Let's Look On The Bright Side Vocal Media Just Did Us A Favor

It’s been a week since the Vocal community was in an uproar over the word count situation from one of their recent challenges. Do I really need to rehash the details? No, because everyone and their mama knows all about this bit of juicy tea. But I will anyway for those who come across this article in the future, brand new to Vocal and having no clue about the situation.

So I take you back to late July 2021, Vocal comes under attack because they selected a second-place winner whose story went over what we all thought was a strict 2,000-word limit. Not by one or two words, not even by 100 words, but by 800 words. That’s right the second-place winner of the Barn Story Challenge won even though they were 800 words over the limit. This of course pissed off the Vocal community and started numerous conversations within Facebook groups concerning everyone’s frustration. Many members decided to email the Vocal team directly and see what they had to say.

Vocal gave a response that seemed to suggest that the 2K word limit is a guideline and not a strict rule, and judges can overlook said guideline for a story they deem to be really great. But that didn’t actually make the Vocal community feel any better. In fact, people got more upset and started dissecting the specific wording of any and everything that was referred to as guidelines on the Vocal website.

Initially, I was annoyed, but not angry. I’m a person who mediates, says affirmations daily, and writes in a journal every morning. I didn’t want any negative emotions associated with this current situation to have any effect on my winning future contests. Anyone who knows anything about the law of attraction knows that positive emotions are important when trying to accomplish a goal. And yes my goal is to win one or two or all of these contests. Okay, all might be a little unrealistic, maybe even a little unfair, but the point is I do intend to win. I’m a freelancer so of course, the actual prize money plays a role in my wanting to win, but more importantly, I want these challenges to force me to push myself to become a better writer. Even if I don't actually win, I want to feel as though I created a work of fiction that must've at least been a major contender for one of the winning spots. I do wish they had honorable mentions though ( ahem, hint, hint).

So I happened to be among the few Vocal members who weren't necessarily angry about the situation. That said, no drama would be complete without another character swooping in with a better offer to potentially save the day. Thus right on cue, Medium, another writing platform, came out with its own writing contest and many Vocal members expressed wanting to participate in it, especially in light of the word count issue. I for one did some research and found that Medium’s writing contest, came with its own set of flaws, which I write about in detail in an article published on Medium.

The Bright Side

Anyways, now that the dust has settled a bit, let's talk about why this whole situation is actually a blessing in disguise. If you’re intent on participating in all or most of the summer fiction challenges, like I am, then by the time the word count issue came to light, we’ve all already submitted at least three stories. The main frustration people seemed to talk about when it came to the word count issue was the fact that they spent so much time editing down their stories to fit the 2K word limit, only for a winner to be chosen who clearly didn’t have to do that.

I completely agreed with that frustration. Staying within the 2K word limit has been a huge challenge for me, so much so that I submitted my story for the Barn Challenge as a part-one just because there was no way to give it a proper ending in 2,000 words. That was a bit of a setback for me because one of my issues as a writer is finishing and/or giving my stories a proper ending. I have tons of unfinished work and now my barn story is one of them. If you chose to read it please send me encouraging notes to force me to write a part two.

The same thing happened with my cake story. Though this time I was able to give it a proper ending, I spent hours trying to get it under 2,000 words. I had to do annoyingly tedious things like remove whole sentences, turn words into contractions, and literally sit there and try to reword and shorten every possible sentence. It was a stressful process, but I did it, got it down to 1,995 words. Originally that story was over 2, 300 words. Three hundred words is a lot to have to edit down and so you can see why I was so stressed.

Moving forward, I have no plans to stress myself out about word count. Like they said the 2,000-word limit is a guideline and so I’m going to use it as a guide. My goal will always be to keep it under or as close to 2,000 words as possible. I'll never look at a draft that’s 2,800 words and think to myself okay great I can submit this, but if I happen to be over by 100 or so, I won’t stress myself out. I’ll submit it and hope that the Vocal team stays true to what they said and that my story would still be eligible to win based on the quality of my work.

At the end of the day, this website is run and maintained by human beings who are prone to making mistakes. Did they handle this situation the best? No, but that's to our benefit now. I do think they need to work on being more transparent with the Vocal community as to how they chose their winners. We're writers and we want to know what one writer did to make their story stand out enough to win. That bit of advice would be great and would help to make us better writers (ahem, hint, hint).

That said, I have grown to love it here and for me, this situation is an absolute blessing. Honestly, I wish this would’ve come out sooner. I’m excited more than ever to participate in the rest of Vocal’s challenges. I’ll be able to be more authentic with my writing without feeling like I need to remove parts or sections to adhere to a strict word count.