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I am scratching around for an idea for a ghost story, which needs to come in at between 2,000 and 5,000 words.
I am stumped. Up until a couple of years or so ago, I continued the practice started originally by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
pax_draconis, of a Christmas ghost story and at least once extended the idea to Halloween, too. Those were troublesome enough and the idea with those was to keep the word count deliberately low at a maximum 500 words. After a few short years of that exercise, I found that I couldn’t think of a new ghost story. Any idea I had had already been done in one way or another and the format really didn’t leave much scope for overt originality, other than in trying to deliver the short, sharp shock as it were.
The terms of the competition I have seen and which has tickled my interest, state that the story should not have been published before, even in electronic form (including, I assume a blog or journal).
I know that readers of this LJ are thinner on the ground than once they were (mind you, so are my contributions, so can’t complain, really), but – if I dusted off one of my old stories and attempted to expand it by a factor of ten, does anyone think that would contravene the rules on prior publication? Thoughts, anyone?
I am stumped. Up until a couple of years or so ago, I continued the practice started originally by
pax_draconis, of a Christmas ghost story and at least once extended the idea to Halloween, too. Those were troublesome enough and the idea with those was to keep the word count deliberately low at a maximum 500 words. After a few short years of that exercise, I found that I couldn’t think of a new ghost story. Any idea I had had already been done in one way or another and the format really didn’t leave much scope for overt originality, other than in trying to deliver the short, sharp shock as it were.The terms of the competition I have seen and which has tickled my interest, state that the story should not have been published before, even in electronic form (including, I assume a blog or journal).
I know that readers of this LJ are thinner on the ground than once they were (mind you, so are my contributions, so can’t complain, really), but – if I dusted off one of my old stories and attempted to expand it by a factor of ten, does anyone think that would contravene the rules on prior publication? Thoughts, anyone?