Challenging Myself To Challenges

The empty page. The blinking insertion point. The pure, brilliant white void that stares deep into your soul, beckoning for your call. The sheer scope of possibilities, formats and genres can overload the brain until it implodes and is left as empty as the paper in front of you. Writers block can become, if you allow it, an insurmountable obstacle if not broken down.

I found myself a few months ago running headfirst into writer's block. Managing to scrawl only disjointed paragraphs or random rhymes completely disconnected from each other. It happens, especially when life happens. I've spent long enough now however sat licking my literary wounds, staring at the block in front of me grow into a monolithic size. It is time to break it down and keep moving forward.

Of course, I'm not going to attempt such a feat unarmed. I have found a sledgehammer right here, on Vocal. I found and joined this site earlier this month, (May 2024) and so far have really enjoyed myself. It's so refreshing to find such a large community of writers, sharing thoughts and ideas of all different kinds. One part of Vocal that caught my eye early on was the Challenges. Contests for Vocal+ members in which a prompt is provided and you can submit a piece for consideration, and to share with the Vocal community.

Currently, I'm at a place where I don't have the confidence within myself to submit a piece for consideration and am not a Vocal+ member (yet...) I am however in a place where I am desperate to start writing and sharing my work with others again. Therefore, I have devised a cunning plan.

In order to rise to my self-imposed challenge, I must first delve deep down into the archives of contests past. This is for two reasons.

The first reason is my anticipation that this will be a foolproof way to find and enjoy some fantastic pieces, and to discover wonderful authors here. As I'm still quite new to Vocal, this seems like an effective way to find more to read, and I am very eager to do so.

Secondly, I am going to challenge myself to start writing my own entries for contests gone by. As someone with a brain that craves some form of structure, the abundance of prompts-past provides it with the kind of oil it so desperately needs to loosen up the rusting gears.

So, how will I do this? My intention is to start from the very beginning and work through. The hope is that over time I will see a clear improvement in my work and build my confidence to a level where I feel I can submit pieces to Open Challenges. I am giving myself some ground rules I need to follow, as listed below.

1) No skipping contests - Look, I'm not going to force myself to submit each piece in order of when the competitions went up. Even a precursory glance at the opening and closing dates for submissions will show that doesn't seem to be how Vocal works anyway. Depending on the topic, I might be able to knock out a piece I'm pleased with in a day or two. Conversely, it could take me weeks until I'm finally happy with another. So there will be no strict system of "I cannot possibly start on this piece until I have finished this one". I know myself well enough to realise that when I inevitably come across a prompt I find particularly challenging, if I felt I was taking too long I would become frustrated if I wasn't able to do anything else in the meantime. I could risk running right into another writer's block, which really defeats the purpose of this whole undertaking. So no self-imposed time limits, while I MUST submit a piece for each and every contest, I will not stall myself unnecessarily for the sake of an arbitrary chronological order.

2) Submissions per month - In regards to this challenge, I want to aim for at least 2-3 submissions every month. My hope is most months I will be able to produce more towards the challenge, but alas life does have a bad habit of throwing unexpected things our way sometimes. While low, I feel 2-3 submissions will be manageable. Other pieces, such as my older work I am in the process of uploading here from Medium, or pieces I write out with this challenge do not count towards the submissions per month goal.

3) No using past work for challenges - While I have a small body of published and unpublished pieces I have penned previously, I am not allowed to use any of it towards this challenge. Anything I write for the challenge must be new and written for that specific purpose. I may end up writing about an experience or topic I have delved into in the past, and that is fine. But I cannot take from the old works to put into the new, (unless making a specific reference and using it as a source for something).

So if you've made it this far, thank you! I'm really excited to get started on this challenge and if you have any suggestions, please let me know! I'm toying with the idea of giving the pieces I create for the challenge a name. All I've got so far is "My Take On (Contest Name)". Not sure if I'll go ahead with this or not.

As previously stated, I'm still quite new to Vocal, so if any of you can recommend anyone I should follow, or if you know of anyone undertaking anything similar to this please let me know!