We don't get many stories that are produced on softer schedules, with less secrecy, more amnesty, more options for partial participation--and I'd like those.

That would be lovely. I confess to being quite intimidated by the amount of secrecy and serious business attitudes that hang around challenges - and it's a shame, because I'd love to do the growth-as-a-writer do-something-not-familiar-to-you thing, but I don't like keeping secrets and loathe deadlines (deadlines are for work. this isn't work. and that's leaving aside the bit where sometimes it takes one three months to write five thousand words and that's the end of it, or the bit where anything sexual takes literally years because it's hot but also sort of revolting at the same time...).

By the way, and forgive me if there's a search term that actually yields this up and I just can't think of it: what, in the context that the word is used here, are 'spoons'? I've never heard the term before.