Big Finish Limbo #1: In the beginning there was the Word.

Written by The Mara

The people who entered the recent Big Finish short story competition have entered a time of limbo while we all wait for the judges to announce the winner – and the 1071 also-rans. "Limbo" was the term in Roman Catholic theology given to the region between hell or heaven serving as the abode after death of unbaptised infants and the righteous who died before the coming of Christ. Now, while some entrants may feel strung up between heaven and hell, given that the RC church is currently debating whether or not to do away with the concept of limbo altogether, we would be better to take on a more secular definition of the word. According to the speedy, if not terribly brilliant, dictionary.com, definition 3: "an intermediate, transitional, or midway state or place", is far more appropriate.

We’ve all been there. Waiting for exam results, confirmation that we got "the job", the agonising seconds while we wait for someone we’ve asked on a date to say ‘yes’... or ‘no’. Even City boys experience it during the time between the annual round of bonuses being announced, and finding out that theirs is enough to support a developing-world village for a decade. An even more relevant example to this blog would be all the times Doctor Who has been off the air; 1985, 1989 – 1996, 1996 -2005, the seasonal breaks, the rest of the week…

During limbo we need something to pass the time. Rather than take up smoking, I seized the Keeper’s suggestion of writing a few pieces about my individual experiences during the competition as a way of doing just that.

So consider the last 271 words as just the preamble for a collection of musings on the entire competition process. 291.

In the beginning there was the Word, and the Word was ‘competition’. It was closely followed by the words ‘Doctor’, ‘Who’, ‘writing’, ‘short’, ‘story’ and ‘published’. These divine words were uttered by a small-time god. From now on this minor deity will be known as "Morbius". I listened unto Morbius and said, ‘yea verily unto which URL shall I venture forth?’ And Morbius listened unto me and gave his wisdom of the URL and proclaimed; ‘go forth and create!’

It is the strength of the Doctor Who community and their use of word of mouth that has led to Big Finish being inundated with entries. I would never have known of the competition had it not been for Morbius informing me of it. He also would not have known of it without someone else mentioning it to him.

Of course the 1072 submissions (originally 1073, but we have since had an entrant own up to previously published paid fiction work) are just from those who managed to complete and chose to enter. Add a guesstimate of how many people wanted to enter but didn’t, and we end up with an impressive number touched by this competition.

The enthusiasm for the competition was highly visible in face-to-face meets and on fora like Outpost Gallifrey. Conversations about entry details, writing trials and tribulations, open declarations of support and encouragement were sparked by the competition and still continue through this limbo period.

Ultimately this competition has served as a catalyst for a level of enthusiasm, support and encouragement that stands as Testament to the strength of the Doctor Who community at its best.

But now I’ve jumped too far in the future. Also, warm n’ fuzzies don’t make for brilliant blogging; there needs to be more confession and Hail Marys, more ‘insight’ to keep the voyeurs of blog-land happy.

When Morbius told me about the competition, there was never any doubt that I’d write an entry. This comes down to the simple conceit that I do consider myself as a writer. I’m very much the amateur, which is a good thing given the rules for the competition, but I do have a bit of a writing résumé. I’ve had a short story printed in a county English teachers’ journal, a poem printed in a University collection, articles for street press and university rags, and my crowning glory, a non-fiction chapter in a collected work where I got to be printed alongside such luminaries as Francis Bacon, Aristotle, Goethe, Chaucer and Shakespeare… but none of these exploits received remuneration.

While I am conceited enough to think I have a better than average chance of winning, this was not my main motivation for writing. I primarily saw the competition as a writing challenge. Where other people may be driven by the impulse to win, or have a story they felt had to be told in the Whoniverse, or saw this competition as a way of legitimising their fan-fiction output, or did not consider any of these things and just thought writing an entry would be fun, I saw this as a structured method to hone my skills. I had never written any Doctor Who fiction before this short story. In fact, I never wrote any science fiction either; my usual areas of fiction writing are fantasy, and things that can be amorphously grouped under ‘modern fiction’. So the tingle of doing something new, added to the tingle of possible publication and ‘winning’, meant that before I even put finger to keyboard I was already giddy with excitement… and hassling the rest of my fandom associates to discover who else was writing and thus being conferred the weird status of both competitor and comrade.

So! I sat down at my keyboard, after discovering three comrade-competitors, after reading the rules and –

In the beginning there was the Word, and the Word was ‘Hell!’ It was closely followed by other words, and became a question; ‘What the hell do I write?’

Coming soon – Big Finish Limbo #2: The Devil is in the Detail.