permission, but if it is not his own work he should gain permission from the author before submitting to the Carnival.

If you'd like to be added to the e-mail list, please let me know. Finally, I appreciate folks promoting the carnival on their own blogs, and I'm always looking for bloggers willing to host future carnivals.

Now accepting submissions for the next Storyblogging Carnival

The next Storyblogging Carnival will be the one hundred and eighth. It will be hosted here, at Back of the Envelope, and going up on Monday, April 5th. If you use your blog to share your fiction, then the Storyblogging Carnival is your opportunity. Here we host any and all forms of storytelling in blog format. If you're curious about what this looks like, have a look at some examples of previous storyblogging carnivals.

If you'd like to participate, please e-mail your story submissions to me at dscrank-at-alum-dot-mit-dot-edu (or post in my comments), including the following information:

• Name of your blog
• URL of your blog
• Title of the story
• URL for the blog entry where the story is posted
• (OPTIONAL) Author's name
• (OPTIONAL) A suggested rating for adult content (G, PG, PG-13, R)
• A word count
• A short blurb describing the story

The post may be of any age, from a week old to years old. The submission deadline is 11:59 PM Eastern time on Saturday, April 3rd. More detailed information follows (same as always):

1. The story or excerpt submitted must be posted on-line as a blog entry, and while fiction is preferred, non-fiction storytelling is acceptable.
2. The story can be any length, but the Carnival will list them in order of length, from shortest to longest, and include a word count for each one.
3. You may either send a complete story, a story in progress, or a lengthy excerpt. You should indicate the word count for both the excerpt and the complete story in the submission, and you should say how the reader can find more of the story in the post itself.
4. If the story spans multiple posts, each post should contain a link to the beginning of the story, and a link to the next post. You may submit the whole story, the first post, or, if you've previously submitted earlier posts to the Carnival, the next post which you have not submitted. Please indicate the length of the entire story, as well as the portion which you are submitting.
5. The host has sole discretion to decide whether the story will be included or not, or whether to indicate that the story has pornographic or graphically violent content. The ratings for the story will be decided by the host. I expect I'll be pretty lenient on that sort of thing, but I have some limits, and others may draw the line elsewhere. Aside from noting potentially offensive content, while I may say nice things about stories I like, I won't be panning anyone's work. I expect other hosts to be similarly polite.
6. The story may be the blogger's own or posted with permission, but if it is not his own work he should gain permission from the author before submitting to the Carnival.

If you'd like to be added to the e-mail list, please let me know. Finally, I appreciate folks promoting the carnival on their own blogs, and I'm always looking for bloggers willing to host future carnivals.

Now accepting submissions to the next Storyblogging Carnival

The next Storyblogging Carnival will be the one hundred and seventh. It will be hosted here, at Back of the Envelope, and going up on Monday, March 1st. If you use your blog to share your fiction, then the Storyblogging Carnival is your opportunity. Here we host any and all forms of storytelling in blog format. If you're curious about what this looks like, have a look at some examples of previous storyblogging carnivals.

If you'd like to participate, please e-mail your story submissions to me at dscrank-at-alum-dot-mit-dot-edu (or post in my comments), including the following information:

• Name of your blog
• URL of your blog
• Title of the story
• URL for the blog entry where the story is posted
• (OPTIONAL) Author's name
• (OPTIONAL) A suggested rating for adult content (G, PG, PG-13, R)
• A word count
• A short blurb describing the story

The post may be of any age, from a week old to years old. The submission deadline is 11:59 PM Eastern time on Saturday, February 27th. More detailed information follows (same as always):

1. The story or excerpt submitted must be posted on-line as a blog entry, and while fiction is preferred, non-fiction storytelling is acceptable.
2. The story can be any length, but the Carnival will list them in order of length, from shortest to longest, and include a word count for each one.
3. You may either send a complete story, a story in progress, or a lengthy excerpt. You should indicate the word count for both the excerpt and the complete story in the submission, and you should say how the reader can find more of the story in the post itself.
4. If the story spans multiple posts, each post should contain a link to the beginning of the story, and a link to the next post. You may submit the whole story, the first post, or, if you've previously submitted earlier posts to the Carnival, the next post which you have not submitted. Please indicate the length of the entire story, as well as the portion which you are submitting.
5. The host has sole discretion to decide whether the story will be included or not, or whether to indicate that the story has pornographic or graphically violent content. The ratings for the story will be decided by the host. I expect I'll be pretty lenient on that sort of thing, but I have some limits, and others may draw the line elsewhere. Aside from noting potentially offensive content, while I may say nice things about stories I like, I won't be panning anyone's work. I expect other hosts to be similarly polite.
6. The story may be the blogger's own or posted with permission, but if it is not his own work he should gain permission from the author before submitting to the Carnival.

If you'd like to be added to the e-mail list, please let me know. Finally, I appreciate folks promoting the carnival on their own blogs, and I'm always looking for bloggers willing to host future carnivals.

Now accepting submissions to Storyblogging Carnival CVI

And we are back. Now that I've gotten my blog up and running again, the Storyblogging Carnival is returning from hiatus.

The next Storyblogging Carnival will be the one hundred and sixth. It will be hosted here, at Back of the Envelope, and going up on Monday, February 1st. If you use your blog to share your fiction, then the Storyblogging Carnival is your opportunity. Here we host any and all forms of storytelling in blog format. If you're curious about what this looks like, have a look at some examples of previous storyblogging carnivals.

If you'd like to participate, please e-mail your story submissions to me at dscrank-at-alum-dot-mit-dot-edu (or post in my comments), including the following information:

• Name of your blog
• URL of your blog
• Title of the story
• URL for the blog entry where the story is posted
• (OPTIONAL) Author's name
• (OPTIONAL) A suggested rating for adult content (G, PG, PG-13, R)
• A word count
• A short blurb describing the story

The post may be of any age, from a week old to years old. The submission deadline is 11:59 PM Eastern time on Saturday, January 30th. More detailed information follows (same as always):

1. The story or excerpt submitted must be posted on-line as a blog entry, and while fiction is preferred, non-fiction storytelling is acceptable.
2. The story can be any length, but the Carnival will list them in order of length, from shortest to longest, and include a word count for each one.
3. You may either send a complete story, a story in progress, or a lengthy excerpt. You should indicate the word count for both the excerpt and the complete story in the submission, and you should say how the reader can find more of the story in the post itself.
4. If the story spans multiple posts, each post should contain a link to the beginning of the story, and a link to the next post. You may submit the whole story, the first post, or, if you've previously submitted earlier posts to the Carnival, the next post which you have not submitted. Please indicate the length of the entire story, as well as the portion which you are submitting.
5. The host has sole discretion to decide whether the story will be included or not, or whether to indicate that the story has pornographic or graphically violent content. The ratings for the story will be decided by the host. I expect I'll be pretty lenient on that sort of thing, but I have some limits, and others may draw the line elsewhere. Aside from noting potentially offensive content, while I may say nice things about stories I like, I won't be panning anyone's work. I expect other hosts to be similarly polite.
6. The story may be the blogger's own or posted with permission, but if it is not his own work he should gain permission from the author before submitting to the Carnival.

If you'd like to be added to the e-mail list, please let me know. Finally, I appreciate folks promoting the carnival on their own blogs, and I'm always looking for bloggers willing to host future carnivals.

Carnivals are going up

You probably noticed that I've been putting up the past carnivals. I'll continue putting up one a day until I run out of archived Carnivals--which should be sometime in April. Meanwhile, I'll start soliciting for the next carnival, and get the Storyblogging Carnivals rolling again.

I still haven't finished getting the site up-to-date, so you'll see some changes as I do that.

Hosting a storyblogging carnival

NOTE: This is a really old post, so some of the details have changed, but it does explain the general idea of hosting a Storyblogging Carnival.

Robin Jones is now soliciting entries for the next Storyblogging Carnival. I probably should have given him my advice on how to do this earlier, but I'll go ahead and do it now.

First off, I suggest posting the announcement with the complete rules about a week before the Carnival takes place, although Robin advertised a bit earlier. At the same time, you need to send out the announcement to the e-mail list. If I had the resources, I'd have a listserv list, but right now my list is just a bunch of e-mail addresses. That reminds me, I really need to send the list to Robin. I very much suggest that the host send out the e-mail, otherwise whoever sends it out will get a bunch of the entries.

The rules are still under development at the moment. Hey, we've only done this twice so far. Right now we're asking for a lot of information. In addition to the usual for Carnivals: blog title, blog url, story title, story url, and description, we also want a word count, a suggested rating, and author name or pseudonym (this is a new one, since I was uncertain what name to use for some of the entries I got last time). We use all of this in the Carnival entries, so none of it's extraneous, but it is a lot.

Once all the entries are collected, the host has to read all the entries. Yes, all of them. This allows the host to adjust the ratings as needed. (I've decreased the rating for a couple of stories when I thought the author was too hard on the contents, and I may have increased it once or twice.) It also allows him to comment on the stories if he so desires. Because the host needs to read all the stories, and because there's no length limit, I suggest a cut-off early enough to give him time for it. I make it on Friday night so I have the whole weekend, but I'm pretty lenient if people get an entry in late. That's also the reason why I take a maximum of twenty entries on a first come, first serve basis. If I had to read fifty entries, I'd never be able to do it. So far, we haven't received even twenty entries, but we've just begun, and we're growing. If we start regularly exceeding twenty, we may have to come up with a different solution. This is, of course, up to the host, and if he thinks he can handle fifty entries, he should go for it, but my rule is twenty, first come, first serve.

Then on the scheduled Monday the host puts up the Carnival. I think the format of the previous storyblogging carnivals works well.

The description of the story--the blurb--comes straight from the author's mouth, in order to avoid editorializing and spoilers on the part of the host. (If the author has a spoiler in his blurb, that's foreshadowing.) Occasionally I want to use a different blurb from what the author proposed, if the author's is too long or too vague, and sometimes the author asks me for help, and in this case I try to discuss it with the author until we come to an agreement.

I don't double check the word count unless it seems off to me. Trust me, once you've read five or six stories of various length, you can usually tell where a story falls, and I don't think it's necessary to be exactly right on the word count... five words here and there won't make a huge difference, although it can place one story ahead of the other in the Carnival, as the entries are listed in order of length. It's not terribly important, but I also put stories in categories. Stories 999 words or less are brief stories, 1,000-24,999 words is a short story, 25,000-59,999 words is a novella (only one of these so far--mine), and 60,000 words or more is a novel. These are somewhat arbitrary, and in the first carnival I defined anything less than 2,000 words as a brief story. The basic definition of a brief story is that it is not much longer than a typical blog post (a non-Steven den Beste blog post, that is). This post, by the way, is 1,034 words long [before the update was added]. I list the stories in order of length. I do both of these because this is the Internet, and on the Internet, people have short attention spans, and I want them to know what they're getting into when they start to read a story.

Both excerpts and stories in progress are exceptions to the rules. In some ways they are similar--they are both incomplete stories. For excerpts, however, the complete story is available somewhere--preferably online, but not necessarily, while stories in progress are not yet finished. Their word count is whatever is available in the blog, although with an excerpt the full length is included (again, so the reader knows what he's getting into should he decide he wants to know how the story goes). Since a story in progress has an unknown length, and sometimes the author doesn't even know what category it will be in when finished, I don't even give an estimate of the final length.

Any comments the host gives on a story are his own. I wasn't particularly impressed by my own commentary in the previous Carnivals. I do not comment on every story, or even most of them, and you shouldn't take the lack of a comment positively or negatively. I never comment on my own stories, for example. I also do not pan stories in my comments, although I won't rule out additional warnings for mature content (beyond the rating system). Sometimes I don't comment simply because I'm worried doing so will give too much away. If I feel I can comment without spoiling, and something in the story particularly struck me, then I may say how it did. I don't know how other hosts will comment on the entries, but I look forward to seeing it, since it's one area where I could use improvement.

So that's all there is to it. Any questions?

Update: Since the carnival began, there have been a couple of changes, but not many. These days the deadline for accepting submissions is Saturday night, rather than Friday, but that's still up to the host. And in addition to the two e-mails mentioned above, the host sends out a reminder e-mail a day or two before the deadline just to make sure people don't forget. I also ask that the hosts link to my Carnival category, as that contains links to the last twenty carnivals. Finally, since we've gotten a listing on Conservative Cat's Carnival submission form, we get entries through that webform as well. Those entries go straight to me, and I forward them to the host. Typically these entries don't have the full information we usually ask for, but I usually let that slide, although I may ask the author if something important is missing, and I'll be less willing to overlook it if I've added them to the e-mail list, in which case they should be getting the e-mails telling them what information to send. Being part of Conservative Cat's Carnival submission form also means that we should ping the trackback to make sure the most recent entry's on the carnival link list. I send the necessary information to the host.