Hone Writing Skills Via Entering Competitions

There's nothing like setting ourselves targets - New Year's Resolutions or not - and the continued honing of our writing skills should be a priority. 

One of the easiest methods is to write outside of our comfort zones. It truly makes us think about sentence structure, characterisation, and speech patterns other than those used as a norm.

However, writers are often strapped for time, and so writing as an exercise can too easily be pushed down the workaday list of priorities. 

Writing specifically for competitions circumvents this by offering a targeted set of constraints: market, wordcount, theme, deadline. Writers merely need to add the creative spark.

Across on his blog, member Stuart Aken runs a massive Resources page which includes a link to a substantial Creative Writing Contests Table, updated on a regular basis. Even better, many are free to enter; all offer prizes.

So what's stopping you?


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