My wife sent me a link to a list of writing contests. When I opened it, the website popped up its own weekly contest that uses writing prompts (reedsyprompts). One of the prompts struck a chord. This was Wednesday morning and the contest deadline was Friday night. I didn’t have time to write on Wednesday and figured I would have to give it a miss (as the Brits say). Three thousand words or less may be brief, but short stories still take time to write, edit, perfect. Besides, I had just written a different short story about a week before (just hanging on to that one for now). I wanted to get back to working on my novel.
By Thursday morning the prompt had grown into a pretty good idea. Not fully formed, but a solid outline in my head. I decided to go for it. With the help of my wife and our youngest, I had it in by the deadline. This was my first short story submission, of any kind, so I was pretty excited.
One week later, I received the email above (I screen capped it and turned it into a plaque). Of course, I immediately had to know who had beaten me! Was it really better than mine? Well… it’s a pretty great story. A well deserved win. I didn’t read any of the other shortlisted stories (five, plus mine, out of 251 entries), so I can continue to assume that I placed a close second!
It’s very gratifying to be recognized. I have a lot of confidence in my abilities, but writing professionally is an uphill climb and this goes a long way to assuage nagging doubts. For that alone, the effort was worth it. But it also lets me show off more of my work, which is currently slim pickings. “Content” is much more ‘me’ than Becoming Intelligent, which was a collaborative work.
It’s a strange coincidence that they are both stories from the POV of computer programs. If you read “Content” and you read the contest prompts, you’ll probably understand why I went that direction. None of my writing ideas are about sentient programs and few have much to do with AI (I’m still writing sci fi, so there will be some). The novel I’m working on is historical fiction and the other short story I wrote is about a sleeper ship. My wife’s concerned that I’ll be thought of as the AI guy, but I’ll be chuffed if I’m thought of at all!
Please let me know… What do you think of “Content” and what do you think of the reedsyprompts competitions?
Arthur P. Dutton 