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STUDENT CHOICE CONTEST

Whidbey Writers Workshop Short Form Student Choice Award

	»April 2008 Student Choice Award Winner Morecambe Bay, Sands Guide by Chris Hill Quick-sands. Strangely named for something so sluggish and yielding - a porridge, a saturate. Strange until you realise that quick means life: "The quick and the dead." And the sands have life, they are active, and they suck the essence from other living things. Once, just beyond the boundary of living memory, the sands took a whole cart pulled by four grey mares; ten souls lost, men, women, children, crossing from the fair at Cark. History tells us that within the hour the whole mass had vanished beneath the sifting land. The sands are treacherous, it's true, and what they win they will not readily give up, yet men have been lost out there in that vast expanse for days, and mourned, before turning up vague-eyed and confused along the pebble strewn shore. Once I lost a pony which bolted across the cold, dun plains until it was swallowed by the silence, nothing out there, not even a speck, only to reappear, thinner and quite insane some three weeks later. Take a long look across that gulf, imagine that absence of shape or form. The colour of the sands shifts across it's narrow spectrum, here it is tan, further out taupe, here biscuit or the colour of beech wood; while the water on the sands stands silver or gilt or ash-mirror. Grey sky, featureless or dappled, apprehensive. The pattern of the water changes every day, sure some channels stay the same, but the pools left by the recent tide are as transient as time. I have been here 40 years as sands guide in my cottage on the shore. My job is to navigate its narrow paths and passageways like the black ants foraging for food on the endless plateau of my front step. My job is to guide others to safety in this unforgiving world balanced between land and sea. I know this unknowable landscape as well as any man can. And I know why men step out into it, the mirage of the far side of the bay, its whispered pleasures seem so close, so tangible. But once you venture a few hundred yards then you are more lost than you will ever be. What sights I have seen. Grey Friars who navigated the sands close to a thousand years ago, far from their home in the Valley of the Deadly Nightshade, sad eyed dogs lost looking for sticks across the centuries. And I have heard the last sentient song of beached whales echoing through time. Things harder to comprehend. Shilloths who lead and lure, their faces faceless and their minds a haze. Have I seen them? Couldn't have, except they stole my shadow, except they stole... Oons at play across the waking sky, a giant snake which leaves its V shaped wake among the standing pools. And I wander this flat land that is neither earth nor water, mesmerized as it shimmers, lonely as an oyster, watching my step. If it could give something back, this place which sucks life, apart from the flook I tread, the cockles I gather delving iron hard fingers through gritty ice-cream, then I would take my son. I remember the final moments, when at last I found him on the plains, up to his neck in sand, the argument he had fled forgotten along with all else but primal terror. "Hold still," I begged him as I stretched my body across the phantom ground and dragged with all my strength. Hold still I told him, though it is against nature not to wriggle and squirm when you're in death's grip. And I pulled for my life, for his life. But, in the end, I pulled for nothing. "Goodbye," he said. He was calm when he slipped beneath the surface of the sands. He was still. For all it seems compact, for all its unyielding flatness, the sand finds its way into your clothes and clings to your body like your own skin. The warm musty smell of sea and salt and desiccated human faeces, the prickle and abrasion. And it seems to me that, no matter how hard you scrub, the smell, the aura of it, will not leave you. You become part of it. It becomes part of you. Previous Months' Winners » March 2008 Student Choice Award Winner: The Crypt's Woman by Neal Swain » February 2008 Student Choice Award Winner: Borbála by James Tipton » January 2008 Student Choice Award Winner: I once saw Jesus by Ryan Dilbert » December Student Choice Award Winner: January, 2007 by Sally Petersen » October Student Choice Award Winner: Black Bird by Sherri Hoffman » September Student Choice Award Winner: The Application of Gasoline and Sawdust by Grá Linnaea » August Student Choice Award Winner: Blackout by Sean Darnell » July Student Choice Award Winner: Birds at the Bon Odori Festival by Jill Johnson » June Student Choice Award Winner: The World of Beer by Jackie Shannon-Hollis » May Student Choice Award Winner: Success by Rebekah Matthews » April Student Choice Award Winner: A Necklace of Daisies and Faith by Petra McQueen » March Student Choice Award Winner: Tree by R.F. Marazas

"Submit your entry for the May contest here - Poems or prose welcome! Mayday! Mayday! Please include the words "student contest" in your subject line so it doesn't go astray.
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THE RULES

1. The contest is open to all writers of any age and at any stage of their writing career.

2. The competition is open to manuscripts of 1,000 words or fewer in fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, and children/ young adults. Entries outside the word limitation will be disregarded.

3. Type the genre and word count in the subject line of your entry.  All other identifying information will be posted at the end of the entry, including name, email address, postal address to send the $50 prize, and the writing organization or newspaper to send the press release if your entry receives the Student Choice Award.

4. All entries must be in English, original, unpublished, and not submitted elsewhere until the winners are announced. Whidbey Writers Workshop reserves the one-time electronic publication rights to the winning entry, which will be posted on the WWW Students website.

5.  All entries must be double-spaced and in the body of the email.  No attachments will be opened by the judges.

6. No confirmation of receipt will be sent.

7. Entries will be read in the month of submission, in order of submission.  The student judge will continue reading entries until he/she finds one that “knocks his/her socks off.”  No other entries will be read.

8. Winners will be notified by email and a $50 check sent by US post. Please check the Whidbey Students website for the announcement of the monthly choice.

9. If a piece is not selected, authors may submit the same entry in subsequent months.