h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Now that it's started, I think this might be the right place for some personal feelings about The Stretcher.

Credit to Rich for the impetus and the balance. It isn't the way I'd have thought of doing it, and I guess GB would say the same. It's a good and equitable way though.

That said, Rich is wrong when he pictures himself as the fulcrum of a see-saw, with his fellow judges at opposite ends. Writing isn't one dimensional, for a start. And people are rarely poles of a spectrum because heads aren't fixed that way, not even mine.

Being a Stretcher judge is a privilege, and all privileges come with responsibilities attached. Subjectivity is no good here, and partiality even less so. I decided to score with a system, and I'll explain it soon. I don't think I'll be giving away clues by doing so, because individual winners aren't the point of The Stretcher. If there is to be a winning outcome, it will be a full set of competitors, (plus everyone who dips in as reader, supporter or occasional contributor) all knowing they're better for it, all learning something and all feeling fulfilled.

One round in, and the standard is fantastic. The level of interest too, is higher than wildest expectations. I'm a little bit circumspect about riling dmitri (mainly because he didn't get what I meant), but he's got the temperament and he's certainly got the writing ability to punch me back. I'm a little more worried about us collectively crushing mini. Please stay with it mini, because the critics are learning too.

The cliché about everyone being a winner already is true though, and the trick is to have everyone believe it. Entering this was a brave thing to do. A commitment to stretch, moreover, really means a promise to raise your own bar, and to try things that make you feel uncomfortable. The limits and the achievements are personal and the competition is relative. For the majority of people in this thing, there’s one genre or other that's going to be an out-of-comfort-zone stretch. Then again, there are a few who write adequately (or indeed better than that) in pretty well any style, and do it without having to try too hard. It's the judges' job to sting those people should they be tempted to coast.

More important, every single participant has provided great Entries to h2g2 already. I've picked out one by each entrant as their personal benchmark. So I'm looking at fourteen pieces, each in its own way as good as anything you'll read in the Guide. When this is over, and if anyone's interested, I'll consider telling you which of your past achievements I started out measuring you against. (Merry Anne is probably bemused by this. She's measured against who I think she might be, and if she's somebody else who struggles to live up, then serves her right for being anonymous).

'Started out' measuring, because the Stretcher fully realised will replace every one of those fourteen brilliant Entries with a better one, and in some cases it'll do it several times over. The first set of offerings have seen a couple of benchmarks matched, though none are yet decisively bettered. A couple of efforts fall well short too, it has to be said.

That's the mark that The Stretcher sets for everyone then: to achieve new standards better than your own past ones, and to keep doing it across a broad front of different writing challenges.

Simple, innit? Well maybe not. I was chuffed when Rich asked me to judge, but I’ve realised I’m a bit relieved too, now that I’ve had time to think about it. I'm not as brave as you lot. I'm not at all sure I'd have dared put myself where the Fourteen have.

Respect. And to every one of you I really mean that. You're the Best of Hootoo, and the Best of Hootoo is pretty damn good.

I too have respect for all the contestants. I was also chuffed to be asked to be a fellow Judge and considered it an honour. I can only repay Rich's faith by giving my full attention to the project as a whole, but I'm struggling with a couple of things which I'll email you about.

When I accepted the role of Judge I knew my first quality was honesty; and I have agonised over low scores knowing how they'd hurt. But this is not a contest for people-pleasing (I can hear the baying of the audience even now) and in a way I wish they were all anonymous, even though I found it quite easy to rate the pieces while ignoring who the author was.

I'm not looking at what they've submitted/produced in the past, I'm hoping for improvement from their first Stretcher submission

Some of the best writers on hootoo have stayed away from The Stretcher. From what I've heard it was time constraints, busy RL etc., but this just means the field is wide open. Yes we have strong contenders but that shouldn't mean the others can't raise their bar and create a photo finish you wouldn't like to bet your grocery money on.

They're all winners, I agree. So is the EG - and the wider audience of readers who will see The Stretcher EGEs on the Weird and Wonderful widget in the next few weeks. That's what gives me the biggest buzz.

It's an honour and a pleasure sharing the podium with you

GB aka Ms GB

Hope you don't mind me barging in, but I for one would be interested to know which of my previous Entries you used as your initial benchmark (if you can remember in 7 months' time, or whenever this wild ride is scheduled to end!).

Ditto.

I'm intrigued, rather then bemused, btw.

Me too, seeing as there's quite a few to choose from

You are right. I never thought of that. He must have spent hours to read your entries alone, and those of various others, too.

Me, spent hours?
The time was invested a while ago, for the most part. I'd read stuff by all but a couple of the Fourteen well before the Stretcher, and knew of impressive Entries by most.
I haven't read everything everyone's written, and I haven't deliberately tried to identify the best of what I have read. I've just put a really good Entry against everyone's name.
Let's wait to the end before identifying them, OK?

ooo, cloaking everything in mystery, eh?

It's like Scooby Doo.

Pin is really Dannnnniiiiiii Minogue, and when we take off his head right at the end, he'll rattle on - 'If it wasn't for you pesky kids...'

He smells like the Minogues. Or bits of them anyway.

I am wondering what entry you have against my name too, as i have yet to write a completely solo EGE and have only contributed to about two EGE's And you cant be marking me against my poems for as they are, well they usually get about ten minutes maximum in between me opening my word processing program and sending the email to

Hmm, interesting. But i can wait

mini

OK, so now two weeks in. Still fantastic, though sad that we've lost people. Fb and Merry Anne were looking pretty good to me, which makes it extra sad. Matt's resignation was out of the blue and quite a shock, because it's a loss to more than the Stretcher in his case.

I want to explain how I'm scoring. It's systematic. I really don't want to get subjective about the judging. There are people in this whose writing I've venerated for some time, and there are people I count as soulmates. If I didn't have a system, how could I be fair to the others I hardly know and have scarcely read?

So, the scoring is based on the UG Quality Assurance model, but extended. There are five criteria. Three are from the UG, and they're Originality, Elan and Diligence. Two are new, Connectivity and something I just call X (partly because it means I can make an acronym of CODEX, which seems pretty apt for something portentous and literary that's also a means of restraining miscreants).

I'm going to explain what I look for in each category in later postings. For now, I'll say that in each category I give an integer score from 0 (entirely lacking in the relevant virtue) to 3 (exemplary and replete with said virtue). Then I add up the five figures.

This can add up to 15. Yeah, I noticed that too. In the first week I just subtracted 5 to give final scores. In this second week, and I think this is better and plan to stick with it, I took the highest and lowest scores and decided what I thought each was worth on a subjective 0-10 scale. Then I just ascribed those scores and interpolated the others between, rounding to the nearest integer.

It's interesting how people are reacting to it all. I hope it's fun. There really isn't any merit in giving people soul-destroying challenges and seeing whether they can still write afterwards. It has to be fun, and stimulating, and varied enough to make sure everyone gets pushed off their home turf reasonably often. First prize for me is a string of challenges where everyone keeps thinking wow, I've never thought on those lines, but this is exciting and I'm really up for it.

I guess you can blame me for the latest self-inflicted adjective feature. Rich did all the work, of course, including throwing in some adverbs for maximum confusion. But that's what I'm on this earth for, a mixture of creativity and indolence, right?

Oh, and in response to someone's question, no we aren't conferring on judging (surely it doesn't look as if we are?). We're doing it independently and only then bringing the scores/comments together.

I'm a bit perturbed that I'm scoring highest on average, though. Really not good for cred/rep, that isn't. Trouble is, if I'm not actually managing to be a total b*st*rd, then the only other thing I'm qualified to be is a non-entity

Yeah, sorry about the adverbs. It was only when I got to upload the article at about 1am that I realised I didn't just have a challenge to drop in, but I had some words to find, too! In the end, I almost just picked the words and inserted a clause telling people they couldn't complain about them...

'Oh, and in response to someone's question, no we aren't conferring on judging (surely it doesn't look as if we are?). We're doing it independently and only then bringing the scores/comments together.'

I think that's my fault. I wrote my reviews before opening the document you sent on, but in an attempt to make it more conversational I tweaked some of them to refer to the reviews written by you and GB. I think the scores should show that we didn't exactly collaborate, anyway.

Stats-wise, the current average scores per review are:

GB: 6.30
Pin: 6.01
Rich: 5.56

I may have to start to be more generous in my scoring. Wouldn't want to harm your cred