There are several critical components in a writing challenge, the first being writing entries. We have those in the Spec Faith Fall Writers’ Challenge.

Which brings us to the next phase. We need readers. We’ve already had a number participate–either with comments or by hitting the thumbs-up button on the ones they liked the best.

But here’s the thing–if only writers are voting for writers, we’re behaving like a closed society: we who write want to honor one of our own. That’s not a bad thing, but it doesn’t generally give a true picture of the writing samples. The real question should be, what does the reading public think about these entries?

I don’t want to turn this into a popularity contest, but I don’t know how else we can attract readers except to ask you to invite readers to come and participate in the challenge, both this week and next when we run the poll.

I know that visitors might take one look at the number of comments to the Writing Challenge post and get discouraged, thinking they need to read 49 entries, or whatever the current number. In reality, many of those are comments–a great component to this challenge. The actual number of entries is twelve (mine isn’t a real entry–just my for-fun attempt because I didn’t want to be left out 😉 ).

I might add that at least four of those were posted late in the week, so those who visited the challenge article early may have missed tho entire group of entries.

Also, this early stage is to determine the top three entries which will be included in next week’s poll, so visitors may hit the thumbs-up button on as many of the entries as they wish. You might ask yourself if you’d like to keep reading. If yes, then that entry might deserve a thumbs up.

As I’ve mentioned before, these Spec Faith Challenges are hopefully pre-cursors to an actual Spec Faith Contest, with prizes and everything. But before we launch such an endeavor we need to see if there’s enough interest in that kind of an opportunity. In short, you’re evaluating the writing entries, and we’re evaluating the challenge itself. 😀

With that said, I hope you’ll take the time to stop by the Spec Faith Fall Writing Challenge post and read the entries you’ve missed.