I knew this was coming. A barrage of e-mails bombed my inbox. I have come here to defend myself and maybe set things into perspective.
"...considering the rising costs of EVERYTHING,your competition rules about using snail mail are unreasonable. This on top of the fees you're charging,is making me think twice about entering." and "I've got tons of cool stuff I know and I could e-mail them to you"
These are just the more polite missives I got.
I'm a writer and one of the reasons why I 'insisted' on the entries being hard copies y'all have to mail in, is it's all part of the ritual of writing. I think society today is so caught up in instant coffee, fast food, microwave dinners,sms bla bla bla that we have forgotten the ordered,meticulous and deliberateness of writing down something, proofing it,hating it,re-writing,proofing it again,addressing an envelope- with your name on the back and writing out a cheque. Longa manu. It's all just hit send, e-money or online money (how many of us prize winners wanna be paid in online money anyway?).
I 'insisted' on all the knowledge coming in on paper to give us time to think about it. So much trash is on the net and in our inboxes just because of the ease of it all (this present blog is NOT included! :)
As a writer,I am a custodian of language. Good language. Not sms or IM language.
And if that means some folks don't want to be conscientious and take out a few hours to jot down some wisdom we can share here (and maybe get some lovely soap-who knows?It could be YOU)
then, oh well...(head to the side,bemoaning a generation that hates the Postal system)
I still want all your feedback.
x