An opportunity for every Indian blogger to get published!

Thanks Anoop for your highlight. Taking a cue from what you suggest, I think I can do better.

A very happy anniversary :)

So how many of you out of the 250 have submitted your stories? I'm still stuck on my second one. It is turning out to be a novella. Not able to get it within the word limit :(

I've started writing it an hour back. And I've forgotten what my actual story was! 

Panic attack! : Is the last date 31st March? If possible, please extend the date. 

what were you doing all this time?? sleeping??

Not sleeping. Was very busy with work. Have completed half the story. Its not that I can't finish the story by Sunday, it is just that a few more extra days would be good.

ok all the best

Don't worry about the wrong word count - we'll use the same word count as MS-Word when we verify the stories!

seriously i can relate with ranjit and anukriti... And i have around two stories to complete... And the word count is driving me crazy..... wish they could extend it by few days :-/

will 78 extra words make a difference @Renie :P

And i would be travelling on 31st :(.. since am in the USA the time zone is an other concern for me... 

ok coming back to the word count would 78 extra words make a difference... am trying to reduce it though :(

i have extra 100 words and i'm just too confused how to chop it...my odd little story will become more odd if i were to snip it :/

75-100 words is not too difficult to remove. You don't have to remove any content to remove 100 words. If you just read through, you will find sentences you can reword and remove 4-5 words. Just do that for 20 sentences and you get rid of 100 words withour losing content.

I know i am bit late but for future reference, in this types of cases, using American English is perfect. It will chop away unncessary prepositions and things like that.

Looks like it is so easy to have 'story ideas'. When it comes to actually writing the story, we all get stuck. Out of the 250 shortlisted ones, I'm sure not everyone will submit their complete stories by the deadline. I'm not submitting my second story. Too complicated.  Hope that makes the final shortlisting easier with fewer entries. *fingers crossed*

writing is not so difficult....its editing and snipping it to a word limit which is more tricky

feel like that nandini; been editing and editing and i don't know where to stop it; when to stop it, i should stop it at least before 31st march. god save me.

Yeah. That is why I did 2 rounds of thorough editing (almost re-wrote the entire story) for both my stories and then chucked it in and forgot about it. 

did crazy chopping still 10 words left...my story is looking like a cyclone victim now :D

Editing is a skill. I was like found it difficult to  bring my story to some 3980 from 4500. Indeed a difficult task! sigh!

In future, if you like, I can help you guys in editing. I have professional editing experience of 5 years Yeah, but i am bit harsh when it comes to grammar errors and punctuation errors (I simply don't get how writers can suck at writing), so most of the times my writiers hate me

Well! Phase-II over and, up to now, we knew what were the timelines for the phases. Now is there no guideline ahead? Is there a date by which the next short-list of 50 gets announced? And, pray, what needs be done after that point by those lucky short-listed writers to get to the final stage?

I am surprised that there is no announcement about the number of stories received and the next deadline.

And it is still open like some of the contests in the past.

earlier they had to read just 500 words shorties...now they have to read almost 4000 wordies so I guess thats why they are taking their time.

Yeah! It would be a help if you said something like June 30th or July 31st - so that we can shelve this for the time being and get on with our lives 

I am surprised that most people had to cut down words. I am on the other side I had hardly 2200 words and brough it up to 2600+ but could not do more. So I left it. rules I guess say within 3000-4000.

Quite strange that it seems only I am on the other side, maybe I really don't have a big story to tell.

vaikunth, thoda mirch masala add hone  se spicy treat  hota for world to read.

Is it funny how I promoted my plot crazily, but finally ended up not sending the story?

I wouldn't allow anyone to slice it Rio. I would like it to be as it is. I'll find some other publisher, or go to Harper Collins indirectly

All writerz need to get past the editors, if they wanna get published.

Yes, but they wouldn't slice it offThey'll just make some changes and stuff.

Rio, it depends too much masala and no meat makes for a yucky treat :)

It depends on the reader too how much spice he/she can handle

@Pooja : yea the time given to submit the idea and promote it was sooooo long compared to the time for actual story completion. Though I wrote my full story when I wrote the idea itself, I had to scamper my editing at last moment.

It was not that actually. I thought the 3000-4000word limit was too less. My story will never fitSo I backed out lol

pooja, even I foolishly thought I could crunch down 7 years in 3000-4000 words, ignorant me....:P

Hahaha. 7years is little actually. I wanted to write the story about my Brother and Bhabhi. They were friends since Childhood but fell in love after 15-16years. Imagine putting that in 4000 words

Poo, may be you should start writing a novel soon ;)

Planning on it Ste. Have everything plannedWaiting for holidays so I can start

Results by April 30th? That seems pretty quick. Any idea how many of the shortlisted ideas were submitted? 

@Stories .. The result is NOT going to be out on April 30 .. It will take more time. We will inform everyone on the NEXT STEPS sometime in the first week of may :-)

Hey all for publishing only people who are writing articles have this opportunity of publishing.

my blog is to create puzzles. so can i contribute or apply for publishing in some way ? Like my idea would be some puzzles as a page filers :)

This particular [contest] was only for stories and it has ended long time. So, you can't submit your entry now.

Anoop, was hoping the results would be out on the 30th. I guess reading so many stories and then picking out the ones worth publishing will take time. Just keep us informed and in the loop so we don't feel we are in limbo - really appreciated whoever wrote to let us know results would be announced on the 30th. I see now it has been replaced with, "Editors are now selecting the best short stories."

@Mathur The results are definitely not going to be out on the 30th of this month. The last email from IndiBlogger mentioned that there will be an update during May.

It is not so much the reading of the stories that is the issue but the overall concept of which stories are going to work together to form a set and that is vey much a challenge.

Rest assured, people are working very hard at this :-)