The most difficult and complicated part of the writing process is the beginning.
A.B. Yehoshua
Writing something, anything, has always been on my bucket list. This year, one of my resolutions was to finally start writing. Writing is something I have just always done, and used to do a lot of. As a child I wrote and illustrated my own My Little Pony adventure, made up comic books, kept a journal where I made up fantastic aliases for everyone I knew and absolutely revelled in writing English essays. I am (finally) taking a Literature class this spring, but before that begins, I have jumped in with both feet! I am currently in a screenplay writing competition, of all things. I stumbled upon an ad for the contest online and just thought, yes! Let’s do this. So now, with round one behind me, I have to wait until June to find out if I qualify for round 2. It’s been amazing so far, and now I have an 11 page screenplay to my name, that will actually be read by other people! I’m very excited to finally be taking steps toward a literary goal, whatever it might turn out to be. In the meantime, I guess, it’s just practice and be consistent. That is the key to anything really, isn’t it? Consistency.
UPDATE
Hi everyone! Just updating this blog post on where I ended up in the competition. Jump up and down with me, because I DID qualify for round 2! Out of over 1700 entries in the first round, I was one of 300-something people who made it through to the second. I was amazed. You can’t imagine how my heart flew when I saw that I PLACED FIRST in my heat to progress to the second round! And it was my first writing competition ever, guys. My first creative writing attempt since high school!
Unfortunately, I didn’t progress to the final round, but the judges had very constructive feedback. They liked my story, my character development and my comedic style. One of them even said my writing style was poetic! Unfortunately, I didn’t make it through due to too many technical errors (cliches I didn’t even notice I used, too flowery in places, too many spaces after a period, oops!), but I am already competing in a flash fiction competition. I am going to keep pursuing this guys, and next time I enter a screenplay competition maybe I will make it to finals. The dream, guys, the dream!
Mahalo for reading,
Kristy