When my challenge is ignored I feel like a hole opens in my chest; tiny at first, but painful, sharp as a pin’s prick-prick-prick. With time the hole widens, and deepens, the pain swelling along with it to an unending, unbearable ache. I open Prose, and I open Prose, and I open Prose! That lonely challenge at the very bottom of the list taunts me; dirty, insulting, laughing. The hole in my chest grows a vortex, spinning and pulling at the very cruxt of my being, tattoo-ing my unworthiness forever.

With meandering time the vortex of shame grows, grows, GROWS… sucking my pride inside it, allowing anger space to build! My eyes stray to those cocky, snotty names watching my wallows from on high; those with their clever challenges, and their thousand upon thousand followers, and with fourteen entries on their challenge. Hey Lolly! Are they so smart? Do they teem with brilliance? I seethe and burn within my tornado lust, it’s hole ever widening, ever pulling, ever threatening now to drag my very soul within it. I brace, and strike-strike-strike at it’s heart, knife-less it is true, but with imagined talons and fangs, sharp and hoary.

But the vortex is strong. It pulls, pulls, pulls me inside. Dark is the room, dark the walls, dark the very air. I breath in the dark, and I exhale it, until I myself am the dark, swimming within it alive as it sucks me ever deeper inside. “My God!“ I despair. “There is still three weeks to go!”

And at the very core lies shame. The hole’s bottom runs deep-thick-slick with it. Calf high humility sludge, oozing through toes, slurping at skin, holding tight. It is a bad place, this. Vainly climbing; clawing, sliding, stretching and slipping, two up-three down in the cruddy, muddy mire. Why would they write… why would they… why? It is only me down here… it is only… me... alone. It is just me down here, drowning in Prose.

But wait! What there? An entry! Am I saved? Thank you, thank you, thank you! Oh, sweet and lovely ”Platty-puss!” I will follow you! I will read all of your writings! The world is no longer so dark, or life so tragic, and all for the kindness that is you!

Joy, joy, joy! Thank God and Platty-puss I have climbed, risen high above that smart aleck Huckleberry guy who has no entries on his stupid challenge.

Ha, ha! What a loser he is!

One could think of it as a practice in dealing with rejection. No need to take it personally. Some things explode, and some things don't. Doesn't mean that the idea was bad. It could have been posted at a weird time, drowned in the trending page, or maybe it was just such a novel idea that no one was really sure how to approach it. I find all sorts of unanswered challenges hiding out on the Recent (New?) tab, even though the Trending tab is the first one to appear when you click on the Challenges link.

It's a bummer. I know it sucks to not get even a single response, so sometimes I try to comb through the challenges and enter ones that are kind of quiet. I often find that the quiet ones force me to think outside of my comfort zone, and being pushed as a writer is nothing but a good thing.

1) answer it yourself- if you see that people are not responding to a challenge, post your own stuff. you cant ask others to do things you are not willing to do yourself. so if you put in 'write a novel worthy of a Pulitzer, then you'd better have something ...

having said that, i realize i haven't always posted on my challenges. its mainly to do with being crushed under a heavy boulder/pirates/work..

2) don't care about participation- even if you didn't get anyone (except you) , it is still good that you raised a challenge. the goal of challenges here is to get people cooking. so anything you give is good.

3) consider that something was wrong with how you presented the topic- maybe it's too specific, maybe it's too open, maybe it is a leading question in disguise (which is not allowed to be used by the prosecution).

4) maybe it was on a portal or it was for a short duration or the word count definition threw people off (write a novel in 15 words or less...)

5) maybe there was a similar challenge recently.

6) maybe instructions were too complicated.

in any case, DO NOT give up on raising challenges and never stop writing...

6

I've been on Prose for about six years now. I've created a number of challenges during my time.

Do I get many entries? Sometimes.

Have I created a challenge where no one enters. Definitely.

Does it suck? Sure.

Am I disappointed? Sometimes.

However, there is an easy solution to this. Are you ready? Here it goes: move forward and keep doing what you like to do. For every challenge that doesn't get any entries there are two or three more that do.

At the very least, I'm getting people to write what they want to write. And that's gotta count for something.