Competitive spirit FTW
For the last month I've been taking part in the brigits_flame monthly competition. There's a prompt every week, for which you write something (original, preferably self contained, 1000 words or so) and you advance to the next week via an elimination poll voted on by the community members.
It's... inspiring, actually. I mean, I have a touch of competitive spirit in me, so it's a good motivator to get me up off my ass and writing. But it also is pitting me against some people that are really GOOD at short original stand-alone fiction, which is making me raise my personal bar of how to do shorts instead of epics. I'm realizing I can write these things, and viola, it's something finished and done and not a life eating ongoing thing. Also? Not actually that long or hard to do unless I run into a bad case of ADD brain on topic and prompt (last week was a good example. 5 completely different false starts before I settled on just writing one of them. v_v)
Also, the stories we write are peer reviewed (ie, critiqued) by at least two editors every week, and it's making me more aware of things like my blatant overuse of the comma and tendency towards run-on sentences and sentence fragments. (You can opt in or out of the critique, which is good, as there's some weeks I just can't cope with the grammar picking. I also do editing myself in turn - I've signed up to do one edit a week, which takes me twenty minutes or so depending on how long the piece is. =P)
I've made it to week three! Wooohooo! That's saying something, when we started with 80+ writers (BF was on the LJ spotlight, which is how I found them, and there was the usual OMG EXPLOSION of new members) and are down to 22 slots open for the 4th week. The poll for week three is down to the tie-breaker, which is a seven way tie, five to continue on, two to be eliminated. I'm in the tie. (No, you can't go vote for me, not unless you're a member of the comm, and I'm not asking for votes. I'm just noting where I am.) The tie-breaker ends tomorrow, so I'll find out then if I go on to week four or not. x__x aiiii! (I have no idea what to write for week four anyways - prompt of "hands". Plus there's the mini challenge, prompts of "ink stain, basement and flashback". argh!)
Did I sign up to do this next month too? Hell yes. =P It's keeping me consistently writing at least one thing a week.
PPS - dear self, you ought to be cross posting those stories. JUST IN CASE. v_v
It's... inspiring, actually. I mean, I have a touch of competitive spirit in me, so it's a good motivator to get me up off my ass and writing. But it also is pitting me against some people that are really GOOD at short original stand-alone fiction, which is making me raise my personal bar of how to do shorts instead of epics. I'm realizing I can write these things, and viola, it's something finished and done and not a life eating ongoing thing. Also? Not actually that long or hard to do unless I run into a bad case of ADD brain on topic and prompt (last week was a good example. 5 completely different false starts before I settled on just writing one of them. v_v)
Also, the stories we write are peer reviewed (ie, critiqued) by at least two editors every week, and it's making me more aware of things like my blatant overuse of the comma and tendency towards run-on sentences and sentence fragments. (You can opt in or out of the critique, which is good, as there's some weeks I just can't cope with the grammar picking. I also do editing myself in turn - I've signed up to do one edit a week, which takes me twenty minutes or so depending on how long the piece is. =P)
I've made it to week three! Wooohooo! That's saying something, when we started with 80+ writers (BF was on the LJ spotlight, which is how I found them, and there was the usual OMG EXPLOSION of new members) and are down to 22 slots open for the 4th week. The poll for week three is down to the tie-breaker, which is a seven way tie, five to continue on, two to be eliminated. I'm in the tie. (No, you can't go vote for me, not unless you're a member of the comm, and I'm not asking for votes. I'm just noting where I am.) The tie-breaker ends tomorrow, so I'll find out then if I go on to week four or not. x__x aiiii! (I have no idea what to write for week four anyways - prompt of "hands". Plus there's the mini challenge, prompts of "ink stain, basement and flashback". argh!)
Did I sign up to do this next month too? Hell yes. =P It's keeping me consistently writing at least one thing a week.
PPS - dear self, you ought to be cross posting those stories. JUST IN CASE. v_v