The past week gave me both anxiety and thrill.
We have had a phenomenal week on os.me. Thank you for making the Write Choice Challenge a resounding success. In the past seven days, the community published about 400 posts and 4400 comments!
It’s only proper then that I scouted the internet to curate more writing contests and opportunities for you. Ergo, to honour your participation, I have five (4+1) writing contests and opportunities that pay (as much as ₹14.70 lakh or $20,000)!
If you have ever wanted to write a book, or a 100-word flash fiction, or a three-line poem, I have found just the opportunities for you.
But first, enrich your life and hone your craft with our weekly pick of os.me blogs.
Transformative Ideas
What Held Me Up from Writing, for Months: Writer’s block, impostor syndrome, procrastination, self-doubt — we have all faced these and then some. Hritik writes about successfully battling the distractions so that you can actually start writing.
Parkinson’s Law and The Write Challenge: Cyril Northcote Parkinson coined the Parkinson’s Law adage in a humorous article that he wrote back in the ’50s. It states that work expands to fill the time allotted for its completion. But you can avoid the trap. Prahalad Rajkumar explains the importance of a deadline and offers tips on establishing a good one! In short, accomplish all your pending writing and other projects with these simple tips.
Why I Write and then Rewrite and then Write: Shivani Kohli shares the joys and disappointments of writing. Perfectionism is a trap unless it is about ‘understanding’, do you understand? Read it.
Creative Writing Tips by Swamiji: Amit Kumar has collected a few invaluable writing tips offered by the bestselling author, Swamiji. He shares those for the greater good. Writing an engaging piece is so much easier now.
A Monk’s Memoir—4: Now that you have enough tips to begin your writing journey, one important aspect to honing one’s craft is — practice. However, Sandeep Sibs discovered that merely practising a skill doesn’t make a man perfect. What does? Find out.
The Art of Writing Poetry — a Healing Therapy: I have pulled up this blog on the stream of consciousness writing as a meditative and therapeutic tool, by Chitrotpala Chaitali Dash. I hope you discover the cathartic side of writing and several tips on good writing.
Writing with Mindfulness: I pulled up Ria R’s piece because sometimes mindfulness is needed over catharsis. She warns that a writer, especially a new writer, could become self-absorbed and self-centred. Mindfulness can help keep that in check.
Writing or Fishing: Finally, here’s a tip: Don’t let what they say affect you much. Writing is like fishing, says Divya Pai. She draws an analogy between the two and concludes with an important observation that you can extrapolate to just about everything in life — Not everybody loves eating fish and that’s fine. Here’s how to write and enjoy it, too!
Creative Writing Delved: On a lighter note, Sundaram Venkatesh’s playful piece will motivate you to not take yourself too seriously.
Struggling with self-discline, writer's block, or procrastination, this post is for the writer in you tell a friendWisdom From Swamiji
Struggling with Self-Discipline?: Well, all creative people do, because of several reasons — let-me-first-complete-other-unimportant-tasks syndrome, and so on. So, here are three tips to get your train back on track because mindfulness alone doesn’t cut it. The best spiritual leader from India, our dearest Swamiji, helps keep the kettle on the boil.
Change: Is there a way to change ourselves or the others around us? The question has three answers — yes, depends, and the “long and real” answer, says Swamiji. He also mentions the tool that he uses for distraction-free writing.
Watch This Now!
5 International Writing Contests and Opportunities
By now, you are ready to make the most of these five (4+1) international writing opportunities that pay. The deadline for each is sufficiently away, and these are all no-fee writing competitions.
The Commonwealth Short Story Prize: If you are from the Commonwealth nations, this short story contest is for you. The winner gets $6832 (£5,000), and there will be regional winners, too, who will get £2,500 each. If the winning entry is a translation, the translator receives additional prize money. All the winning entries also get published online by Granta magazine. Submission deadline: 1st November, 2021. For all the info, click here.
The Dream Foundry Contest: No matter where in the world you live, if you are a new writer (less than 4000 words of paid fiction to your name and have earned less than $320 from those words), this is for you! The Foundry is accepting speculative fiction (sci-fi, fantasy, weird fiction, etc.). Three prizes of $1,000, $500 and $200 each. Submission deadline: October 11. For more info, click here and check out the section called Writing Contest Guidelines.
Sejong Writing Competition: The Sejong Cultural Society has announced the international sijo competition for the first time. Sijo is a traditional three-line Korean poetic form organized technically and thematically by line and syllable count. Three prizes of $500, $250 and $100 each. Submission deadline: September 30, 2021. For resources, info, how to write, and the submission form, click here.
The International Short Tales Contest: This 100-or-less-words contest organized by the César Egido Serrano Foundation is your chance of winning $20,000. Three more prizes of $2,000 are at stake too. Submission deadline: September 30, 2021 (Spanish Peninsular Time). Click here for details.
os.me Karma Program: This one is the closest to my heart. os.me is probably the only writing platform that lets both the writers and readers earn through its Karma Program. The spiritual community of kind and truthful people earns by publishing blogs and commenting on posts. It’s a troll-free and judgement-free zone. If you are new here, you can read all about the os.me Karma Program, here. There is no deadline because it is an ongoing program. It’s the most rewarding thing on the internet.
The Write Choice Winners
Before I announce the winners of the Write Choice Challenge, allow me to remind you that the aim of these contests is to keep you motivated to write, build discipline, and have fun. All of you, my precious os.me family, made the challenge a resounding success. You put in time and energy in sharing a piece of your heart and mind, for that is what writing is all about. You also invested time in reading these gems, for what is a writer without their readers. So many of you started the challenge but missed writing on one of the days, but several of you completed the challenge.
I am delighted to announce Neelam Om has won the competition. She published 78 posts in these spirited five days. Hritik (70 posts), Sandeep Sibs (56) and Prahalad Rajkumar (44) are the other winners. Among the readers, Luv Sarpal outdid everyone with 212 comments. Congratulations!
As an aside, was it fair that Lord Ganesha went round His parents and Lord Kartikeya actually went around the universe, yet Lord Ganesha won? Let me know what you think in the comments below.
Until next…
PS: I have anxiety because I haven’t finished reading all the articles yet!
PPS: A noteworthy writer will be joining our community this Friday. Stay around, you don’t want to miss his blog!
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