A couple months ago I saw an ad on Facebook for a writing contest with cash prizes and writing feedback for all entrants, and since I’ve been on this journey of getting back into writing consistently, I thought I might give it a try. I was a little suspicious of how they were going to afford cash prizes until I saw there was an entry fee, but that only made me more suspicious of the whole thing. Was it actually a scam? Unfortunately, at the time, the deadline for signing up was only a day or two away and I knew nothing of writing contests so I had to do some quick research.

Thankfully this particular contest appeared reputable with a long history, so I signed up.

Anyways, the contest itself, through NYC Midnight, was for writing short stories. According to the rules there would be four rounds, and each entrant would have a limited amount of time to write based on a randomly selected prompt setup, of which the final output would be judged and a certain number from each group would move on. The rules also stated that we couldn’t publicly share our work until ten days after results for the round were announced. So, I won’t be sharing my round one entry here just yet.

Sadly, I did not pass round one, and now I’m just waiting for feedback. Cash prizes aside, that was a big draw for me to sign up, so I’m looking forward to seeing what kind of feedback I get on my writing.

I’m always looking to improve, so I’m not going to let this loss discourage me from continuing to write. Once I get my feedback and the ten days have passed I plan on sharing my one short story here, and then maybe you all can also provide some feedback!

We’ll see where things go from here.