As opposed to last year's celebration of free creativity with "Notes From Underground", this year we wanted to offer writers a more concrete jumping off point. Entries for "Variations on a Theme" should be inspired by one of two stories:
or
As there are different versions of both of these stories, you're free to use any version you choose as inspiration. If you click on the links above, you'll be taken to public domain versions you're welcome to use. (Or feel free to search for other versions of the story if you wish) And, we're interpreting the phrase "inspired by" rather loosely, so writers definitely shouldn't feel too restricted by it.
Stories can be written in any genre and up to 3,000 words long. We do, however, prefer short stories as opposed to poems or visual artwork. The contest is open until December 31, 2011 at midnight PST. Paste your stories in the body of an e-mail to LiteraryLab@gmail.com.
We plan to announce our selections around the end of January, but please be a tad patient since we do this during our free time. Once again we have the wonderful Becca Brown serving as our organizer so the three of us won't know who writes what story.
We'll be publishing roughly 20 of the stories in our 3rd Annual Literary Lab Presents... anthology, which will come out in the first half of 2012. Additionally, this year, we're offering two cash prizes.
Our favorite story will receive $200, and our first runner-up will receive $100.
The three of us will also be including our own attempts at the contest, simply because we want to play along. Our stories won't be eligible for any prizes, and we'll make it clear in the anthology that they were not part of the official contest.
We hope you'll try out "Variations on a Theme"! We're excited to be able to reward at least some of our writers this year. We look forward to your entries!
Also, please help us spread the word.
