"I love deadlines. I like the whoosing sound they make as they fly by." Douglas Adams
The entries for our So You Think You Can Write contest are coming in fast and furious and it is exciting to see the results of people setting paper to pen/fingers to keyboards. More than just a shot at a prize, a contest like So You Think You Can Write is a good opportunity for writers to meet a deadline and launch a piece of writing into the world.
Because I write fiction and I don’t have a book deal, there are no absolute deadlines to work toward. So mostly, the work doesn’t get done. In an attempt to make myself write and meet a deadline, I decided to enter a contest earlier this summer.
The publishers of the new Collins Canadian Dictionary had a short story contest with a deadline of July 1. A 1,000-word maximum and 10 of them had to be from a list of 40 Canadian words from the updated dictionary. Perfect. A deadline, a word count and 1/100 of the words are already chosen. My kind of contest!
So I carried the word list around like a talisman, checking it every few hours, reviewing the definitions, working them into potential sentences. The final result was a quiet little story about a newly moved Maritimer in a prairie town. I made the deadline with hours to spare.
I didn’t win the contest, but I felt like I accomplished something that mattered, if only to me. The sense of satisfaction and accomplishment spilled over; I found myself dancing while I unloaded the dishwasher the same day I sent the story in. Hmmmm, what does that tell me?
There are a number of writing contests that give writers deadlines and guidelines that can help contain and direct creative fervour. Many of them charge entry fees (the TC’s So You Think You Can Write doesn’t) and the prizes vary greatly. There are some hoaxes out there so beware the poetry contest that requires you to buy a copy of the book as your entry fee. Here are a few links worth checking out:
Geist Magazine's postcard story contest #7
The ultimate challenge in writing contests - the Three Day Novel (Registration must be in the mail by Sept. 3)
Caveats on poetry contests
List of current and past wrtiting contests
Apologies
To people who posted comments this week. A technical glitch means I didn't know about them so I couldn't publish them until today.
