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I'm posting this here because I think it relates nicely to the rewrite challanges and those of you who have been doing them.BBC America is having a short story contest to rewrite a tale from Geoffrey Chaucer's, Canterbury Tales.
The contest starts January 8 , ends in late February and the word count is under 2000. The info is on their website.

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So, the Challenge schedule is changing. Laocoon is just going to have to wait until February.

I hereby announce that January's Rewrite Challenge will be a retelling of one of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. That should give everyone interested in participating plenty of time to write, ask for critiques and put the final touches on a story to be submitted to the BBC before their deadline.

Here's the link to BBC America:

http://www.bbcamerica.com/britain/get_writing/get_writing_submission.jsp

And a link to the tales for those of you who'd like a jump on it:

http://www.canterburytales.org/canterbury_tales.html

ALSO, (PAY ATTENTION HERE!!) I'm going to post the Rewrite Challenge in Writing Class from now on. That way it won't get lost somewhere on page 3 of the F&F board.

Is this contest worth it? Does it take away potential future earnings? If they took my story and made a movie out of it, would I get any of the proceeds? Should I revert back to Laocoon for January?

???

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Submissions will not be returned and will become the property of BBC America upon submission. However, copyright in the submission will remain with the writer, subject to a perpetual, royalty-free, non-exclusive license to BBC America to edit, publish, make available, distribute, assign, sublicense or otherwise exploit the submission throughout the world by means of any media, whether now known or hereafter invented.

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This is pretty standard for BBC, especially in this kind of contest. They don't want to wrangle with people claiming ownership of every new series produced by the BBC, and BBC can hardly take the standard defense and send everything back unread in this case, can they?

There is an interesting weasel here, since the BBC has no intention of actually referring anyone to the losers of this contest when a popular show is picked up by someone else. And of course, when you tell other potential buyers that this story is already a contest loser in the BBC competition, not only will they think that your story is crappy, they will also know that if it turns out to be a hit BBC retains a license to publish and sell as many copies as they like without paying you or anyone else a dime.

OK. Now I need some votes. Do we use this contest for the January Challenge?

We'll maintain the challenge as The Canterbury Tales. So if anyone still wants to submit to BBC they have this challenge to help them out.

Laocoon will be next month.

Yanos' choice of a Thai tale will be in March.

Keeley (If memory serves) will pick an Arabian tale for April.

Mikemunsil has sent me a link for a Chilean tale that will come into the line-up in May.

I just checked the Canterbury one. Seems to be working fine. Are you navigating through the stories using the navigation window on the left side of the screen?

Try this one:
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/Cha2Can.html

Or this one:
http://www.librarius.com/cantales.htm

And it's not like I'm computer-stupid. I know my way around pretty well and have even designed sites. So, ?

I asked if it were taken down because the ELF site, which you can navigate to through the canterbury link, seems to be gone: http://elf.chaoscafe.com/

I wasn't sure if the stories were coming from there or not...

But I'll try the new links you've posted... Thanks.

Also, for those who are getting bogged down in the middle English or the poetry, I found a site that gives some pretty good study notes and synopsis. If you are looking for a source to help you decipher things, it may be helpful.