The Write Challenge

After the first write challenge got over, I told my brother that I had participated in this contest, and that I had written 38 posts. “Very Good”, he told me, “You can now hope that nobody would read them, and forget all about them”.

Huh?

I was rather proud of several of my posts, and I had hoped people would read them. My brother explained that the purpose of a writing contest, generally is to flex the writing muscles, keep the pen going on paper and produce words. They would not be the most well-written, researched pieces. Ah. In that contest, his words made more sense. It got me thinking – what are some good ways to approach the os.me write challenge? Here are some that I could think of. 

1. Put Words on Paper – Your only goal is to win the contest. Your only job is to put words together and conjure up an article. You will increase your post count rapidly. Like my brother said, these will not be the best quality articles, but your writing muscles would have had a good workout and to top it all, you are likely to win the contest. This is fair game (and from what I understand, this is the norm in a lot of the competitions).
2. Write good quality articles – If you normally would average 1 article every one-and-a-half weeks, this is an opportunity to step up your game and write 5-10 articles during this time. You will not have a chance of winning a prize, but the external motivation of the contest means that you get a chance to write more articles than usual, at the same time not compromising on the quality of articles. 
   Note: With the additional special prize given in the second edition of the challenge, this approach has a good chance of winning a prize.

3. Advance preparation – This approach is for you if you want to write good quality articles, as well as win the prize by writing a high volume of posts. Say the next challenge is four months away. Take these four months, write as many good quality articles as you can. Post your usual os.me articles as per your schedule (e.g. once a week), but retain the rest of the articles for the challenge.
4. Parkinson’s Law Enabler – This has the same flavor as #2, but instead of writing 5-10 articles, try and push Parkinson’s law to its limit, and try and write as many good articles as possible.

Can you suggest other ways to approach the write challenge? Do mention them in the comments!

Image Credit: Lisa from Pexels