Writing Contest (Week 2) | Joining the Christmas fever

Since I joined Steemit, I have slowly immersed in the writing community, whether through activities like freewriting (check the Hive account@freewritehouse if you haven't) or through amazing contests, such as those hosted by Hive account@sndbox, Hive account@celfmagazine, and Hive account@themarkymark. Besides encouraging the production of high-quality content for the platform, this kind of things can really give a push to the authors’ creativity, and even help us overcome writer's block!

I wanted to replicate that effect myself. Therefore, here's another edition of the writing contest hosted by me, which I plan to carry on weekly. This time, I’ll be working along Hive account@celfmagazine and Hive account@c-squared. A special shout-out to their great teams!

Theme

We all have Christmas stories to tell. Whether their base is on real or fictitious events, they're surely good tales, mostly fun and heartwarming, I hope. However, I wanted to come up with an unusual proposal; this time, I fancy reading some horror stories. Therefore, the theme for the Week 2 of the contest is Christmassy horror. Be bold, be creative, and design unique plots!

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Rules

For an entry to be valid, it must comply with the following guidelines:

• New, original content.
• At least 400 words.
• Written in clear English / Español (yes, we will accept entries in both languages).
• Include the tag ilovewriting.
• Title of the post: "Writing Contest - Christmassy horror | YOUR TITLE".
• You must submit your entry before December 28th, 00:00 UTC. Here you can visit the countdown to know how much time is left.
• Drop your entry as a link on the comment box of this post.
• We will accept one entry per contestant.

If less than five valid entries were submitted, the contest would be declared null and an honorific mention, along with 1 Steem, would be given to the participants. In that case, I would return the prize pool to the respective contributors.

Selection criteria

• Creativity is highly encouraged.
• Proper writing and formatting will be taken into account.
• Blog history will be considered as a tiebreaker criterion between entries of similar quality, with preference given to authors who consistently post great content.

Judges

This time I’ll be the only member of the jury. Hopefully, next week, some fellow writers will be able to join me!

Prizes

The jury will take up to a week to review all entries. After that process, three winners will be selected and announced through another post. The prizes for this contest will be funded by the liquid rewards on the contest announcement posts, published on Hive account@celfmagazine as well as on my personal account. Also, since we wish to make things even more appealing, there will be an optional prize pool to which anyone can contribute.

• 1st place wins 50% (liquid rewards + prize pool).
• 2nd place wins 35%.
• 3rd place wins 15%.

All valid entries will be submitted to C² curation collective (Hive account@c-squared) for additional upvote consideration.

Rewards on the winners' announcement post will go equally to the members of the jury.

Current prize pool

Keep an eye on this, as it may go up!

Hive account@zoexantelamv - 5 Steem
@...

To contribute, send Steem to Hive account@zoexantelamv with the words writing contest 2 as the memo, and I will add that amount to the pool. The contributors will be given credit in this post.

Give an upvote to this post if you find the initiative valuable, and hit the resteem button so your friends know about the contest too!

Many thanks to anyone already involved or soon to be. Much love to you all!