FanStory.com - FanStory Contestsby Wayne Fowler

I very recently cast my vote in a FanStory contest: ‘Teach Me Something’. Once again I was conflicted and torn – how do I pick just one of the several well-deserving entries?

Sometimes there are two equally exceptional contest entries. It’s very possible, and has probably happened, that an entry that could/should have won does not even place merely due to its placement in the queue, or simply because it lost out in the ‘eeny-meeny-miney-moe, catch a tiger by the tail’ deciding routine. An entry that could have won might become relegated to the 'quickly dismissed dump' as if poorly constructed and written.

As I said, ‘Teach Me Something’ was replete with well-written and informative entries. I learned from each, or at least should have. I’d never heard of the horrible villain Odillo Globocnik. Or how to make a sestina. When to use a comma was quite educational, though I might have benefitted from a paragraph on when ‘not’ to use one. The entry on free forming was informative and helpful. But it’s possible that those among us most aided by the teaching will never experience its benefit, not being poetically inclined.

'Subjunctive Mood' was a study course that I found most enlightening. Unfortunately for the author, I was blinded by the light. Halfway through, my eyes crossed and my ears began to hum. Katydids dominated the air. Despite knowing that I was in the presence of a professional, I listened to the vibrations of my hair follicles more than the voice of the master educator. Three-quarters of the way in, I developed an unexplainable twitch. Knowing that the piece deserved the vote, I decided that having had read every word, I didn’t actually ‘learn’ anything. I was impressed, but… And that is not the writer’s fault.

'Mango Hears Homophones' was fun, but as was the case with the Oxford comma, something I already knew, I didn’t learn anything. But is that the author’s fault? They presented a teaching piece very well – all that was asked of them.

Many other contests present equally difficult choices. I recall contest entries of my own that received accolades and stars abundant in reviews, but no corresponding votes. I can only surmise that my entries suffered from the ‘six-in-one, half-dozen-in-the-other’ dilemma.

The solution, besides a cumbersome first, second, third ranked voting system, is that more people vote. If there were a hundred voters instead of a handful, maybe the ‘this or that’ question would resolve by simple statistics. Given enough coin flips, the odds are…

So I offer this as a manner of apology to the writers of entries in the ‘Teach Me Something’ contest. I’m sorry that I could only vote for one. They were all very well written (as far as I could tell), and all deserved recognition.