Contest Summary
- MOTA word: ADDICTION
- Guest Editor: Elizabeth Engstrom
- $10.00 US entry fee due at submission
- Stories up to 10,000 words
- Contest starts: May 1st
- Contest ends: September 30th.
- Postmark on or between May 1st and September 30th
- The writer has to be at least 18 years of age
- The writer has to be able to travel internationally without assistance
- Prior Grand Prize winners cannot enter
- Grand Prize worth over $7,000.00 US, there is not any other type of payment or prize at this time, but we hope to offer $0.05/word to all MOTA selected authors. Please read more below.
- No reprint stories
- No simultaneous submissions
- Submitting to MOTA is by entering the contest
| What is MOTA?
MOTA is an anthology of short stories along a common idea, thought, word.
mo'ta n. 1. A philosophy of higher thought, crystallized into time and space.
Please look at the past MOTA volumes for an idea as to the type of stories we want. Since the previous MOTA books are all sold out, please visit your local used book seller or Amazon.com for used copies. We encourage all writers who are interested in submitting a story to this contest to read one of the books in order to enhance their chance at selection. Reading a previous MOTA does not guarantee inclusion in this new volume, but it will help to keep the writer from writing in a way that is not desirable.
We are pleased to announce that Elizabeth Engstrom; author of novels, short stories, and essays will be our Guest Editor for MOTA 9. If you want to know what kind of stories she writes, read Black Leather. It is a saucy, sensuous, recriminating look to the unexpected side of life.
Read the rules...
Send your entry... (send them BETWEEN May 1st and September 30th). Any entry postmarked outside of the date range will not be considered. The closing date was origionally August 31st, but has been extended to September 30th due to uncontrolable event. We appoligize for any inconvience this may cause.
TripleTree Publishing
2852 Willamette Street #507
Eugene Oregon, 97405-8200
Unites States of America
Attn: MOTA 9
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| Why a $10.00 US entry fee?
The money obtained from the MOTA entries will go to subsidizing the flight and seminar costs for the Grand Prize Winner of MOTA. If we find that there is more than enough money raised from the entry fees, there are several options that we will consider. 1) Offer a Second Place monetary prize. 2) Offer the Second Place prize as a second seat at the seminar. 3) Pay the author of each selected story for the anthology a $0.05/word payment.
There are any number of other offerings that could be made with the money raised by the MOTA entry fees, but be assured that all of the money raised will only go to the authors of the publication and prize winner. As we gain more understanding of forecasting the anthologies, we can step out more boldly and offer even a wider range of returns on your entry investment. |
The word to write too is: ADDICTION
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| ad·dic·tion | noun; the state of being enslaved to a habit or practice or to something that is psychologically or physically habit-forming, as narcotics, to such an extent that its cessation causes severe trauma.
[Origin: 1595?1605; < L addicti?n- (s. of addicti?) a giving over, surrender.
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What We Don't Want
- No profane language that does not promote the story line or ground the character.
- No sex scenes, please. There are ways to lead the reader up to an event without showing the event. Let the reader fill in the blank. Check out Elizabeth Engstrom's book "Black Leather" if you want to see wondrous ways of leading the reader up to the moment and then letting the reader fill it in for themselves. |
What We Do Want (some ideas)
- a person wakes up at 2am every morning and can't get back to sleep until they go down to the local fast food and eat a bag of onion rings. ... I know someone who had this addiction and the fast food place got so used to her arrival, they would recognize the headlights coming down the street and put an order of onion rings down.
- a person is constantly late for work in the morning because the first thing they do after waking up is get online and play computer games on the web. They have to get one more kill to make the level and then they will get ready, but it is already fifteen minutes till they have to be at work, they live twenty minutes away and they are still in their PJ's. ... I know several programmers with this addiction.
- an Elf just loves to spark their magic. The feeling as it courses through their body and the particles of light that it produces look and feel invigorating. But, magic is forbidden by the Elf society to use magic in any but honorable and beneficial ways to the society. ... This is an example of how an addiction can seem harmless but have social impact so that the person, the Elf, has to keep the practice hidden to such an extent that they lie and cheat in order to have more time to do it.
- Be inventive and think outside your comfort. Write outside of your norm. Find out, through words, what would drive a person with an addiction and what are they willing to give up to do their addiction just one more time.
An insight: I was hospitalized for heart surgery when I was in my early twenties. There were complications that caused a lot of post-surgerical pain. The hospital gave me morphine injections to help with that pain. I could taste the sweet earthiness of the morphine as it went in my vein. Yes, I could taste it as it went into a vein, scared the nurses. After a few days the injections were supposed to last several hours but I was asking for more after a few minutes. I was hooked, it had become an addiction. The physician said I could not have any more morphine but offered several other alternatives, that I all turned down. I wanted the sweet earthy taste again. I wanted to forget about the pain and drift quietly. That night they turned off my supply of morphine was horrific. I screamed, pleaded and begged the nurses to give me just one more injection. I would have literally done anything for just one more injection. But then I would be needing another one just minutes later and it would start all over again. A brave and incredible nurse sat with me and held my hand all that night at my bedside. The other nurses made her rounds for her so she could sit and be with me. I am ashamed of the things I said to her in my pleads and crying for more. But she held my hand and rarely said a word. I was better the next morning and the worst had passed. The pain was less and tolerable, and I didn't need pain meds, except when the doctor came in the debride the incision, but even then it was more mind than physical. I am also a 20+ year dry alcoholic, but that is a story for another time and place. What I am trying to get at is don't' just scrape the surface of an addiction. Get down inside and find out what it is and why it is effecting your character. What drove them to the addiction in the first place? How have they tried to quit, or have they tried? Do they know they are addicted? I sure didn't at the time. |
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