It’s mid-June and the NYC Midnight Flash Fiction Contest is back on my mind. This is an update. If you want my primary report on my NYCM experience, click here.

The only new thing that’s happened with the contest since my last post was that people were invited to share their stories on the forum (password protected for feedback purposes, thus avoids classifying as “published”). I elected to do so. It seems about 10% or so of participants joined me in the experience. The suggestion is that you read some stories and comment on them, including a link back to your own story for reciprocal readings.

So I read one of the first few stories to post and offered some commentary. By then, I had comments start trickling in on my story, so I started reciprocating. And after one day of this…it stopped. No one was reading and commenting on my story anymore. I was a little shocked that it halted at day one, but not as shocked as I was by something else.

As I mentioned in my original NYCM post, I’m used to contests like this through my writing group. That group is composed exclusively of writers with a professional sale or participation in a major workshop with similar selection criteria. (This fact might be crucial in a moment.) For such writing group contests, the participants are the judges, reading, rating, and commenting on every story in the group except your own. The ultimate goal of those contests isn’t just to win the contest but to create a marketable story. Thus, most of my comments attempt to include both positive and constructive comments, to let the writer know what worked for me and what didn’t. In the NYCM forum, I did the same thing. This thing was great; you might want to think about this other thing. However, none of the comments I received included the second part. Lots of back-patting, no recommendations. So either my story was perfect (it was not) or they just didn’t offer those kinds of thoughts.

So my over-thinking brain and I have been stewing on this. Why no constructive comments? Is it because the se posted after the contest deadline so it’s considered too late to change? Or is this just not a community that offers those kinds of comments? Or was my story just too out there for suggestions? (This is possible. The story format was an AI analyzing the factuality of news stories line by line, offering its own explanations and commentary. And the news story in question was about the sun dying. So yeah, a little weird.) And the follow-up overthinking question: did these people whose stories I read want my suggestions?

I hope the participants know my comments were all made with good, helpful intentions. I wasn’t suggesting I knew more than anyone else, just sharing the thoughts I had about the story min case they could be helpful in some future rewrite. So if anyone was under the impression I’m not a guy with anxiety, you now see evidence to the contrary. I guess I’ll just wonder about this until eternity.