I’m sitting here at my desk with the candles lit, a new Word document opened up ready to be filled with story-telling brilliance and my fancy new iPad playing some motivating movie scores on my Pandora app.
I’m inspired tonight to start a new short story. You see, this last week I had not one but TWO new short story ideas pop into my head, and I immediately searched for some new writing contests that would motivate me (meaning would give me a concrete deadline) to actually sit down and write them. Since my awesome experience with NYC Midnight Short Story Competition this year – round 2 results should be in next week, by the way – I’ve decided that whenever I have a good idea for a story, I should immediately look for a reason to see it through to completion, in the form of an upcoming short story contest. Because, for some odd reason, having just the base desire to write the story is not enough to actually get me to do it. I need a deadline.
My search yielded several results (thank you, writersmarket.com!) and I narrowed down the options to three contests, all of which have deadlines around the end of April/beginning of May:
1. The 34th Nimrod Literary Awards – a 7,500 word limit on a fiction piece, due on April 30th.
2. The Writer’s Digest Annual Writing Competition – A big flipping deal, with several categories for submission and a deadline of May 1st.
3. The Lorian Hemmingway Short Story Competition – Run by the Hemmingway’s grand-daughter, this needs submissions by May 1st as well. 3,500 word limit.
My initial plan was to write one story, one GOOD story, and submit it to all three competitions. They all accept simultaneous submissions as far as I can tell, and they all have pretty similar guidelines. But, since I’m new to the writing contest world, I wonder if that is a normal thing to do.
Since I have two story ideas, so I may go ahead and try to write both in the next month, despite the heavy work schedule I have lined up. I will be traveling a lot, and I tend to get a lot of writing done when I’m spending a lot of time on planes and trains and in pretty hotel rooms. It may be rough and I may be setting too high a goal to attain, but that might be something good. I certainly feel inspired and motivated these days, why not try to capitalize on it?
Has anyone out there ever entered any of these contests or have any comments on them?
And by the way, about the new iPad – I actually won it in a drawing on SaveUp.com – no joke. Pretty awesome, yeah? I’ve decided to allow it to be the only gadget that I leave out of my work realm entirely. I want it to be my writing companion, keeping my notes and inspiring me with its awesome brainstorming apps and music features. I just need to come up with a name for it…..I’m thinking something like Albus?
Yeah, Albus. That’s perfect.
I’m off to read a book with Albus and then maybe play a word game with him before bed. Goodnight!
The Non-Writing Writer 