Twelve contestants, twelve weeks. Every Thursday a new assignment will go up and contestants must post their responses by Sunday at 7 pm, when all users are urged to vote by clicking Set or Delete by each name. Voting continues until the following Thursday, when the contestant who got the most "deletes" is eliminated (he or she is allowed to make a graceful or surly departing speech, as he or she likes). A new assignment is posted. The assignments begin quite short, and grow in length as the number of contestants (and thus the amount users have to read) dwindles. You will be writing under your real name, with picture and bio. We might have contestants try a different genre each week--and maybe we get two-three experts in that genre to be that week's panel. The prize will be $1000, and assorted goodies, an hour of consultation with Adair Lara, whatever we can scrounge from sponsors, and publication on Matchwriters. Later contests may have themes. To apply, send 100 words on Why You Should Pick Me as One of the First 12 Contestants support@matchwriters.com . (And propose a name for our contest). Later contests will have lengthier submission and vetting processes. Samples from Ten Contestants Who Are Waiting in the Wings: Mark Sloan: There was a woman I saw on a reality show once who was challenged to eat something gross. Pig testicles, if memory serves. The woman looked down at the bowl, then glared at the camera."Hey!", she said. "I ain't eatin' that." Unimpressed by her principled stand - everybody else ate the testicles -- the producers promptly booted her off the show. She left the set down a long, dusty road to television oblivion, her fifteen minutes all used up. Here's the deal with your contest. You're going to get a lot of eat-the-testicles applicants, writers of over-the-top essays on just about any topic (public indiscretions with priests, for example, or good-natured-but-fatal pranks), jockeying for the chance to be king of your literary hill. But you're also going to need a dignified guy, a man taught by nuns - the real kind, with habits - who will, when the theme of the week turns to, say, fatal pranks with pig testicles, declare: "Hey! I ain't eatin' that." Somebody's got to get voted off the island first, you know. I'm your guy. Jim Ruggles: Why pick me? Because I will pull hair and break legs to win. My heroes are Judas, Nancy Kerrigan and all four Heathers. Competition ain't pretty (even if I am), and I will act firmly and unflinchingly to deliver the media attention that we both require. You may think me the underdog - it was apostle James, after all, who was the first to be martyred - but turning the other cheek just isn't my style. The only cheeks turning this October will the reddened asses of my opponents as they flee out the door marked "Early Exit." Gary Miller: I've taken all adjectives hostage. If you want them released, you will choose Gary Miller for participation in your Idle American Minds contest. Oh, clever writers will think they can survive without qualifiers, but by their second paragraph without adjectives, they'll be twitching like Paris Hilton in the third hour of her one-year celibacy pledge. In good faith, I am releasing "dark" and "stormy" to avoid prose beginning with "It was a night." Remember, Gary Miller's in or the adjectives go bye-bye. And you can't even call me "diabolical" because it's sitting here next to me.
Gary Miller grew up in a family of storytellers and letter writers. When he moved to California in 1991, a friend asked him to write about life in California, which prompted Gary to become an essay hobbyist, taking observations from each week and shining them through a prism of humor, or in the case of politics--passion.
Gary has finished his first novel, Prey for the Moon, a mystery thriller about a man connected to a serial killer through dreams which reveal the face of the next victim on the night before each murder. Elaine Beale: Here's my pitch on why you should pick me as one of your first 12 contestants:
See me? I'm the girl in the back, by the window. The one with the freckles and over-washed shirt. Waving a skinny arm, trying to get your attention among all those other skinny, waving arms. Pick me, pick me, I'm thinking. Staring my words at you, willing you to hear.
You scan the room, gaze barely brushing by me before you settle a smile on the kids in the front row. Pick me, I think, so hard now it makes my jaw clench and my chest ache. Pick me, I keep on thinking, even as I know you won't. Then, just when I've given up, let my hand drop, am sinking into my chair, I see you glance over, towards the window. Your face creased into a question, you meet my stare.
Thanks...
Elaine Beale JGibbons: Why you should choose me, me, me!
look again! there is already a sweetheart on the list. and now--you! Congratulations and stand by!
I have noticed you only have guys so far in the competiton. You need a girl, a woman, dagnabit!
In all those reality shows, you have an America's Sweetheart. Someone you want to win because she's gosh darn nice and sweet. A Kelly Pickler, Colleen from Survivor, Mirna from Amazing Race. They are the women who you don't expect much, but just wait. We come out fighting and don't underestimate us. Sure, we might look like Doris Day and sing Que Sera Sera on occasion, but cross us and we can be Uma Thurman from Kill Bill. We are like Madleine: We are sad when when we see wounded people, and say pooh pooh to tigers. We try to do the right thing. Our role models are Doris Day and Marge Gunderson from Fargo, because even when Marge is questioning a suspect, she's pretty polite about it. And Doris Day is darn cute when she gets mad. So I can be the Sweetheart. I have no problem with this. Marsh Rose: The Moving Finger Contest
Gaaaaze into your computer screeeen. You are growing sleeeepy. Verrry sleeeepy. Thaaat's right. Just breathe. In with the good air, out with the bad air. You reach for your keyboard. Its surface is so smooth, so inviting. You are so relaxed. A wish enters your mind. It is a wish to vote, to vote. You wish to vote for Marsh. You will be soooo happy if you vote for Marsh. One more deep breath now, aaaand. awake! Ah, how wonderful you feel! You are refreshed, filled with joie de vivre. You vote for Marsh because, really, you have no choice.
Marsh made her first entry in a daily journal on her 13th birthday. She wrote in the basement of her parents' house in Massachusetts, on a manual Royal upright typewriter... the kind with a cloth ribbon and keys that jammed together. Now, an unmentionable number of years later, her short stories have appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, Cosmopolitan, Salon.Com and other venues. After suffering a stint as a newswriter she is now a psychotherapist and lives in the backwoods of Cloverdale. She still keeps a journal. Rebecca K. O'Connor: My African grey parrot, who is an exceptional orator, will be dictating to my typing Brittany pup (who is enthusiastic, but not as talented). Together they are quite brilliant. (And thankfully have not discovered how to use the phone.) This will explain all type-o's, grammar issues and frequent requests for peanuts or table scraps. If we are chosen, my writing team will be too distracted to follow through with their imminent coup. (Giving me time to plan my last stand as dictator.) Have mercy on me and remember.my home is only the first conquest on their way to world domination. Ann Brady: I was going to suggest you name the contest Never At A Loss For Words. But I changed my mind and thought of a better name. How about Project Rejection. It captures the real zeitgeist of writers. ( I had to look zeitgeist up) Here's the twist your contest offers. As a writer I'm used to rejection, I expect it. In this contest I start out with acceptance and each week move toward rejection. Very twisted indeed. Twisted enough to say pick me. Then I can be un-picked later. Or maybe not. Either way suits my, you know, my zeit. Kristin Lund: Hand it over.
But this is nothing but a shaving basin!
Shaving basin? Does thou not know what this really is?
Like Don Quixote before me, if you select me as an Idle Idol, I will point my quill at whatever windmill, er, writing topic, looms up on the horizon and charge forward with strength and honor ("Rich matrons pay well to be pleasured by the bravest champions"-Oops! Sorry! I veered off into Gladiator for a moment).I will charge forward with valor and wit ever in defense of first person writing and shaving basins will become golden helmets. What is sickness to the body of a knight errant? What matter wounds? For each time I fall I shall rise up again and woe to the wicked! Sancho! My armor! My sword! Stacy Appel: The very idea of the Idle Pens Contest has thrown me, it must be confessed, into a flutter of spirits. A fortnight ago, I had supposed myself happy in the confines of my own drawing-room, where I am so kindly received by my feline companions, and where the modest pleasures of my daily life are pleasant enough that I could have enjoyed a gentle, leisurely life within it for some time to come.
True, my manner of living is exceedingly plain, the rooms are small, the activities dull, my thoughts and reflections are without audience, but, all in all, my life is not disagreeable in the least and I have done very well engaged in my duties here. Perhaps I could have remained so indefinitely, had I not received word of the Contest. To have such a happiness offered - oh, my heart is full! While I do not flatter myself that my affections for the Idle Pens Contest are returned in equal measure, I cannot help thinking of it continually and dwelling on its merits. Yes, I see now that I long to participate, that my current existence is both solitary and wretched, and that surely some person must offer resistance to the ruinous schemes of the vainglorious Mark Sloan. Shall the opportunity not be mine? I cannot think how I should endure the winter to come if I am not selected.