One of the tasks I have set myself, as I develop my writing, is to search out writing competitions and ezines and use their prompts. The purpose of this is to push myself: to write out of my comfort zone; to write beyond my preferred genres; and, to write other than from inspiration. Also, it is to ensure that I write as often as possible. I find that if I work too long on the same project, the writing becomes dry and habitual. I write to make sure I have written, rather than writing to tell a story, whereas online submissions give me the opportunity to write something different.
So I hunt around to find prompts and challenges that interest me, and then I write.
This has been working reasonably well with some aspects of my reasoning; I have managed to find something to submit to each week of the summer holidays. That makes me feel like my time is being used productively which is always good for my mental health. It has given me writing to do which is a break from the bigger projects and it has been writing that has come from an external prompt rather than my inspiration.
However, most of my submissions have not pushed me out of my comfort zone or genre – I have scoured the websites and the competitions that draw me the most tend to still be in my preferred genre. I have submitted some poetry, so that has pushed me out of my comfort zone – my poetry is juvenile at best – but again, I have found venues for my work already written, rather than taking a prompt and working with it. With the fiction work, I have been able to hunt down prompts and themes which closely match a piece of work I already have in progress. That piece is the developed to the point where I am happy(ish) with it.
One consequence of this, is that I am getting short on stories that I have already begun; certainly those that are close to being a complete story. That means that, as I continue to write, I will now have to start creating new pieces and that will lead to more voyages out of my comfort zone.
It is proving to be an interesting experiment, albeit in the early stages at the moment, and I look forward to seeing it progress.