Why every new writer should participate in Vocal Challenges

If you're like me and are new to writing you probably have no idea what you're doing. (Fingers crossed, that it's not just me.)

Let's be honest, putting words together is hard. I mean not only do you have to think about it making sense grammatically, but you also want to be creative and innovative. You want to GRAB people's attention with your words. Not an easy thing to do if you really have no experience in writing.

Now, with that being said I'm assuming that you're here because you like to write; or at least enjoy it to some extent.

Let's pretend we want to be good at running. We would never start off by running a marathon or even a half marathon. That would just be crazy, we would kill ourselves. But what we would do is start training. Slow and steady, from half a mile to a mile and so on and so on. That is exactly what the vocal challenges can be. Yes, I am aware that there are high stakes involved. Cash money! But stay with me, okay! I'm about to drop a bomb. Our focus should NOT be the money. It should NEVER be the focus. If you genuinely want to get better at something you should focus on the craft. You should focus on having fun. Write for fun, write for pleasure. Write because you actually enjoy it.

I wish there were some tricks, but really the only way to get better at writing is simply by writing more.

Now, let me tell you why I think the Vocal challenges are a PERFECT way to gain experience. Have you ever seen those journals that have writing prompts in them? Yes! OKAYYY!!! That is exactly what the challenges are, they are PROMPTS. Prompts are made for people who have a hard time getting started. Like me! I never know what to write about it and it can stress me out. Inspiration comes in waves for me, but I have found that when I look at the photos of the challenges I start to see a story in my head. The challenge is to trust your instincts. As soon as you start to see the story forming you must start writing. Let the images flow onto the page. Don't worry about editing, that's what a rewrite is for.

The genius of looking at a photo is that a photo tells a story. The way we choose to interpret the story is totally up to us. 500 people can look at the same photo and they can come up with a different story. The way we see things is perceived by our own life experiences. Which means we all naturally have our own unique voice.

When we are looking at a photograph we naturally start to see things and start to piece things together. Our brains are storytelling machines. It's how we are wired. Therefore, using the photographs of the challenges can easily get us started. We don't have to reinvent the wheel and grasp for things out of thin air. I want to make it very clear that you can use this technique outside of the challenges. Say you wish to write about your childhood and don't know how to get started. Picking up a photo of you and your family, say from Christmas will help reignite memories. It will spark thoughts, feelings and that's where you begin. That's where you begin to write and the story that wishes to be told will slowly start to appear just like a polaroid.

So join the challenges, pick up a photo, and just start to write.