Helping Writers #DraftNewSkills With Rough Writing Prompts
Writing Class Scholarships by Rough Draft and Skillshare
(TL;DR: Write a response to the writing prompts below using the Rough Draft app (or pen and paper!) and you can win a one month scholarship to take a creative writing course on Skillshare!)
Update: That’s a wrap! We collected a number of great responses over the past few weeks and will be going over them to decide the winners of a one-month Skillshare scholarship! Check out some of the stories written on Twitter and OnlyRoughDrafts.
Have you ever dreamed of taking a creative writing class? Of being part of a group of thinkers, congregating in the early morning in an oval-shaped lecture room at a university with old brick buildings covered in ivy, the smell of coffee fresh in the air. Some place you could learn how to write like one of the greats, like Rushdie or Rowling or Rudyard Kipling. A class that would get you on the right track to becoming a published writer.
Imagine yourself in that lecture room. Near the old chalkboard stands your favorite author expounding upon prose and pentameter. Your instructor reaches into a bag, producing a few sheets of paper, handing them out:
“Explore your creativity and respond to this writing prompt.” She says as you start to write…
Having penned a few pages, the instructor asks each of you to read what you’ve come up with. And now it’s your turn. You timidly stand up and clear your throat. As you begin to orate, doing your best to sound more confident than you really are, you’re cut off a few sentences in by a growing cacophony of snickering from your peers. That’s when you look down.
You’re not wearing a shirt. Or pants. You’re naked down to your underwear.
Your dream of becoming a writer has suddenly turned into a nightmare.
Thankfully, we can now avoid this nightmare with creative writing classes like those from Skillshare. With instruction from great teachers like Kari Sayers, a prolific author and entrepreneur; Christopher Mitchell, a ten-year university and secondary school writing instructor; and Jennifer Armstrong, a published author, magazine writer, and writing workshop teacher, not only can you start “drafting” new skills, you can live the dream of learning how to write professionally, all without ever having to wear pants!
Our team here at Rough Draft strives to do everything we can to support writers, and today we’re excited to support teachers like Jennifer, Christopher and Kari in their efforts to pass down their craft to writers like you. Today we’re announcing a rough writing scholarship, sponsored by Rough Draft and Skillshare.
Skillshare is a global learning community for creators, where anyone can enroll in their over 3,300 online classes, or even teach a class themselves. They empower writers and other creators to take the first steps to pursue the work they love today, something that we encourage with each sentence written in Rough Draft.
#DraftNewSkills Contest
Starting today through Sunday, April 4, you’ll have the chance to win one free month of Skillshare to take Christopher, Jennifer and Kari’s classes though the rough writing scholarship. To enter, all you need to do is write a 250~500 word response (around 10 minutes) to any (or all!) of these writing prompts:
Just write whatever comes to mind, and keep it rough. No perfect, edited drafts! Hemingway once said, “The rough draft of anything is 💩” and that’s OK because done is better than perfect. In order to keep everything rough, please submit your responses either:
- Through Rough Draft to OnlyRoughDrafts.com with “#DraftNewSkills” in the title; or
- Reply to any of the tweets above with a snapshot of your handwritten response and #DraftNewSkills tagged in the tweet.
On April 8, we’ll give out up to 30 scholarships — graciously supplied by Skillshare — to writers who respond, with half of the scholarships awarded to the roughest, er… funnest stories, and the other half pulled out of a hat).
Make sure to share this post and the tweets around! The more people who submit responses, the more scholarships we’ll be giving away:
- 2 scholarships for the first 10 responses (20% chance to win);
- 13 scholarships if we get 50 responses (25% chance); and
- 30 scholarship for 100+ responses (30% chance).
More importantly, the more you share, the more you help other aspiring writers learn how to #DraftNewSkills.
And if you have any questions about how to apply, reach out to us using the chat button on Only Rough Drafts.
P.S. We’ll be giving away one scholarship at random to one of the first 10 writing prompt responders, so download Rough Draft and get writing!
