It’s time for another experiment in the culture of parenting blogs. The last group writing project Babylune hosted was a great success in terms of quality of posts and entertainment value. I’ve also been inspired by the parenting GWPs run by Weary Parent and MamaBlogga.

The Theme:

This time, write a post about a family vacation that you have taken as a parent or as a child. What are your memories of the main event, your favorite parts, the successes, the advice for others, the fun factor and/or the mishaps?

The Rules:

All posts must link back to this post announcing the GWP. Once you’ve written your post, leave a comment below in case your trackback URL ends up in the spam filter.

While I relaxed on this point last time, this time normal Group Writing Project rules, as defined by Problogger, apply. All posts must be written especially for this contest. Only one post per blog or blogger (if you write 20 blogs, you can still only submit 1 post) will be accepted. The contest is now open and posts will be accepted until 11:59 PM on 31 August 2007. As usual, I reserve the right to declare any post I deem to be unsuitable for a family audience (or any other audience) as ineligible. Final results will be posted on 1 September 2007.

The Prize:

I thought we’d try something a little different this time. At the end of the GWP, there will be a cash prize payable via PayPal. The prize will total $1 per eligible entry up to $100.

That means, if 100, or more, worthwhile, eligible posts are submitted from 100 different blogs written by 100 different people, the prize will be $100. If there are only 98 entries, the prize will be $98 and so on down to just one entry in the contest with a $1 prize.

A little legalese:

The winner will be entirely responsible for paying any taxes and duties on the prize as required (or not) by their respective places of residence. This contest is valid only where legal and participants are responsible for determining legality before entering.

A Second Experiment:

Partly as an experiment and partly to protect my income, I am not going to promote this GWP. I am not going to email the other parenting bloggers I know, I am not going to announce it to any lists, forums or post it on any social networking sites. You’re the ones with the interest in driving up the prize amount, so it seems fair that you should be the one to tell other bloggers about the GWP. I’ll let you know how traffic is affected by this strategy.Updated on 21 August, based on day one stats, this was obviously just a horrible idea. I’ll promote it now.
The Third Experiment

Random draws usually determine the prize winner in a GWP. Winning a draw is about luck while writing a successful blog is about writing well. Therefore, I am going to choose the entry that I think makes for the most entertaining, though/provoking and interesting reading. In the event of a tie, two blogs will split the cash prize.

Post from: Babylune

The idea is simple. I set a theme. All of you then write a post on the theme for your own blogs. Link back to this post in yours with a short description of the writing project. Finally, in case I don’t get the trackback, leave the URL to your post in the comments section below.

Every morning, I’ll post all of the entries from the previous day.

The contest is open now and closes at 11:59 PM on Thursday, 14 June, 2007.

The final entries will be posted on Friday, 15 June, 2007. On Saturday the 16th, I’ll announce the results of a random draw of all eligible posts to receive the winning blogger’s choice of a $24.95 gift voucher from Amazon or $24.95 in virtual cash via PayPal (it has to be under $25 US to avoid potential tax penalties for the winner).

Posts that aren’t on the theme or aren’t suitable for family reading will be disqualified at my dictatorial discretion.

Now for the theme:

Tell us all about a parenting mistake you’ve made, what you’ve learned from it and how you’re trying to make sure it will never happen again. Here’s mine.

Obviously, if you are the kind of parent to be featured on Parents Behaving Badly, we don’t want to hear from you. Not at all.

Instead, we want to hear from people recognize that, while there is no such thing as a perfect parent, trying to do better is good for the whole population.

Let the group writing project begin!

Post from: Babylune