Open Novella Journal 2024

Week 5

Things happened, so I've not managed to get any writing done this week, which is a frustration on its own, but I won't go into the specifics of real life getting crazy because it happens even to the best of us.

It--

The reason for deciding to post despite not getting any work done is that there's been a major lack of anybody complaining about getting nixed during the first round this year.

Like, absolutely nobody.

This in itself is rather nice because the previous year or two, there was always someone giving the ambassadors a hard time, asking why their entry didn't get through, with some even demanding they had the right to know and "how dare the ambassadors not tell us."

This may, in turn, explain the drop in number, that some of the writers who complained the previous years just didn't come back, because to be honest, I think a lot of people were actually aware of why they got nixed, but were in major denial regarding the matter and would rather blame the ambassadors.

I mean, last year, there was definitely a story I saw that obviously nixed part of the prompt, and one could tell just from the summary they did this, but the reason I ended up finding the story was that the writer decided to ask why they'd not passed the first round. There were, of course, people who were like, "I don't see why," and didn't think some of their favorite stories getting nixed was fair, but I think the kicker was trying to say others that followed the rules, the guidelines didn't deserve to pass the first round.

Which, I think--

There were definitely some who sacrificed "a lot" just to have what they thought was the perfect story, but this included say not actually following a prompt which in turn I think came about because prior to the question about how our stories are being used there was like, a lack of getting nixed during the first two rounds for this, while the last two years I think people started realizing that the prompt, following a prompt was important.

Of course, they've also not announced the statistics yet for this year, and this is where the complaints may crop up because they may see the number and think, "Hey. This is proof I've been unfairly eliminated." The thing is, it never was.

Also, reading wise -- I've got a few I'm rooting for and a few I won't be surprised if they get nixed during the next round, particularly with the lower numbers of people passing this year.

Actually--

So, last year, according to my chapter from last year's journal called "How Many Are there", there were 900 stories tagged #onc2023, a number that dropped majorly, but they had over a thousand entries submitted, but according to "moving onto round 2 - part 1" of that same journal, only 598 stories moved onto the next round and this was out of a 10k in stories.

In contrast, this year there are 647 stories using the #onc2024 tag, while around 700-750 stories passed the first round, which is a stark contrast from the previous year. If the tags are anything to go by, there are in fact around that many stories submitted to ONC, aka 700-750, so the number of stories that actually got eliminated during the first round managed to drop significantly.

And why?

Well, I think the last two years resulted in some of the writers who didn't take the prompt part seriously realizing they're just wasting their time, and the time of the ambassadors, as well as readers, readers who are expecting the writers to actually base their stories on a prompt, so it's actually a nice change up.