Monday, April 12, 2010

20 Minutes. GO!

My friend sent me an IM tonight. In conversation she told me that she was submitting a short story to a writing contest for NPR. I asked her if she thought I should submit something and she said sure. The catch was that the deadline for submission was 11:59 PM. And it was 11:39.

The only rules for the contest was that it had to be 600 words or less and use any form of the following words at least once: plant, fly, trick, button. I had no idea what to write and didn't have time to browse the other submissions.

It felt impossible. I wanted to just give up. Everything I thought of felt contrived and stupid. I told my friend that, but she kept encouraging me to keep at it. I threw my inhibitions to the wind and continued on my ridiculous premise.

Not only did I manage to write this story and submit it to them, but I did it with a good 6 minutes to spare. I felt incredibly proud of myself for accomplishing a supposedly impossible task. What's even better, I ended up not hating what I wrote (even though I'm sure it has no chance of winning) and my friend thought it was great and deserved to win.

I guess we'll see what happens. All I know is that you can do this stuff if you feel that you have to. Give yourselff 20 minutes and no excuses. Now go!

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