Resolutions 2024 – Take More Risks
I’m a writing contest junkie. There’s something about the thrill of a deadline, the fun of friendly competition, and the innate, if mildly narcissistic, desire for external validation that appeals. The odds of winning any given contest are low, but it’s still a good time and I have a competitive nature. Besides, it often generates pieces that I’ll go on to publish later, and so the stories get put to work in the long run. It’s great to have a hobby that pays for itself. (I bet all you knitters, in debt to the yarn mafia, are pretty damn jealous right about now.)
You might be asking yourself, what is the point of this little meandering monologue about contests—how does it relate to Take More Risks? I’m getting there, I promise.
Most writing contests have some sort of prompt. It can be a genre, character, setting, theme, an object that must be included…or a combination. Sometimes it is an image or a line of poetry or a snippet of music. There’s a huge variety of prompt types, but one thing that’s universal is that whining about the assignment is part of the process. Bitch, moan, scream WFT?! into your pillow. Trust me. It helps alleviate the angst.
A couple of years ago, I was in a writing contest called Writing Battle. (look it up, it’s lots of fun) They tend to have very unique genre assignments, and I got saddled with “Vampirical Romance.” I’ll admit I didn’t just complain about the assignment, I had a bit of a meltdown. First—Romance? On purpose? No, thank you. Not to mention, Vampires are so overdone they’re practically derivative. There was no way I was going to write some Twilight knock-off drivel. Peace out.
Luckily, I have a pep talk guy. (Highly recommended. It takes a village.) He reminded me that I do my best work outside the box and that I had a knack for taking blasé prompts and bending them to my indomitable will. And so, I sucked it up and wrote a story that had no blood sucker in it, nor an active romance, but still fulfilled the genre requirement. I ended up winning the contest. A risk worth taking.
Later in the year, I wrote a 500-word run-on sentence with no capitalization entitled “when the ice moon rises, and the night is strangely bright.” I broke every single grammar rule out there. The story was not only published at a venue I love, but was also nominated for a Pushcart. Another roll of the dice that paid off in a big way.
These were good risks and remind me that I should do more of it.
In 2024, I want my writing mantra to be: Break the Rules. Not with abandon, but with artistry. Something important to remember, you can’t break the rules until you know them inside and out. I think every writer should spend time learning how to write really good stories that follow the rules before trying to circumvent them. There’s a natural progression from Learn the Rules to Follow the Rules, before you can end up at Break the Rules. Eventually, I’ll get to Make New Rules. Then I’ll break those as well.
Anywho, I find myself most successful when taking risks and thumbing my nose at folks who say this is the way things must be. Writing outside the box requires creative thinking and a willingness to try things that might fail. Experimentation does not always go well, sometimes it falls flat. But I do feel that playing it safe only achieves lackluster averageness. Humdrum, forgettable, colorless, banal, middle-of-the-road boringness.
This year, I’m making a promise to myself to write fearlessly. I want memorable. I want the singular, the fantastical, the unexpected. I don’t want to strike a spark, I want to start a wildfire.
