Marked by the Absence of Human Life, Activity, or Comfort by Erin Hopson

Congratulations to Erin and to all our finalists, and thank you to everyone who wrote in to vote. Look out for more contests to come in 2010 -- and keep writing.

We have narrowed the list to five finalists. Please help us choose a winner.

Marked by the Absence of Human Life, Activity, or Comfort by Erin Hopson

The Legend of Arthur Rimbaud (Part 1) by JayS

One Size Fits All by Marc Paltrineri

Thumbspeak Across the Universe by Stephanie

Western State by Waex Youngblood

• E-mail the title of your favorite to bryan.falla@peerscribe.com

Good luck to the finalists and big thanks to all participants. We had some really strong entries that we hope to see again in future contests. We have some interesting things planned for 2010, so keep writing!

HOW TO ENTER:

All entries must be tagged with poetry contest 2009 and social network for writers as the sub-genres (separate the two sub-genres with commas). Only three (3) entries will be accepted per user. Entries must be submitted no later than Nov. 15, 2009. Be sure to set "Access" to Public and "Write access" to Private. The winner will be announced Dec. 1, 2009, and will be awarded $100 (paid through PayPal) and will be featured on the Peerscribe home page.

To enter:

JUDGING:

1) Peer feedback
*if you are entering the contest, it might help to dole out the good vibes on peers' entries to get back some good peer karma

2) Peerscribe administrators jury panel
*we will look at mechanics, creativity, and originality

AS ALWAYS:

Your entry must be your original work of authorship. That means it cannot infringe on any third-party intellectual property rights. All entries remain the property of the author (that's you).

New to Peerscribe? Sign up here.

One of the things that sets Peerscribe apart from regular social networks is the ability to create and join workshops. Workshops allow you to exercise your creative muscles by forcing yourself to write in a structured environment.

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Creating a workshop on PS is very easy. Go to your Workshop tab (up top), click on Create a new workshop, then fill out the form top-down. Separate Topics with commas the way you would separate tags on a blog. For the Website, try adding a page that might further explain the subject of your workshop. A Wikipedia page might be a good, simple addition to your workshop. (Adding a Website is optional, however.)

To add a manuscript to your workshop, click on the Workshop manuscripts from the workshop's main page. Once in the Workshop manuscripts page, click on New manuscript.

If you join a workshop with a shared manuscript (like Telephone), you can edit the workshop manuscript by going into the Workshop manuscripts page, selecting the manuscript, and clicking Edit manuscript.

Done and done.

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Now go check out some of the open workshops already in progress, get some ideas, and create your own.

We started Peerscribe in hopes of creating a space on the Web for writers. We hoped it would become a place to foster creativity. A place where we could get feedback on our works-in-progress. Where we would feel comfortable giving advice one day and seeking guidance the next. A place that would connect us to our peers on the other side of the planet as easily as it would our peers on the other side of town. Slowly, it is becoming that place.

As our community grows, we hope our collective ambition grows with it. Among us we now have published poets and seasoned storytellers, but we also have writers who are just getting to know their craft. Through feedback, workshops, and the simple act of publishing our work for our peers to examine, we hope Peerscribe will become an instrument that nurtures our voices, cultivates our talent, sharpens our skills, and focuses our view of the world.

Thank you for helping us write this vision.

Poetry, short stories, novels... they're never really completed until the ink has settled on the paper and royalty checks have been mailed. And even then, any writer worth his salt will look at his words and find ways he could've said it better.

It's a process. That's why Peerscribe lets you track your edits. See your voice develop with every deleted word. Every new sentence. Every fragment. Evolve. Now you have proof.

Say that three times fast. I have been reading, devouring really, The Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan. For those of you who have not read it, I highly recommend it. That is, of course, if you are into science fiction. If you enjoyed Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings", I can almost guarantee you will find Jordan's work fascinating. He creates a world that grips you from the start and never lets go.

Now for some Peerscribe related news. The site has been experiencing email problems. I don't want to get too technical, but suffice it to say that some of the major email carriers (gmail and yahoo, among others) were not recognizing emails coming from Peerscribe.com. This was creating problems with the registration process. The good news is that the problem has been taken care of. The bad news is that emails that were sent during the past few days are now lost in cyber-limbo. If you tried to register and didn't get an email from Peerscribe.com, please send me an email at webmaster@peerscribe.com and I will activate your account.

All the best,

--Favenzio.