A few weeks ago I joined an online writing community called Reedsy. My goal was to participate in the site’s weekly prompt contest. I’ve never considered myself good at short stories. I struggle with coming up with good ideas that don’t require tons of worldbuilding, I struggle with deadlines, and I often lack the confidence to share my work. I feel this site and the prompts are really doing me a world of good.
With the Reedsy Weekly Writing Prompts competition, writers are given five prompts and a week to write a story between 1000 – 3000 words. I never thought I’d be able to write a story so quickly. Also, the thought of sharing a story that I haven’t spent months editing and rewriting would have been unthinkable a few months ago. Now I’m seeing that even if I don’t write something perfectly, people can still enjoy what I have to say. I think practicing writing short stories most weeks is really helping both my writing skills and my confidence.
Would these stories be even better if I gave them more time and attention? If I had time to re-write them, to rework them, and find the best way to tell the tale I want to tell? Probably. At the very least, they’d have much better opening lines. Seems a week is not enough time for me to think up a perfect hook for a story. Still, I’m happy with how the stories I’ve written have turned out so far. I’ve also read some pretty amazing stories from other writers on the site.
Most importantly, I’m having a lot of fun with this site and community. If anyone else here is on Reedsy, let me know, it’d be fun to read each other’s work. Even if you are not on Reedsy, my profile is still publically visible. The button below will lead to all my Reedsy stories.
At the time of writing this post, I have four stories on Reedsy. They are:
Ground Beneath My Feet vs. Ground Up In The Sky
“Don’t Worry About That, Just Go!”
I’ll take a break this week, unless I get a really good idea. I’m probably not going to stay away from this challenge for long though. At least, not until I’m ready to focus on some of my longer projects.
I’m really glad to be sharing my own writing on this blog, and hopefully that’ll become a much more regular thing from now on.
Happy Reading,
~Lauren
Jayde Holmes 