Page Two Way Back Writing Contest!

First Prize (two winners): $100 each

Second Prize (three winners): $50 each

Total Number of Contest Entries: 100*

Entry details described below.

*No limits to the number of entries per participant.

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Are you a quick-witted writer? If so, here is a chance to make some money!

Our writing contest, Page Two Way Back, invites you to write a page two addendum to our page one vignette.

All of our vignettes are taken from the archives of various newspapers, and are true little stores from a hundred years ago, but they suggest that there may be more here than meets the eye.

As newspaper space is valuable, they stick mostly to the facts. We invite you to add imagination, imagery, humor, or just a confluence of words.

Once a month the Ten Mile River Press will present our Page Two Way Back Contest. We will post the Page One vignette on our website. You are invited to submit your version of the next page (Page Two) for the competition.

We ask that entries (Page Two vignettes) be limited to under 375 words. This can be seen as an exercise in concise writing. There will be a $10 entry fee for each vignette submitted. A minimum of 100 distinct entries are required for the contest to be judged; otherwise the contest will be extended through the following month(s) until the minimal number of entries are received. All entries will be judged by the editorial board of the Ten Mile Press.

We will announce the winning entry for the vignette at the close of the competition. There will be two first place prizes of $100 each, and three second place prizes of $50 each. The winning entries will be posted on the website, along with the writers’ names.

Each entrant will be notified by email when the contest has closed. Everyone is welcome to participate in forthcoming contests, whether they have been prize-winners or not. All winners will be notified within one week of the contest’s end, and their winning entries will be posted, along with their names on this website (* unless you would like to remain anonymous – if that is the case, make this clear with your entry).

This type of exercise may initiate enough mental energy to help jump-start a “writer’s block.” We all know that you can become trapped in the rut of your language. This exercise is loosening oil, by forcing the writer to have a go at something completely different. It could turn out to be both challenging and rewarding.

To submit an entry, first make a pre-payment to “10milepress@gmail.com” through PayPal Send Money Online ($10 per vignette). Then, fill out our entry form or send a separate email to Ten Mile Press (10milepress@gmail.com) with the subject header “Page Two Contest [MONTH] [YEAR].” Copy the full text of the entry(ies) and the payment confirmation number(s) in the body of the email. Do not send entries in the form of a separate attachment. Entries without a PayPal confirmation number will not be considered or judged.

June 2011 Contest: Page One material

CONTEST PAGE ONE:

March 12: Miss Sylvia Pankhurst, the young suffragette who expressed her sentiments by throwing bricks around London and going to prison for indulging in this form of demonstration, appeared in a white satin gown yesterday afternoon at Christian Science Hall and explained to a large audience why she threw the bricks and how it felt to be in prison. The bricks were thrown, she said, because an English Cabinet minister is more susceptible to the influence of a brick than to moral suasion. For 40 years, she said, the suffragettes of England have been striving for the ballot by abstract means, without avail, but since the use of the brick, the prospects are that the object will be attained within a year. She gave no new arguments but a narrative of the efforts of suffragettes to get their petition heard. Having been bodily, physically and personally thrown down the steps of Parliament, the suffragettes were charged upon by mounted police. But police horses did not throw them down, she said, but merely pushed them aside. The reason for the self-imposed starvation, Miss Pankhurst explained, was to express their refusal to be regarded as other than political prisoners. Having concluded her charmingly told story, Miss Pankhurst appealed to the women in the audience to regard themselves as waves of a great human sea and to feel the responsibility of each doing her part toward carrying the sea a little higher on the shores of progress.