Micro creative writing, with a bit of competition and restrictions?

[MarshaMarshaMarshmellow]

Hello everyone!

A bit random, but I like the idea of being given a small challenge (e.g. "write the story behind this photo"), maybe with a few extra restrictions to make it a fun challenge, and maybe with an element of competition (to motivate me).

Does this exist? Would anyone be able to point me in the right direction?

My motivation is pretty much to use this as "art therapy" for myself and have a little creative outlet that can fit into my life and give me something new to think about. I haven't really done any creative writing since I was much younger, and even then I specialised in "snippets" rather than having the stamina for attempting anything long or big. So this isn't about a route to becoming a published writer - I claim no such ambition or no talent! It's just a personal thing I'd like to do for myself, and see how I like it. But I need a little push.

Thank you :-)

[Copen]

I've been taking part in NYC Midnight and Globe Soup and find them great for the reasons you've given.

NYC Midnight is comparatively expensive, but they do give judges' feedback on your entries. Globe Soup is much cheaper, and once you have paid for one competition, they also have free competitions you can enter.

I really enjoy the prompts, competition element (and chance of winning money!), short word counts and deadlines. It's got me writing again after a pause of several years.

I also looked at Writing Battle but don't think it's my kind of thing, the genres seemed a bit niche.

[MarshaMarshaMarshmellow]

Thanks @Copen for those recommendations - I would never have stumbled across those sites and it looks really interesting!

[Copen]

No problem, they were recommended on a previous thread on this forum and I got them from there.

I joined a few Facebook groups for submitting work to literary journals etc and am a bit shocked by it. They seem to think they are doing you a favour to print you in their digital journal - they don't pay, and think giving you a copy of the resulting pdf is more than enough payment, in fact very generous. I think I'll stick to competitions!

[Luckydog7]

Op that sounds interesting. Why don't we try something like that on here? Someone (you?) Gives a writing prompt and everyone else writes something. Maybe give a word limit of 100-500 words or something?

I'm currently doing a writing workshop and would be happy to quote the exercises we have done.

[LoreleiG]

I used to love doing this at school!