Susan, I'm so sorry. That contest -- or contests -- are not the final judgment of your skill as a writer. There are readers who will love your work -- keep writing and putting it out there so they can find you.

What a weird question. I think Lyra's right, because they can't possibly be testing whether you know how to look up words in the dictionary, but that is what's asked for.

I do the same thing with mashed sweet potatoes.

oh my that sounds so good!

I think I may have to BK for lunch. Terrible for me but deliciously salty.

In the "Dude, That's a Little Unfair" category....

You know how patients who participate in drug studies are often compensated, or at the very least, never have to pay for the drug while they're in the study?

I'm editing an article about the effect of certain drugs (antidepressants, diabetes drugs, etc.) on people who are in a weight-loss program. [The drugs are medications that the patients were already taking, not something the study put them on just to study it.]

As part of the article, the authors list what criteria kept a patient out of the program (like extremely poor health, active eating disorder, etc.). One of the exclusionary criteria was "Unwilling or unable to pay the $200 program fee."

Dude. This was NOT a commercial weight-loss program like WW or Jenny Craig. It was a medical study! And they wanted the guinea pigs to PAY for the right to be guinea pigs?

Uncool, mang. Uncool.

That's really fucked up, Steph. I'm not sure that wouldn't mess with the validity of the sample, for that matter. Certainly it's introducing an income-level variable.

Why would I pay someone to study me?

That's possibly an even bigger variable. I'm guessing that people willing to do that would tend to be more educated and informed about medical research and its importance. Otherwise why do it, since they're not getting other meds, etc. So your sample would seemed to be really skewed.

Yup. This is what I'm saying. I'm not sure why we're publishing it, b/c the results don't seem very unbiased.

That's weird, Steph. Though I think my parents paid to be in a program that was also a study because they were fairly sure they would get a lot of beneit out of it (reversing heart disease, Ornish). That seemed reasonable at the time.

Susan, I'm sorry you haven't heard from the contest, but winning contests isn't your goal, publishing your book is. It would have been nice to get some validation, but I doubt the judges are going to give you terrible feedback and advise you to stop writing right now. And even if they do (which they won't), screw them, what do they know?

OK, we have signed the P&S and left a very large check with it. Eek! Thanks for the house~ma, and I'm sorry for grumpiness.

It's a nice day out. I came into work late, and am thinking about leaving early (I have enough OT hours to cover this plan) Tom and I may hang out with my high school ex-BF tonight. Weird!