Excuse me a moment while I whip out my broom and dust off the behemoth spider web that has appeared in the corner of the blog. Though, I’m pleased as punch that the lack of blogging hasn’t been due to laziness or inertia but because I’ve been a busy bee writing a new story – yay me!

One of the bigger struggles I have with my writing is accountability – setting goals that I stick too. Taking class is wonderful for me because I have hard deadlines that have real consequences if I miss them or don’t put in as much effort as I know I should. I know how it feels to not get the grades you want due to lack of effort (hello, BSc Astrophysics 2:2) and it ain’t a nice feeling! But since I am attempting to actually gain my BA not all my classes can be creative writing ones, which often means months go by without me writing anything new. So for this reason I was rather gleeful when I tripped over a novel (as in innovative not book!) on-line writing contest at the beginning of August.

http://thewritepractice.com

The Write Practice is a blog/website I’ve been following for a little while but I didn’t appreciate it is also an online community for budding writers from all over the world. One day an advert for their new writing contest popped up in my reader feed and it pricked my interest. For a small fee (most submission opportunities come with fees) you got six weeks access to their writers forum in which the goal was to post a brand new, 1500 word short story and have it ‘workshopped’ by the other participants before submitting your best effort to the actual contest. I think what captured most writers interest though was this contest is offering to publish all short stories submitted even if they don’t win one of the three top prizes – very unusual.

Writing stories is not an endeavor one typically takes on to keep one’s end product secret. Most people who write creatively are doing so for a number of reasons but one of those reasons is to be read by others – to have an ‘audience’, and to gain validation & appreciation from said audience. When I started this website I was driven by two reasons: to make writing more present in my daily

source: http://www.mikejones.tv

life, and to have a conduit through which to share my work with family and friends. But really I wasn’t very honest with myself. I wanted an audience and I wanted that audience to grow. And you know what, that is ok. That is part and parcel of being a writer. A desire to have your words ‘seen’ – to have your hours of (solitary) toil acknowledged and (perhaps) be told that you have something resembling talent.

So in all honesty, it was the fact that my work will be published online regardless of how I do in the contest that drew me to this particular opportunity. However, I got so much more out of the experience than I expected – especially from the online community. Although most of the people on the forum have writing experience similar to myself (that is; just starting out) many of them had great insights to my story and helped me mould it into something better through the feedback they offered. In this digital age I think newbie writers such as myself can gain so many benefits from what can be found on the internet from information to support to publishing opportunities – but as with anything ‘online’ a grain of caution has to be used.

Next up for me is a creative (personal) non-fiction assignment for class – another little shove on the boundary of my comfort zone but I’m up for the challenge!