Writing contest

I was leafing through the local news paper one day, when I noticed an advertisement. It was inviting for all people who had flair for writing, to write a short story or a poem. It should be no more than 1,500 words, and it should be an original story. The winner of the contest was to win a dream holiday to a destination of their choice with spending money, and the winning story or poem would be published. Once published it would be sold by a bookshop (one of which had a large number within its chain).

I set about starting my writing, I had lots of ideas of what to write but when I put pen to paper and stated writing, I was conscious that this was to be writing that people would read and access, so whatever I wrote in the 1,500 words had to be good.

I had lots of children’s stories that I had written when I was back in school, in school I had won awards for my creative writing skills. I got out my old work; I thought that leafing through this work would help with ideas. As I read through my old work, I realised that I would have to raise the standard if I was to win the contest.

I set to work, after looking through old work, I had made the decision of writing a children’s story and not a poem.

I wrote a story all about a plane and its passengers, I made it appealing and fun for the listener. I knew that if children were going to eventually read it, then it would have to be story that could be illustrated well. So I made the characters in the story sound colourful. They were all laughing throughout the story, for the end of the story I decided that I would finish it with a twist, to make it more interesting.

When I had finished my work, I put it in an envelope and posted it to the address stated in the advert.

The closing date was in one week’s time, so I waited with anticipation.

It took 2 weeks before I received the letter that I had been waiting for. It said that they had got my story, and that out of hundreds received mine was through to the semi final along with 2 others.

I was to go down to their offices and they would ask me to read the story to them, as would the other two finalists, then they would make their final decision.

I arrived on the day nervous, I read my story to a panel of judges (I pictured them as being children). I then was sent to the waiting area whilst they made their final decision.

Unfortunately this time I did not win the contest, but my story did come second. I was told although I did not win, they were willing to publish my book anyway. They were going to try it out on a major high street book shop as an audio book. I was pleased for I had achieved far more than I ever expected.