Posts tagged writing contest

We just posted the winners of our Winter Parks and Weekly Worldwide writing and photography contests. Thanks so much to everyone who entered, we really enjoyed seeing and reading about your cold-weather explorations (even the hardcore snow kiting and ice climbing—brr). If our furry oracle is correct, we’ll be looking forward to at least six more weeks of the underappreciated, ethereal quiet beauty of parks in the winter.

• Winter Parks: 1st Prize Photography: Alex Eriksen 
• Winter Parks: 1st Prize Writing: René Jasper
• Weekly Worldwide: 1st Prize Photography: Rachel Chang 
• Weekly Worldwide: 1st Prize Writing: Stephen Drum 

• Writing 1st Place: $50 Contract
• Photography 1st Place: $50 Contract

• Deadline: February 8, 2012

In the meantime, we’re busily judging the California Wine Contest and last week’s Weekly Worldwide and will make an announcement by 2/8/12.  Thanks so much for the great turnout!

California Wine Writing and Photography Contest

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• Writing prize: 2-day hotel stay at the Tradewinds Carmel, 2 passports to the Carmel Wine Walk-by-the-Sea, and a $100 writing contract to cover Monterey County’s wine scene.
• Photography prize: $150 at Restaurant 1833 in Monterey, CA

Weekly Worldwide Writing and Photography Contest

• Photography Prize: $50 contract
• Writing Prize: $50 contract 

Thanks to all who downloaded our iPhone app! We’re now working like crazy on the next big thing. It’s going to be much more participative every step of the way. Here’s what we’re thinking:

• The check-in market is cornered. The world doesn’t need another Foursquare clone.
• Unedited reviews: Sometimes useful, often faked or spammy, almost always demoralizing to wade through. See TripAdvisor or Yelp’s four stars and a rant.
• Guidebooks/newspaper travel sections: Based on an antiquated, elitist model that relies on a handful of people (often just passing through or relaying  hearsay) to cover a huge geographic space. Prone to obsolescence, inaccuracies, shilling, and sameness.

We want to collect the experiences that drive people to check places out and report back on them. To put it succinctly:

      People + Places + Love

A place will only appear on Trazzler if: 

• our editors scouted it out and loved it.
• a person scouted it out and loved it and our editors agreed.
• a person scouted it out and loved it—our editors disagreed, but smart people convinced them they were wrong.
• an expert (like a tourism bureau or local blogger) suggested it and our editors agreed.

Frankly, most places won’t make the cut. Instead of listing every place in the big wide world and waiting for people to check in, we want you to send you on assignment to check places out. Instead of interacting with a chosen few, our editors work with everyone, devising creative contests that feature places we care about—and reward the people who love a place enough to capture its essence in photos or words.

Here are two contests that are happening right now (soon there will be more all over the world that you can enter right from your phone or Trazzler.com):

East Coast Local Institutions: Sandwich Edition: Writing Assignment—$250 Contract + a Free Philly Hoagie Getaway
West Coast Endangered Places Contest: California State Park Edition—Writing Assignment: $500 Contract

Deadline for entry: November 30.

Photographer: ConstantineD

»Go to Slideshow: Abandoned Mines in the American West

Congratulations to all of the winners of our Juxtapositions Writing Contest and a big thanks to our sponsor, the City of Chicago, and all who took the time to enter and vote.

Editors’ Choice Grand Prize:
Falling Into a Book Lover’s Rabbit Hole in Detroit, Michigan

Editors’ Choice Runners-Up Prizes:
Going Pagan for Holy Week in Andalusia, Spain
Discovering a Rocky Oasis in Las Vegas, NV

The People’s Choice winners are:
brendanmcguigan
bmunchausen

Thank you to all who applied for our January/February round of weekend-getaway freelance writing assignments. There were so many high-quality pitches this time—more than ever before—that it was quite difficult (bordering on agonizing!) to narrow it down to just one person per region. Without further ado, here they are:

Northern California (Lake Tahoe) Brigid Fuller
Pacific Northwest (Willamette Valley) Spencer Foxworth
NYC/Boston (Vermont) Rob Liguori
South Florida (Miami) Stephanie Dunn
Southern California (Santa Barbara) Tien Nguyen

A bit about our selection process: We first do a preliminary reading of all of the submissions. At this time, we select a group for a second reading. Then we pick of favorites from among this batch and “trazzlerize” them (that is, we make them Trazzler trips or send them to get photos). These trips rise to the top of the list of submissions and the editors give them another reading (or two or three…) to narrow things down further. In the end, about 10-20% of the submissions become Trazzler trips and make it to this final round. While we aren’t able to provide a lot of feedback on individual trips (we wish we could, but we’re a small team and are perpetually swamped), we have written extensively about our editorial criteria and philosophy:

http://www.trazzler.com/about/writing-guide
http://www.trazzler.com/about/writing-nuts-and-bolts
http://blog.trazzler.com/2009/08/trazzler-nycgo-summer-contest.html

This last link, in particular, goes into a lot of detail about why most trips don’t make it to the final round. If this is the case, keep trying!—many of our freelancers and contest winners have entered multiple times before winning. We love it when a writer “gets” our (admittedly quirky) editorial style and focus—even if it takes a couple of tries.

Which brings us to this month’s assignments… We’ll be doing another huge round of 20 weekend-getaway writing adventures—we’ll announce it here and on our Facebook and Twitter accounts in the next few days, so please stay tuned…

A big thanks to everyone who entered our Smart Travel Writing Contest. This contest had more top contenders than usual, so our choice was not easy. In 2011, our two winners will be headed to Tonga for a Seacology eco-expedition aboard the Nai’a, exploring South Pacific islands and visiting one of the few areas in the world where humans can swim with whales. Here are the winning trips:


Jessica Allen: Sprinting After Chimpanzees in Kibale National Park, Uganda

Jennifer Gold: Getting a Taste of Community-Based Tourism Koh Yao Noi in Thailand (pending confirmation)

Both of these places (and their well-written descriptions), give us hope that the right kind of tourism can be used as a force for good in communities that want to protect the environment and their way of life.

We have another round of freelance writing assignments up for grabs this month. Some are ending next week, so get your submissions in soon. Read more here:

• Northern California—Lake Tahoe
  
• Pacific Northwest—Willamette Valley and Mount Hood
  
• New England—Vermont winter destinations
  
• NYC/Tri-State—Vermont winter destinations
  
• Florida—Miami
  
• Southern California—Santa Barbara
  

Hey Trazzlers,

We’re excited about our latest regional travel writing contest: 365 Days of Adventure in Bend. Surrounded by mountains and forests, this former mill town turned adventure playground in Central Oregon is an ideal base to explore the outdoors. In the winter months, you can ski and snowboard on Mount Bachelor, and during the summer, you can fish, hike, cycle, raft, and swim, when this mountain town is blessed with sunshine.

So, if you are a resident, a seasonal visitor, or someone who visited once and simply loved the town, consider submitting a trip for this contest. Maybe there’s a brewery or park you love, or perhaps you look forward to one of Bend’s annual events, like the 4th of July Pet Parade or Balloons Over Bend.

For the Bend Writing Contest, our sponsor, Visit Bend, has rounded up some great prizes, particularly for active travelers and nature enthusiasts:

Grand Prize: A Bend Adventure for Two

Lodging for two at Mount Bachelor Village Resort in a condo along the Deschutes River; a $500 gift card for a shopping spree at Merrell, the official outfitter of Bend adventures; and dining at the award-winning restaurant Cork.

Eager to enter? Check out the runners up prizes and details on our contest page. We look forward to reading your entries. Happy writing!


—Cheri Lucas

Editors’ Choice Grand Prize Winners
A riverside love nest, a neighborhood of books, a dusty subtropical sweet spot, a place where jazz hands can roam free, and a gallery where tiny taxidermy is a medium for angst-y artistic expression… each of our winners grasped the idea of what a Trazzler Trip is all about—and transported us to these wildly different corners of the world (in less than 160 words, no less).

Foodie Temples: Sarah Barker
Cutting the Dust With Sugar Cane Juice in Homestead, Florida

Love: Tess Link
Shacking Up on the Banks of a River in Ojai, California

LGBT Icons: James Mulcahy
Rocking Out to Rodgers and Hammerstein in New York, NY

Neighborhood Spots: Nick Rowlands
Rummaging Around Nooks and Crannies in Azbakiya Book Market, Cairo

Only in SF: Traci Hui
Feeling Nihilistic With Dead Mouse Hamlet in San Francisco, CA

The writers of our Grand-Prize trips win a free trip to San Francisco: five nights at a Joie de Vivre Hotel, free round-trip airfare within the continental US, and a $700 contract to write 15 trips about their Only-in-San-Francisco experience.

It’s always agonizing to choose just one winner per theme, so we awarded 15 Editors’ Choice Runners-Up prizes (15 $250 contracts to write ten short Trazzler trips):

Lisa Michele Burns, Maureen Duncan, Joanna Eng, GladysG, Lily Grace, Megan Kung, Apryl Lundsten, Doug Mack, Gail Nelson-Bonebrake, Mag Ritt, Diana Springfield, Ben Shattuck, Sam Sherman, Tuatara, and Laura Woodman.

People’s Choice Grand-Prize Winners
Foodie Temples: Mary Bonomo
LGBT Icons: Kayla Albert
Neighborhood Spots: Edna Zhou
Only in SF: Rebecca Feinberg
Love in the City: Kim Repp

Our People’s Choice winners win a free trip for two to San Francisco including round-trip airfare for two (within the continental US), 5 nights at a Joie de Vivre Hotel, and $700 in spending money to make a bit of Only-in-San-Francisco magic.

We can’t wait to hear all about our winners’ trips. As I write, our Island Contest winners, Adrienne Wilson and Heather McNeill are exploring Hawaii—one beach and shave-ice shack at a time—we’ll be tweeting about their adventures next week.

—Megan

Hello Trazzlers—
Happy first day of fall! Thank you to all who participated in our #NYCGO Oasis Contest by writing trips or voting for your favorites. Many of you are new to Trazzler—welcome!
>Read the entries

Why Trazzler is Different
So many other travel sites are essentially reworded reference material with logistical information, tourist bureau propaganda, or an unedited, overwhelming morass of useful and useless information. Trazzlers meander through a world of trips—hand-picked, concise, compellingly written slices of life that pull the reader into a real experience: a hotel stay, walk, adventure, spa, restaurant, ice cream stand, pony ride… really anywhere that travel can take you. The more you use the site, the better our recommendations get.

Now, on to the big announcement…

#NYCGO Summer Writing Contest: Oasis
Winner: Stephen Bramucci, Laguna Beach, California
Winning Trip: Walking in the Footsteps of Pirates in Ambodifototra, Madagascar

Grand Prize: $10,000 contract to be a two-week writer-in-residence in New York City and write 30 Trazzler trips covering the five boroughs of NYC. Hotel accommodations (14 nights) provided by AKA luxury hotel residences. Round-trip airfare provided by JetBlue.

An island is a reverse-oasis for those who live at sea. Stephen invites us to imagine the world of the 17th- and 18th-century pirates who terrorized the trade routes and occasionally took a break by setting foot on dry land. All of the judges agreed that this trip was well-crafted and loaded with intriguing details. In just 140 words, Stephen was able to conjure up the weight of the past at the resting place of these rogues—a peaceful cemetery overlooking the sea.

9 Runners Up: Courtney Scott, Alex Dweezy Dwyer, Sandra Foster Lovas, Paul Justin Cox III, Kate Sommers, Marie Elena Martinez, Stephanie Fine Sasse, Paul Koning, and Traci Hui
Prizes: $250 freelance contracts to write 10 Trazzler trips

One of our objectives at Trazzler is to create a writing medium that captures the subjective and diverse nature of travel. We think the top ten trips illustrate how smart, adventurous travelers can experience the world in different ways. About the social-media savvy and creativity of all ten finalists (and those who came so close)—you far surpassed our expectations—thank you for making the contest such a success.

4 Editors’ Choice Award Winners: Craig Bridger, Ethan Gelber, Thalia Kwok, and Karen Dion
Prizes: $500 freelance contracts to write 15 Trazzler trips

It was no easy task to narrow it down to just four trips—a teahouse, a moderately seedy Class A baseball game, the world’s oldest sand dunes, and a nonexistent and poorly signed micronation. Each an oasis in its own way, these trips stuck with us, even after reading hundreds and hundreds of entries. For these awards, we didn’t take the wishlisting votes into account at all—we realize that not everyone is a social-media expert and we always want to find a way to reward writers who embrace the idea of Trazzler.

About Our Sponsors
nycgo.com—New York City’s official marketing, tourism and partnership organization—has very generously sponsored the grand prize: a $10,000 contract to write 30 Trazzler trips with free airfare and hotel for two weeks. Our grand prize winner will stay in the heart of New York City’s own urban oasis, and enjoy the attentiveness worthy a celebrity VIP at the AKA luxury hotel residences. Think insanely great location (one block off 5th Avenue and Central Park) and swanky in-suite spa services. JetBlue will be providing flight to NYC. JetBlue offers flights to more than 50 destinations, with free TV and the most legroom in coach.

Upcoming Contests and Giveaways
We have big plans for more writing contests this fall. For details, follow us on Twitter @trazzler or keep an eye out for our next newsletter (we send one per month). We will also be doing more travel giveaways on Twitter. (We just gave away a two-night stay at the Jupiter Hotel in Portland, Oregon.)

Happy Trazzling…


Megan Cytron
Executive Editor


P.S. If you have any questions or feedback, you can find us @trazzler on Twitter or on Get Satisfaction.

After two weeks of nonstop reading, we are excited to announce our #NYCGO Oasis Contest Semifinalists: http://www.trazzler.com/contests/nyc/semifinals

Judging writing contests is never easy—we often have to eliminate entries that are very well-written, but don’t adhere to the contest rules or don’t quite belong on Trazzler. Our trips are different from what you will find on other travel sites. From the start, we decided to put certain limitations on the form and style of our writing to make the experience of skipping from one place to the next more enjoyable. As a writer, I also strongly believe that limitations lead to spontaneity and spark creativity.

We often get asked why one entry is chosen over another. As I was reading the entries for this contest, I took these notes (from the mundane to the philosophical—and admittedly a bit jumbled):

• Trip was created prior to the contest start date
  
• Self promotion—writing about your own business.
  
• Too long (Our limit was 160 words—we gave a little leeway, but many trips were much longer.)
  
• Misspellings, typos, lack of proper syntax, missing punctuation, missing spaces, abbreviation, or lack of capitalization
  
• Written in verse, not narrative, or otherwise not in keeping with the Trazzler trip page form
  
• Not about an experience that others can have or a place that others can visit (We had some very well written trips in this category.)
  
• Choice of place is too broad (We don’t publish trips on entire cities, our focus is much narrower.)
  
• No discernible place, more about a state of mind than a physical place or discrete experience
  
• Too personal—more about the person who wrote it than the place itself
  
• Too abstract or nebulous—no concrete information about the place (Trips about sunsets and sunrises are especially prone to this one.)
  
• Stylistically or lexically repetitive (in 65-120 words, repeated words or ideas stick out like a sore thumb)
  
• Syntactically repetitive; repetitive sentence structure (trips in which every sentence starts the same way: go here, do this, then do another thing, etc.)
  
• Too many cliched adjectives or verbal crutches… stunning, breathtaking, amazing, incredible, etc… (It’s best to do away with these words and evoke the idea of them in your description of the place.)
  
• Platitudes: X is the place to be. There’s something for everyone in X. You can’t miss X. X is the best. X is a definite can’t-miss, etc.
  
• Metawriting—writing about the act of writing (This is perfectly fine in a blog, but it doesn’t work in the context of our site, where we want each trip to be a microcosm.)
  
• Many exclamation points
  
• Not in keeping with the “oasis” contest theme
  
• Not travel writing; not appropriate for a travel site (Though I have to confess, we loved reading some of these slices of life and sociological sketches.)
  
• Too tied to one moment in time; not a reproducible experience
  
• Well-written, but the specifics or concrete details about the place slip through the cracks, making it hard to understand the significance of the experience without having been there.

Hello Trazzlers—

It’s been a while… We’ve been busy putting together a big contest for summer—and coming up with a dream job for the winner, who will be Trazzler’s very first “writer-in-residence.”

#NYCGO Summer Writing Contest and Theme

Oasis
1. n. a fertile or green area in an arid region (as a desert).
2. n. something that provides refuge, relief, or pleasant contrast.
(Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. 2009.)

• 1 Grand Prize: $10,000 contract to be a two-week writer-in-residence in New York City and write 30 Trazzler trips covering the five boroughs of NYC. Hotel accommodations (14 nights) provided by AKA luxury hotel residences. Round-trip airfare provided by JetBlue.
  
• 9 Runners Up: $250 contracts to write 10 Trazzler trips.
  
• 4 Editors’ Choice: $500 contracts to write 15 Trazzler trips.