The Horrifying Writer’s Contest
Why the heck did I enter?
I never enter contests, especially if it has anything to do with writing. Writing, to me, has never been about competition. It’s about artistic expression, for crying out loud. There should be no prizes for writing. Writing is the prize!
But when I heard about this certain writing contest I happened to be in a low point of self evaluation. I felt I wasn’t living up to my ideals and I needed a challenge. I like to challenge myself. Some may call it masochism. Whatever.
So I entered the contest and then I learned the rules…
The contest called for writing a short story in three hours or less. No advanced technology was allowed; no smart phone, no tablet, no laptop, no computer. The short story had to be written by hand in a spiral notebook. And it had to be written while sitting in a crowded diner while drinking coffee.
Wow, I had never heard of such rules before!
Seriously.
The first problem that jumped out at me was the coffee. I don’t drink coffee. Okay, I drink between two and five cups of coffee a year — which many years ago used to be how much coffee I drank in a day. But I gave up coffee around fifteen years ago. This was obviously a problem.
