| Greetings and salutations!
In the early Roman calendar, September was the seventh month. By that reckoning, I am ten months ahead instead of sprinting from two months behind, trying to catch up to a deadline.
I participated in a writing sprint contest last week with one prompt per round, then five minutes to write a story that left the reader wanting more. The genre was up to the participants. The host played electronic music in the background with a distracting beat – so much so to me that it infiltrated one of my stories. We had 90 seconds to read our stories to the group before a vote via Survey Monkey. Unused writing muscles flexed? Check. Challenge accepted. Endorphins triggered.
Participants seemed to be:
- Extremely good at using dictation to process their authorly thoughts, or
- Possessed nimble keyboarding skills well above 60wpm, or
- Had programmed their AI services to write from prompts – we could/should have a discourse about AI, but I will leave that for another time.
I was the only participant who wrote a rhyme and the only one who took one of the prompts literally. Color me surprised that my rhyme-on-the-spot and taking ellipses at face value, dot dot dot, earned me unexpected entrance to the next round as a runner-up.
Whether you are sprinting to catch up to a deadline or sprinting to finish your writing project I hope you enjoy the journey and stretch a less oft’ used writing muscle along the way. |
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Carol Baxter, APW President
Email Carol
To read the remainder of the Typewriter, click here.
Arizona Professional Writers 