Honorable Mention at Writers Weekly!

Writer's Weekly's 24 hour contest is quickly becoming my favorite contest.  This is my third time around. I'm bummed I'll have to sit out the fall contest due to other plans.

Several things level the playing field for this contest:

• Topic is unknown until the day of the contest
• Time matters
• There is a fixed word limit
• There is a fixed number of participants

Plus there are tons of ways to win something.  You could place, and get cash + prizes.  You could earn an honorable mention (like me) and get a prize.  You could get a prize just for entering via raffle!

Here is the prompt for this round, which must be used in some way in a piece under 950 words:

Holding the sleeping infant on her shoulder, she gazed peacefully at her surroundings. Tourists wandered in and out of stores, an old man was setting up his easel by the lakeshore, and a child's balloon escaped into the breeze. A moment later, she looked up as shouts startled her and the baby. Everybody was running in her direction...

The winning entry is available here.  It's a fantasy type story with magic and a unique ritual.  The second place story actually had a similar concept to mine.  It picked up on the painter in the prompt and fused the painting with the narrative.

My honorable mention entry is a story of a woman reflecting on the end of the world.

Published Update Marco Polo 100 X 100

This entry started as a contest for the now defunct 100 words or fewer. And then it became another case of when losers become winners.

I resubmitted a slightly modified version and made it to Marco Polo Online Literary Arts Magazine

See it here:

Shortlisted on The Writer's Village

My entry to The Writer's Village made it to the top 7 out of hundreds.

This is a great example of taking an older contest entry that you believe in and tweaking it to get a better result. 

I first entered a version of this story at On The Premises. The theme was "home" and I wanted to explore the idea of a broken home.  After receiving the feedback from them  - I made some edits.

1. I gave my narrator a name
2. I toned down her antics to focus just on the family aspect
3. I sought to leave the reader with few unanswered questions

Plus I did a couple tweaks on my own. 

In my first attempt, I experimented with minimal dialogue.  On a second look, I prefer dialogue.  I think it gives the other characters more depth, other than just the narrator's point of view.

For example:
He said I was beautiful.
vs.
"You look beautiful." He said.

I also reworked the ending a bit.

See the final result here. http://www.writers-village.org/12-4-worrell.php

Who knows if this is the last iteration of Confessions?  I don't plan on reworking it anytime soon, but you never know....

Year End Review 2012

I had a lot of fun this year entering various competitions and I know I grew a lot as a writer. To recap:

• I came up just short of 52 contest entries (counting over half from the Writer's Digest Poetic Asides Poem A Day Challenge)
• Just over half of my prose entries were flash fiction.
• I tried eleven different contest sponsors: Midway Literary Journal, The First Line, Switchback, Creative Competitor, Fan Story, Writer's Digest, 100 Words or Fewer, On the Premises, Writer's Weekly,  Kazka Press, and finally I'm submitting to Writer's Village and the Society of Actuaries Speculative Fiction contest.
• I haven't won any major contests, just a minor headline contest.  My prize was a nice resource for writers. However...
• I had a couple journals accept my work for publication: The Binnacle accepted The Butler's Waltz, Marco Polo accepted The Open Box, From The Depths accepted a 13 word horror story, and Underwater New York accepted a handful of flashes.
• Finally I wrote a bunch of articles I'm very proud of and I hope you find them useful.

My favorite contest sponsor this year is Writer's Weekly.  They offer a seasonal contest where writers have 24 hours to bang out a short story.  They limit the number of entries to 500 writers.  Lastly, there are tons of prizes.

My favorite piece of writing this year was: The Intricacies of Cherry Cola.  And while it might not be a winner (yet), I've revised it once and I look forward to revising it again for future competitions.

On top of the work on the blog an with contest entries, I've finished the first draft of my first novel and that feels good from a personal perspective.

Hopefully you had just as fruitful of a year and will have an even better one in 2013.  I know I'm looking forward to it.  On New Year's I'll be posting my goals for writing competitions and we'll see how it all shakes out.

We have a winner!

Wordplay wins again! 
http://www.writersdigest.com/online-editor/winners-of-the-3rd-annual-aprilfools4writers-contest

This writing contest was a simple headline.You can read my entry and link to the original contest here.
http://www.competitivewriter.com/2012/03/writers-digest-april-fools-headlines.html

The prize is The Writer's Yearbook 2012

Writer's Digest -“April Fools’ Headlines for Writers” Contest

Submit your own entry here!
http://www.writersdigest.com/online-editor/3rd-annual-april-fools-headlines-for-writers-contest

Here's mine-
EXCLAMATION POINTS TO QUESTION MARKS IN A PERIOD OF SENTENCE ENDING CONTROVERSY

FanStory New Arrival Story - "Story of a Freshman"

Folks, we have a winner!  The challenge for this writing competition was to write a piece beginning with "Hell found me."   I decided to make Hell a person, and the rest of it just followed.

Enjoy!

My first win

True Minnesotan

I won a 5 pound nut roll for this writing competition!

This is the contest that sparked my drive to write and to write competitively.

Having been in several contests since then, I think there are a couple things to take away.

• Local contests often don't appear on contest list websites
• You are more likely to write about something you know when it is a local contest, a more specific point of view is often better writing
• I prefer writing contests with specific themes/challenges vs more universal "submit anything" types