* Heard of a contest? Running a contest you’d like writers to know about? Email me and I’ll put it up! taratara at killthe muse dot com. Or tweet me!
NPR's Three-Minute Fiction Contest
Sunday morning, I got an email in my in box from NPR. Part of a story I had submitted for NPR’s Three-Minute Fiction was going to be read on All Things Considered. I’d written the story just a few days before, and it probably took about two hours. I’d been cruising around the web looking for contests to post on this blog and found the NPR one and thought, well, what the hell. It was selected as a favorite on NPR’s site and Alan Cheuse, an author and the contest’s judge wanted to read a bit of my story on air.
Deadlines have a way of doing this, of forcing creativity. Faced with a looming deadline, a word count limit (the contest allows no more than 600 words so it can be read in three minutes,) and a photograph meant to inspire the entries, I was able to write something, and write it fast. And yet given all the time in the world and no restrictions whatsoever, I seem to get stuck with my larger pieces. My novel is at the moment very stuck, and though I am using the methods I write about on this blog to get it going again, it remains much harder than what I was able to pull off the other day with the NPR contest.
What these contests can give you, in addition to a burst of welcome creativity is a bit of fame, and sometimes that’s what we need when we are slogging away thinking, “…and why am I doing this again?” Even if you don’t get recognition in the contest you enter, you will have written something and I can pretty much guarantee that even if you aren’t thrilled with the piece, you’ll be happy you produced something and got writing again.
Here are a few contests that might get you going. I’ve focused on flash fiction here, though there are a lot of contests available here:
American Short Fiction Flash Fiction Contest
1000 word limit, $500 prize; both first and second prize winners get published in the mag. Deadline May 1st. American Short Fiction is an outstanding magazine and stories they’ve published have been chosen for BASS (Best American Short Stories) collections.
Fish Publishing One -Page Story
300 word limit. This is a British publication and the prize is 1,000 euro. Deadline is March 20th.
Flash Fiction Contest sponsored by Rhode Island Writers Circle
1000 word limit, $500 prize. Deadline is June 10th, 2010
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