Finally a writing contest where avoiding your writing pays off!
Research shows that writing about painful experiences helps us move on. So why not enter this contest and get any lingering writing-related trauma out of your system. And a maybe win a free book.
Tell us about your worst experience with resistance: a full-fledged writer’s block, endless distractions, persistent procrastination, devious Saboteur, etc.
This is your chance for catharsis, completion and a FREE copy of Around the Writer’s Block, which guarantees you won’t have to go through That again.
That’s right, if you’re the winner of the Worst Writer’s Resistance Ever contest and this free copy of Around the Writer’s Block doesn’t keep you from going through the same horrible experience of writing resistance again, I’ll refund every penny you pay for it.
Contest Rules
Rule #1 Have fun!
Rule #2 Logistics: The contest opens June 14 and closes July 5, 2013. Subscribers to my Imagination InkLinks ezine newsletter got advance notice, the opportunity to submit early (I’ve already received entries) and a rebate offer – so you might want to subscribe.
The winner will be announced and must pick up her/his free copy of Around the Writer’s Block at the Rewire Your Brain to Write More workshop at Subtext bookstore in St. Paul on July 9, 7 to 8:30 pm.
If you live more than 100 miles from St. Paul and you write the best Worst Writing Resistance Ever entry, I’ll contact you about getting your free book to you.
BTW: The Rewire Your Brain to Write More workshop is free and open to the public, so please bring your writer friends. After all, you’ll want a cheering section if your entry is the “winning worst”.
Rule #3 There are NO more rules!
Contest Guidelines
You can write fictionalized memoir, autobiographical fiction, poetry or any other genre you choose. Write about a time when you wanted to write, but somehow never quite got around to it.
Shoot for no more than 300 words, so you don’t end up wallowing in the memory too long. I’m not going to be a stickler on word count. Enter as many times as you want.
Shoot for a humorous perspective. If you like, start with “You think that’s bad, one time I…” Or watch the Sad Cat Diary video for inspiration.
Use this as an opportunity to laugh at your resistance. Or cry and be done with it.
When you’re finished, email a copy to me at Rosanne@RosanneBane.com and let me know if you would like your response posted here or kept anonymous. (Depending on the number of entries, I may not be able to post them all.)
Then print a copy for yourself and burn it! Promise yourself you’re never going there again.
Of course, resistance never goes away; we just get better at responding to it. Entering this contest will show you that humor can be one way to move through resistance.
Bane of Your Resistance 
What’s It Going To Take?
I would like to think I have had some pretty good ideas for a sci-fi story that takes place in the mountains. Characters, locations, plot, conflict, even back stories have come to me in one form of inspiration or another. Getting it all down has been proving to be the problem.
Then I heard an author on “Tellin’ Ellen’, a local public radio show, explain what my problem was. She even offered a solution to my resistance!
Unfortunately for me I got about as far as the exercise to ‘feel free to write as badly as you can’. So I did. In my excitement for having actually written something in years I showed my wife. It didn’t help matters when she quite honestly told me it was some of my best writing!
My main ‘muse’ is a 17 hand thoroughbred horse named Junior. I regularly work as a carpenter, but to supplement my income and pursue another interest I also work with horses at a local stable. It was while riding Junior on the trails near the facility that the main story line came to me. While on his back I could ‘channel’ my fictional world.
The primary location name and the source of its origin were inspired by a woman that lives in the mountains near the community of York, Montana. I would occasionally catch a glimpse of her and her dogs from a great distance, but I had never met her.
While developing the locale for my story, a fictionalized past and future of the area around York, this mysterious lady provided the inspiration as a character that would have been similarly elusive to the early inhabitants that are the ancestors of my protagonists. Her actions, unseen and unknown by the characters, led not only to the name of a prominent location in the account, it is also the name of the work. Well, at this point it is the working title of a vision of a work.
So for the past couple months in the form of very regular email from “The Bane of Your Resistance” I have learned about why I don’t write. I have learned what I could be doing about not writing, too. But I haven’t. (I have learned, however, Rosanne practices what she teaches.)
Then two weeks ago Junior’s owners gave him to me! And the stable owner said I could keep him at the arena for no more than what I was already doing around the place!
The next day while riding in the mountains I met the mysterious woman for the first time. While having a great visit I learned her father had been a literature professor at the nearby prestigious college. I reluctantly told her about how she had served as an influence to the name sake of a story I was developing. Without giving the name away just yet, she looked at me surprised and said she had saved an animal nearby in just such a fashion.
So, what’s it going to take for me to write it down?
Curtis Freeman York, Montana 406-403-2589
PS A note to Rosanne. Thanks so much for what you do for us. Thanks for willing to share your personal life alongside your wonderful professionalism. You are very kind.
Also, this is a true account.
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Curtis: Thanks for your entry to the Worst Writing Resistance Ever contest.
You are most welcome! I get a lot out of writing the blog, so thank you for your appreciation and for reading. Isn’t it delightful how these win-win situations can arise in so many places? In the mountains, in a stable, in a blog…
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