The phrase “Use it or lose it” is one that covers lots of things. It could mean your muscles, it could mean a spoken/written language, it could just mean your mind.
For me, at this point in time it more so means whatever “chops” I’ve ever had when it comes to writing, particularly creative writing. I have often thought “I could write a novel” and have been contemplating different stories/plots that I would want to explore.
However, I never acted upon any of those. Most of the writing I do that doesn’t involve a SQL query or a function, is business related. It would be some sort of marketing copy or technical documentation. Technically speaking my career started as a Technical Writer.
I hate the phrasing of “The algorithm” as some sort of almost sentient thing that feeds you content, I mean that could be due to my view that technology hasn’t reached that level of complexity, yet. I think it stems from humankind’s propencity to anthropomorphize. I prefer to just say “My Feed”, and I know there are algorithms behind the scenes that determine what to dump into that stream of content.
In July of 2024, My Feed was showing me ads for an upcoming writing contest. It was a 500-word fiction contest run by NYC Midnight. I was given a Genre, an Action, and an Object. Those were “Suspense and/or Thriller”, “Having a nightmare”, and “An ambulance”.
I ended up writing a thriller, that had a bit too much comic relief in it, called "Cracking Up". It was very hard to stick to 500 words, so I definitely wanted to do a longer story length next time and found the idea of doing any less than 500 words to be an incredibly difficult challenge. And if you’re curious, there has to be at least one contest a year that is less than 250 words.
The NYC Midnight contest used professional judges, I bring that up to have it be in contrast to the next contest I entered. The next contest was run by WritingBattle.com, run in October 2024. One difference between them is that WritingBattle crowdsourced the judging, the other was this contest was 2,000 words. Everyone had to judge like five rounds of stories, if I remember correctly.
The WritingBattle setup was similar, they gave you a Genre, a Setting, and a Character. You could re-roll/re-draw the cards and try for something you felt you could work with better, but maybe you also get something you regret. I ended up with Espionage, a Public Bathroom, and a Nostalgist. My story was "F Train to Newark". During the course of both contests they tell you not to share your stories on social media, which I abided by. But I did share it with my Editors (wife and mom), no rule against that.
I enjoyed the experience of the WritingBattle so much that I immediately signed up for the next battle that sounded fun, Wonder 2025 Flash Fiction (1,000 words). That contest is going on right now. This time the judging is being done professionally, there are 8 rounds of judging. The first 5 rounds are the main elimination rounds. Your story can lose 3 rounds before it is eliminated.
This time they did allow folks to make their stories public before the judging is over (I don’t recall that being an option last time, maybe it was). Here is my story: I remember...
With all the contests (thus far) you get feedback from the judges, and within the WritingBattle there is an easy forum interface that gives you feedback from your fellow writers. I’ve gotten good feedback before, and on this one I am getting some technical comments, but everyone who has commented enjoyed the story. My writing style tends to lean towards having humor peppered in there, which for a Thriller isn’t quite the right time and place, but for this one I think I did a good job of working it in.
And I just checked to see if there was an upcoming contest on WritingBattle that I want to participate in, I see I am already signed up for the Autumn 2025 Short Story (2,000 word), same as last year.
With this last story, I shared the public link with my Sci-Fi bookclub and their comments mirrored the comments I’ve gotten in the forum. I think I’ve got a character that I can explore more and maybe even work in some of the ideas that I was toying with before, but probably not all of them. I had a notion to be able to work in some the insane current events into part of the backstory.
I am glad to have a creative outlet, because while I rarely find myself with ‘freetime’, it is nice to produce something with those open hours vs just shooting super mutants in Fallout76.
Oh yeah, last thing I will add. With the first two contests, I sort of forgot about them until they snuck up on me, and then I procrastinated on the writing (waiting until almost the last minute to wrap it up). This time around, I got my assignment within minutes of the contest starting, I redrew and got started. I cracked a monster and had my first draft done before I went to bed. I touched it up once and then sent it off to my editors. I dragged my feed on processing those edits, but got them done mid-week and submitted it with a couple of days to spare. They do let you upload revisions before the final deadline.
Wish me luck!