With a HUGE tip of my hat to Julie Powell, I’ve decided to challenge myself in a similar way.
The Contest:
NYC Midnight Madness Short Story Contest
660 crazy writers took on this truly mad contest in January – the organizers divided us into 30 heats and assigned each heat a genre (mystery, sci-fi, etc) and a topic (photography, a chess game, etc) at midnight on a Friday. We all wrote like mad and submitted our 2500 word story by midnight the next Friday – one week of writing like mad.
The Contender
Wannabe writer, blocked blogger, passionate reader by day and night. Looking for a way to produce some finished work – needing to learn, learn, learn. 365 days, 30 genre-topic assignments.
Can she do it?
Rules:
- Start at heat 1, no skipping or changing genre or topic for that heat – except heat 19, my original heat. (if you’re curious, click here to see the heat assignments – then click on each number at the top)
- One week only for each short story – this means some weeks OFF to recuperate.
Participating in the NYC Midnight Madness taught me so much about genre and short stories – writing my own story under pressure, getting feedback from fellow contestants, reading others’ stories & trying to express to them what worked and what didn’t – wow.
Email me if you’d like the password to any story. Comments welcome – and let me know if you want to join the challenge!
LEE HALLISON 