November 15 marks this season's submission deadline for FieldReport, a website dedicated to your creative nonfiction memoir pieces. All you have to do is sign up (free), review five other pieces, and then you're able to post your own 2000-word-or-less personal narrative.
Founded with the desire to deepen Internet communities, this website allows readers to review, comment on, or simply read others' true life experiences. To sweeten the experience, a monthly prize of $1000 is awarded to the greatest story in each of the twenty categories, which is determined by a blind review process.A quarterly prize of $4000 is awarded to the highest ranking field report (excluding previous Silver winners), and a Grand Prize of $250,000 is awarded to the highest ranking silver or bronze winner on January 1st.
A $25,000 teen prize is also awarded to those entrants who are between the ages of 13-17.
The Positives: There is no sign up fee. You can have up to three writing "personas" that allow for anonymity, if you're worried about posting under your given name. You keep the copyright, allowing FieldReport a "limited license on the work."
The Drawbacks: It seems that once posted, your story is there for all time.
Have any of you actually posted your stories on FieldReport? I haven't, so I'm curious about your experiences if you have. Positive? Negative? Ambivalent?
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3 comments:
Here is a user comment about their experience on FieldReport:
"Thank you for creating Field Report - it's exactly what the writing doctor ordered! It's inspired me to get back and writing after a long time away. Reviewing other people work has made me aware of where I sit in the talent continuum as well as made me look at why some things don't work while others do. I've even taken to looking up grammatical rules and the meaning of some words to determine if they're being used properly by the writer. So thanks - I now spend at least one hour, and often many more, most days working on something related to your site."
I am avoiding it for the reasons you described.
I must control my content, or it is not mine at all. What is the purpose of an audience? Do I want the person who engages me and I speak to, or the person who eats popcorn and talks during a movie?
An interesting concept, but ultimately, for me, a time sink with too many negatives.
Also, in the back in my mind, I can hear Ken going, "so, where's that book you said you would write again?"
@anthony: *sigh* me too. I truly don't have time, number one, to work on things beyond the scope of my novel projects. and two, i'm too distrusting. I don't want my content on a site i've no control over. however, i think it may work for some people -- and for them, I want to advertise opportunities :)
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