Announcing the 2008 3rd Annual Spicy Cauldron Awards – now open for entries!

Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008
Father Christmas // Santa Claus // Père Noël
Image by Stéfan via Flickr

Long time readers of this blog may recall the previous two awards competitions I ran, last year and in 2006. You might have thought I’d either forgotten to run the awards this year, or perhaps that I had decided not to go ahead with a third promotion and celebration of the work of other bloggers, but no—I didn’t forget. This year I decided to hold off on running the awards until the month of December (October in 2007, September in 2006) because I wanted to make Yule (or, if you prefer, Christmas) the subject.

As with the previous competitions, this is just for fun and to get your work recognised somewhere other than just on your own blog. There’s no big money prize involved, but there will be a prize for the winner—to be announced later this week and yes, it will be a good one even with financial constraints—and there will be a short review here of the top three entries. A badge for the winning site will be provided.

All you have to do is write, or produce a comic strip, or present a video or audio podcast—or do anything creative that can be published online, basically, for the world to see—all about the festive season. It might be celebratory, it might be for kids or adults, it might be cynical even, or bitter, humorous or serious… The tone is up to you and, within the theme of Yule or Christmas, you’ve got a lot of room to decide for yourself what you touch upon, and why. And no, before anyone asks, a single tweet via Twitter won’t cut it, thank you very much—but a series of tweets under an assumed festive pseudonym might, possibly.

You might write a haiku about a reindeer. Or produce a funny comic strip about Santa. What about a Photoshopped image of Father Christmas’s workshop elves? Or a song in mp3 format? You may just write a blog entry about what Yule means to you, or retell a story from under the mistletoe back when you were a teenager at school (or, if you are a teenager at school right now, you might go back further, to when you were a baby). And then there are the religious and spiritual aspects of the season—you could write from a Pagan, Christian, Muslim, agnostic or atheist perspective—to cover just a few, certainly not exhaustive, bases. I’m a pagan, sure, but I won’t penalise anybody for writing from a different faith perspective; it is always interesting, from my point of view, to hear, see and read about other people’s beliefs. Or what about a ghost story to rival A Christmas Carol?

These are just a few ideas. You’re not short of room to flex your creativity on this one. I’m giving you until Saturday 20 December to get your entries notified to me. You don’t post your entries here–, no, please don’t, that’s defeating the whole purpose. No, what you do is you write your entry, post it to your own website, and then come back here and post the link to your work in the comments section below this specific blog entry. This is so that not only I can go check out your entry, but others can do so as well—others who might otherwise never discover your (no doubt fabulous) blog.

The ultimate aim of these Spicy Cauldron Awards is to foister good community relations among bloggers, cordiality and respect, imagination and creativity. And to have a bit of fun. I’m not looking for professionalism, Dickens-style genius, no, no, no… Ideas are the thing, along with enthusiasm, confidence and going for it.

I really hope you feel up to trying this little exercise, and taking part. Do let me know if you’re game on by posting your intentions below. If you’ve any questions, post ‘em below and I’ll do my best to answer. I’ll post prize details below, later this week, as I said earlier—but if you just want to enter to win, I advise you don’t. So… for now, all that’s left to say is: ho ho ho! Get scribbling (or painting, or singing, or…). And do tell others about this annual bloggers’ get-together of artistic expression! The more the, er, appropriately enough, merrier. The only cost is your time and energy. There’s no entry fee and never will be. But then, the prize won’t ever be a holiday or a house, either. Let’s keep it real, eh?

The winner will be announced when not even a creature is going to be stirring, not even a computer mouse… That’s right. Christmas Eve!

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categories: creative