{"id":1587,"date":"2009-06-19T05:04:00","date_gmt":"2009-06-19T05:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/?p=1587"},"modified":"2018-11-20T05:31:08","modified_gmt":"2018-11-20T05:31:08","slug":"contest-alert-and-thoughts-on-reviewing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/?p=1587","title":{"rendered":"Contest Alert, and Thoughts on Reviewing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Attention writers! If you enjoy fairy tale retellings, don’t miss the upcoming contest running July 1 – July 31, 2009, at Diamonds and Toads<\/a>. For full contest rules and info, click here<\/a>. The object: retell “Sleeping Beauty” in 1,000 words or less. And I highly recommend checking out the site, too, if you’re interested in fairy tale research and writing.<\/p>\n

Are you a writer 14 years old or younger? Then you won’t be able to enter the contest above, but you’re encouraged to enter a new contest sponsored by Imaginator Press<\/a> in honor of the fifth anniversary of their publication of the fantasy The Dark Dreamweaver. Send in your story on the theme “Dream Power” by Oct. 31, and enter to win some amazing prizes, including an iPod Touch (sheesh, wish I were eligible!).<\/p>\n

Via Twitter, Jen Robinson<\/a> tipped me off to an interesting post and discussion on Read Roger<\/a> that was in part about review copies, and who should receive them; and also went back a bit to the good vs. bad reviews idea and whether there’s an obligation inherent in the acceptance of a review copy. <\/p>\n

It was interesting for me to read about bloggers who actively request copies of specific books from publishers. The only time I’ve done this is when I’ve had a prior relationship with that publisher–and usually the publishers have approached US. In fact, for a while we were getting boatloads of unsolicited ARCs, which is why we put up our review policy<\/a>. With unsolicited ARCs I feel far less obligation to post a review, and never do I feel obliged to post a positive review simply because somebody sent me a review copy. However, I’ve generally made it a policy–a personal one–to focus primarily on books that I was enthused about, or that I feel deserve attention even if I wasn’t 100% enthused. <\/p>\n

But there’s been a confluence of events that has caused me to keep coming back to the idea of why I’m writing reviews at all. Firstly, there’s been all the discussions about reviewers, review copies, and different groups of bloggers, which can be truly exhausting. Secondly, I’ve been so busy with work, and with writing, that I’ve hardly had time to write blog posts or read others’ posts. It’s really hard for me to post a review anywhere near promptly. I feel bad about that. But this isn’t my job, and sometimes it feels like it is…and it shouldn’t. <\/p>\n

So I’ve been in the process of mulling over, of rethinking, how I’d like to do reviews on the site. (You may have noticed some “rethinking” in the form of weird roundups and musical interludes.) We originally started posting reviews here in order to recommend books we enjoyed to others in our writing group, and anyone else who might be interested. It turned into so much more, and it’s been a wild ride. Only, I’m not sure my previous method of doing more in-depth reviews is feasible right now. You’ll probably see more roundups and thematic groupings of reviews. In exchange, I’d like to post a bit more about writing and reading in general. And this is just me, and my own angst, talking–Tanita might feel differently. But expect less frequent, shorter, more pithy (one hopes) reviews from me for the time being. <\/p>\n

And, as always, thanks for reading.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Attention writers! If you enjoy fairy tale retellings, don’t miss the upcoming contest running July 1 – July 31, 2009, at Diamonds and Toads….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2,51,9,10],"class_list":["post-1587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-af","tag-contest-alert","tag-soapbox","tag-views"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1587"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1587\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5637,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1587\/revisions\/5637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}