Up to this month, I had never written any really short stories, like 500 words or fewer. I had also written very little fiction. However, with a postcard story contest I found out about from Vancouver Canada, I have “all of a sudden” (relatively to my life timeline), written five! I can’t share them yet, and may not be able to until fall, unless they get eliminated really early, but here were the postcards I chose.
assignments
Writing Contest Assignments
Since I officially started my two year journey for writing on January 1st (2021), I had been looking out for writing contests to enter so as to have some goals, get some feedback, and see how my writing compared to the winning entries. I feel good about my writing skills, but not disillusioned to think I would win starting out. I am not well read for literary writing to know what qualifies high calibre writing outside of the classics. To use an analogy, I have no idea what times are good for a recreational 10 km race or a marathon, say, only what are good for national, world, or Olympic races. I’m sure the time gap isn’t huge, if any, for recreational races that are big enough, but what about the local or regional ones, or ones that didn’t include participants who have had acclaim and/or won big prize money. What’s “good” then? A question even harder to answer with something artistic as writing rather than something quite directly measurable as race time.
Digital Citizen 