Saturday, October 3, 2009

Lannie Sees Red

The faith challenges are back! Yay!!

I'll explain for anyone that might stumble in here, read this and not know what a faith challenge is. The website http://www.faithwriters.com/ has quarterly writing challenges. For 10 weeks they post a subject on Thursday mornings and you can enter by writing something within 150 - 750 words that captures the subject. It's fun, it's challenging, and I really have learned alot about disciplined writing from these challenges.

The most amazing thing for me has been my apparent inability to write something that is on topic. I get an inspired idea, It sounds on topic to me, I write it out, and submit it with joy only to realize after the stories for the week are available for review... I'm sooooo off topic. What is that all about?

So this quarter, my goal is to stay on topic. We'vd had two weeks off between quarters and I've been reminding myself to focus, focus, focus as I wait for the new topic to be posted. So the new topic gets posted and it's "Red." My mind went everywhere. Red is such a vague topic. The last quarter was on all the seasons; seasons of life and seasons of the year. Red, where do you go with Red? Everything from traffic lights to bullfighting ran through my mind.

I finally settled on my story and I'm quite happy with it. But then I always am... before they get posted. I don't see how I can miss on this one though. I mean Red, as long as it has the color in it in some fashion it has to hit the mark, right?

Once the stories get posted (Thursdays at 7 am PST) anyone can go in and read the entries, but you have no idea who wrote each one. We have what we call "little gold boxes" that everyone covets. When you see a story you like you can leave the author a comment and it is displayed under their entry in a "little gold box." They are delicious, we all love them.

There are four levels of entry. Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced, and Master. In order to move from one level to the next (on the first three) you have to win 1st, 2nd, or 3rd place in the judging or be chosen as one of the 10 Editor's Choices. So far the best I've done is place in the top 40 twice and once received honorable mention. I'm still plugging along as a Beginner, but I gotta tell ya the competition is stiff! You become a Master by invitation only.

This really is great fun, so if anyone should stumble into this room and actually read my blog, head over to http://www.faithwriters.com/. You'll enjoy it.

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