Writer’s Block Challenge #1: September/October 2012

UPDATE 9/24/12 6:44PM: Only 2 spots remaining! Enter while you still can! Deadline is Oct. 1st! Follow us on twitter – @TheWBChallenge – for updates!

Welcome to the first Writer’s Block Challenge! This is a contest designed to inspire all you aspiring creative writers out there!

Here’s what the plan is: We accept the first 20 short stories submitted to writersblockchallenge@gmail.com before Oct. 1, 2012. The Winner is scheduled to be announced the last week of October.

We will read them and choose our top three and then put it to a vote who the top story belongs to.

You’ll win a little “Winner” image for online use and some free publicity as we tout the winner on WordPress, Reddit, and twitter. This is mostly just for fun and bragging rights.

The main goal of this challenge is to give aspiring writers a chance to flex their minds and work on their craft.

Now, here are the rules of Challenge #1:

1. You must write about the topic we give you. Beyond that, take it anywhere creatively you wish.

2. For this challenege, there is no specific genre, so you can write in whatever style you wish and have any kind of tone you desire, be funny or serious or weird, go nuts.

3. While we do encourage freedom in your writing, these will be available for all ages to read, so please don’t be too vulgar. While it won’t necessarily disqualify you, your entry will more than likely be removed from contention if there is a large amount of cussing, violent imagery, or vulgar sexuality. You can still write about these, just try to keep it PG-13.

4. The topic for this contest is asking for a true story. While we do desire a true story, you are more than welcome to add some flourish to a true story or even creative a fictional one. The main goal is to write something believable, something that could actually happen in real life.

5. Your story can be as short as you wish, but please limit the length of your story to 2000 words or less.

6. Please proofread your stuff a couple times before you submit it. Submissions with a bunch of typos and/or errors will be disqualified.

7. Realize that, even though you are the author, by submitting your story, you are giving us permission to post your story and to use your story in anyway that we see fit, as long as we attribute credit to the author. (We don’t plan on doing anything bad with it, just covering our butts.) However, you still retain ownership of the story. You may also do with it whatever you wish, including publishing, without any approval from us.

8. The top 3 stories will be published on our blog.

So, here is the Challenge: Describe your first brush with danger.

Once you are ready to submit your story, email it to the address above in either “.doc” or “.docx” format (“.txt” will do if it’s all you’ve got). In the “Subject” line, please write “WBC1” and in the “Body” section, please write your name (and pen-name, if desired), your e-mail address, your twitter handle (if you have one) and the title of your story!

The challenge starts NOW! Happy writing!

Questions? Ask below.