Rules:

1) to participate, email mikemunsil that you will participate.

Thursday, June 30th is the last day I will accept emails for signing up.

2) I will post a trigger in a special (protected) board that only
participants will be able to see, until July 4 when it will become
generally visible.

On Friday, July 1st, at about 07:00am US Central Time, GMT-5, I will
post your trigger.

3) You have Friday, Saturday and Sunday to write and revise. Please do
it all on your own.

Your story must be exactly 500 words, not including the title and your
name. Use any dependable method you like to count the words. I will
count them independently, and will accept plus or minus 10 words
difference from my count. I will make the count using the tools in the
freeware RoughDraft word processor. An example set of text and the
resulting wordcount by RoughDraft are presented at the end of this post,
for you to check your wordcounter against. There is a link to download
the freeware RoughDraft word processor on Liberty Hall.

Any story less than 490 words or greater than 510 words by my count,
will be deleted.

You may format the story in any manner you wish, but may not add graphics.

You may write in any genre you please, but please stick to fiction.

Please provide a title and a byline and a word count. Do not provide
commentary on your own story.

There must be a clear relationship to the trigger, but you do not have
to incorporate the trigger exactly as it is presented to you.

The trigger will be text-based, and I will choose it.

4) Please post your own story to the protected board during the writing
period. Place your title in the Topic title, please, followed by your
name and word count.

Any stories posted after midnight, Sunday, July 3rd, US Central Time,
GMT-5, will be deleted, unless you make pre-arrangements with me, as
several people already have.

Yes, someone else might wait until the last moment to post their own
work, trying thereby to gain some advantage over other writers. There is
nothing to prevent this. But, why bother?

5) You may NOT comment on any other writer's story, after the stories
are presented. You may vote on them. Please be honest.

We will vote on the following:

Best Story
Best Character Development
Best Dialogue
Best Hook
Best Narrative Voice

6) Readers who have not participated as writers may comment on the stories.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
The following selection was counted by RoughDraft as containing 589
words, not including the title and byline. Use it to test your
word-counting software.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[excerpt from ]JURGEN, A Comedy of Justice
By JAMES BRANCH CABELL

Now a court was held by the Philistines to decide whether or no King
Jurgen should be relegated to limbo. And when the judges were prepared
for judging, there came into the court a great tumblebug, rolling in
front of him his loved and properly housed young ones. With the creature
came pages, in black and white, bearing a sword, a staff and a lance.

This insect looked at Jurgen, and its pincers rose erect in horror. The
bug cried to the three judges, "Now, by St. Anthony! this Jurgen must
forthwith be relegated to limbo, for he is offensive and lewd and
lascivious and indecent."

"And how can that be?" says Jurgen.

"You are offensive," the bug replied, "because this page has a sword
which I choose to say is not a sword. You are lewd because that page has
a lance which I prefer to think is not a lance. You are lascivious
because yonder page has a staff which I elect to declare is not a staff.
And finally, you are indecent for reasons of which a description would
be objectionable to me, and which therefore I must decline to reveal to
anybody."

"Well, that sounds logical," says Jurgen, "but still, at the same time,
it would be no worse for an admixture of common-sense. For you gentlemen
can see for yourselves, by considering these pages fairly and as a
whole, that these pages bear a sword and a lance and a staff, and
nothing else whatever; and you will deduce, I hope, that all the
lewdness is in the insectival mind of him who itches to be calling these
things by other names."

The judges said nothing as yet. But they that guarded Jurgen, and all
the other Philistines, stood to this side and to that side with their
eyes shut tight, and all these said:

"We decline to look at the pages fairly and as a whole, because to look
might seem to imply a doubt of what the tumblebug has decreed. Besides,
as long as the tumblebug has reasons which he declines to reveal, his
reasons stay unanswerable, and you are plainly a prurient rascal who are
making trouble for yourself."

"To the contrary," says Jurgen, "I am a poet, and I make literature."

"But in Philistia to make literature and to make trouble for yourself
are synonyms," the tumblebug explained. "I know, for already we of
Philistia have been pestered by three of these makers of literature.
Yes, there was Edgar, whom I starved and hunted until I was tired of it:
then I chased him up a back alley one night, and knocked out those
annoying brains of his. And there was Walt, whom I chivvied and battered
from place to place, and made a paralytic of him: and him, too, I
labelled offensive and lewd and lascivious and indecent. Then later
there was Mark, whom I frightened into disguising himself in a clown's
suit, so that nobody might suspect him to be a maker of literature:
indeed, I frightened him so that he hid away the greater part of what he
had made until after he was dead, and I could not get at him. That was a
disgusting trick to play on me, I consider. Still, these are the only
three detected makers of literature that have ever infested Philistia,
thanks be to goodness and my vigilance, but for both of which we might
have been no more free from makers of literature than are the other
countries."

Note: The material quoted above is in the public domain.

END OF EXCERPT

Edit: Nvm, covered in email.