Put Your Writing Skills to the Test

by Joe Bunting | 13 comments

If you want to become a better writer, you need to practice deliberately, and one of the best ways to practice writing deliberately is by submitting your work for publication. Submitting acts as a kind of test of your writing skills, and studies have shown that people improve at a skill faster when they're tested.

I know submitting can be scary. You feel vulnerable, like all your insecurities and flaws are exposed. However, if you want to get published, you need to learn to submit your work, and not just when it's perfect.

Today, you can make a breakthrough in your writing. You just need to submit your work.

Let's Write a Short Story Contest

Test Yourself

For the next ten days, we'll be hosting a contest for writers who want to put their short story writing skills to the test. At the end, we will choose the best short story as the winner. If you’d like to get a sense of what we’re looking for, get a copy of the book Let’s Write a Short Story.

If your piece is cho­sen, you will receive the following:

At the end of the month, we’ll publish your edited piece on the Write Practice where hun­dreds of peo­ple will get to read you at your very best. For example, read last month’s win­ner, Doc O'Connor's Relay.

It gets better, though. In the next few months, we plan to collect all of these pieces and pub­lish them in a book. Real paper, real cover, real ink. So if your piece is cho­sen, you will be able to con­sider your­self a published author.

Ready to get started? For rules and details see this page: Let's Write a Short Story Contest.

The Last Contest Of the Year

For the last year, we have been hosting the Show Off Writing Contest, where once a month, you can put your skills to the test. This will be the last writing contest we host this year.

If you're inter­ested in being published (in print)? If you would like to get bet­ter at the writ­ing craft by work­ing with an edi­tor? Do you enjoy a lit­tle friendly com­pe­ti­tion? If you want to win an Amazon gift card and a couple of free books?

Then this contest might be for you.

Photo by Canned Muffins

Joe Bunting is an author and the leader of The Write Practice community. He is also the author of the new book Crowdsourcing Paris, a real life adventure story set in France. It was a #1 New Release on Amazon. Follow him on Instagram (@jhbunting).

Want best-seller coaching? Book Joe here.

13 Comments

  1. Unisse Chua

    So is this like the last Show Off Contest as well? 🙂

    Reply
    • Joe Bunting

      Hi Unisse. Yes, at least for this year. We may try something new and different next year.

  2. Beck Gambill

    The last contest? No! I was hoping I had several more shots to win! I guess I’ll just have to give it my best shot. 🙂

    Reply
    • Joe Bunting

      Yes! You should, Beck. I promise it’s not the last one forever, though, just of this iteration. 

  3. Steph

    I am disappointed that this is the last one of the year already and that there is no theme. I like reading different takes on a central idea and having something to focus on when I’m writing.

    Reply
    • Joe Bunting

      Sorry, Steph. 🙁 

      Do you want me to make up a theme just for you? 🙂

    • Steph

      I was getting to the point where I would try to guess them…I had this month narrowed down to Back-to-School, Harvest, or Pregnancy 🙂 . Guess I can pick one!

    • Joe Bunting

      Ha! Yes, I’m predictable, aren’t I? I was going to go with Back-to-School. Great guess. 🙂 

  4. Marla

    Miss Maizie County’s Public Disgrace

    It all started because Mama got caught standing
    buck-naked in the picture window of her living room.  The sheriff come out and talked to me about
    it.  Her house set across from Harmony
    Baptist and the Sunday morning crowd had gotten an up-close-and-personal look
    at her.  Even hell-fire-and-brimstone can’t
    compete with a naked lady standing atop a divan, kind of spread eagled and
    pressed up against a plate glass window.

    After the sheriff’s visit, I brought mama to my
    house. She had days when she was fine, and then there were days when she was as
    lost as a ball in tall grass. She’d wander. 

    She’d forget who I was. When I found her wading with the cows in the
    neighbor’s pond, I called on Doc Patton, who put his hand on my shoulder and
    told me to check her into the nursing home. Which I did.

    The story should have ended there, with Mama in the
    rest home, me alone in my trailer, and Brother Debo at the pulpit, preaching to
    the fully clothed.

    But then Brother Debo come by.  I opened my door and there he was, dressed like
    he was fixing to preach a funeral.

    “Miss Huggins,” he said. “I don’t believe we’ve met.
    I’m Ransom Debo. I was wondering if we might have a little talk.”

    Once inside, I swept the magazines off the divan and
    motioned for him to sit.  “Florene,” I
    said.  “My name’s Florene.”

    I sat facing him. “What can I help you with?” I asked.

    He took my hand. 
    “Doctor Patton mentioned you had to put your mother away.  I’m so sorry. 
    I didn’t know her well, but she did visit me at the church a time or
    two. Lovely woman.”

    “Wait a minute, preacher,” I said. “Don’t go acting
    like you cared about Mama. If that was the case, you wouldn’t have called the
    law on her like you done.”

    He let loose of my hand and fiddled with his tie
    tack.  It was a tiny gold bible with a
    ruby where the “O” in holy should have been. 
    I looked right at him.  He wasn’t
    much older than me. Maybe thirty-two or thirty-three.  And handsome. Even in that preacher get-up,
    he was handsome.

    “Let’s start over Miss Hugg…, I mean Florene.  I’m truly concerned about your mother.” He
    cleared his throat. “However, there is another reason I’m here.”

    “Big surprise,” I said.

    He kept going. 
    “Your mother’s house sits across from the sanctuary, and our
    congregation needs the space. If we had your mother’s house, we could move the
    adult Sunday school classes there.”

    I remember looking in his eyes. They were green with
    gray rims.  Kind of like cat eyes.

    “Well,” I said. “I ain’t giving Mama’s property
    away.”

    Brother Debo smiled. One of his front teeth was
    chipped. “I find prayer helpful when I have an important decision to make,” he
    said.

    “Pray all you want,” I said.  “I’ll be figuring out what Mama’s house is
    worth.”

    The next week Brother Debo showed up again.

    “Just stopped by to see if you’ve decided anything,”
    he said when I answered the door.

    He sat at my table, and after a bit he stopped
    talking like a preacher. He sounded kind of regular, like somebody you’d meet
    at the Piggly Wiggly on double coupon night.

    “You ever been married, Florene?” he asked.

    “I was seventeen,” I said, “I’d just been crowned
    Miss Maizie County for the third time. 

    Ain’t nobody beat my record, not in all these years.

    “My husband was one of the judges.  He didn’t date me until after I was crowned,
    I want you to know, so I earned my title fair and square. 

    “It ain’t a remarkable story. He drank beer like it
    was oxygen and he run around on me.” I shook my head.  “So, I left him and got my old name back.”

    Brother Debo took my hand for the second time since
    I’d met him.

    “You know, Florene, I don’t think divorce is so bad.
    If God can forgive lying and stealing, I don’t see why he can’t allow for a few
    failed nuptials.”

    He opened up to me. Started talking about his
    shut-in wife, how she was practically bed-ridden with some mysterious muscle
    disorder. He mentioned how they weren’t able to have relations. Had a way of
    telling it, made you think he was a saint for staying with her.

    I started watching the road for his car, hoping he’d
    come by.  Which he did, late one Friday.  He showed up on my steps, his Lincoln nowhere
    in sight.  He followed me inside,
    circling his arms around me when I turned to him, and leaning me up against the
    paneling.

    “It’s wrong, I know it’s wrong, but you’re all I
    think about,” he said.

    I swear I almost called him Brother Debo, but I knew
    that two people about to do what we were would not be encouraged by religious
    titles.

    I called him Ransom for the first time.

    He kissed me, and I sagged against him.

    “Are you sure you want to do this?” he asked.

    “I could show you Grandma Cant’s quilt,” I said, and
    felt my face go red.  “It ain’t much but
    I could show you.” I pointed down the hall. “It’s on my bed.

    “See,” I said, when we got to my room, “it ain’t
    much to look at.”

    “It’s beautiful,” he said, looking at me instead of
    the quilt.  Then I laid down beside him,
    my three Miss Maizie County banners hanging on the wall above me, and realized
    I was about to become a great sinner.

    Damned if I didn’t fall in love. We talked on the
    phone every day, and we made love in my bed, and we didn’t tell a soul.

    I sold Mama’s house, for too little money, on a
    Wednesday morning. The deacons shook my hand, and I walked out into the October
    sun, clutching a cashier’s check.

    I called Ransom, and he didn’t pick up.  I called again, and he told me his secretary
    had  seen my number come up too many
    times on his phone bill, in the early morning hours and late at night, and she was
    talking.

    It must’ve been true. I was getting snubbed
    everywhere I went.  On Saturday, Ransom’s
    wife came to my house, leaning on a cane, and yelled at me, saying I’d seduced
    her husband same as Delilah troubled Sampson. I have one thing to say about
    that.  For an invalid, she sure had a
    good set of lungs.

    I called Ransom when she left, but his number had
    been disconnected. I drove by the church. The sign announcing Sunday’s sermon read:
    Genesis – It Was The Woman Who Sinned.

    I knew then that Ransom wasn’t coming back. It hurt
    the way fire hurts: both sharp and lingering. 
    I bought a bottle of Wild Turkey and went to the river and drank.

    The next morning, the sun spilled across Harmony
    Baptist. I could hear the choir from my spot inside Mama’s house, which hadn’t
    been touched since she left. Ransom’s sermon was long and punctuated by loud amens.
    It was after noon when the invitation began. 
    I climbed onto the divan then, and pushed back the dusty curtains. The
    sun felt warm on my naked breasts.

    I leaned against the window, listening as the last threads
    of  “Whosoever Will May Come” faded and
    then died, and ached for those church doors to open.

     

     
     

    Reply
    • Marla4

      Thanks Joe! Doing it now.

  5. Thuy

    Thx this help me a lot.

    Reply
  6. heartysmiley

    Hi, can you give me some update on this, Im interested in participate in this kind of events its not about the freebies but i love to improve my skill so i can be a author someday… its really my dream to publish my own novel? although i have some problem technically but i know i will improve as the time goes by 🙂 – Heartysmiley 🙂

    Reply

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