Writing contest in Rügen

Our writing group had all assembled in Rugen for a week for our last meeting of the year. This year we had also decided to do something a bit different and held a writing contest while we were staying there.

The island of Rugen was a beautiful and captivating place, and we were all hoping that it would inspire us to write something special that we could use in the competition. We were a group of mostly amateur writers from Hamburg, however a few among us did manage to earn some money from our passion. Because we all wrote in different styles, in fiction and in non fiction, The contest was going to be very open ended. Our guidelines were only one paragraph long and had been written up by a few of us so as not to be biased. We had to write a two page article or story on an aspect of Rugen and something that had inspired us, or something that we had discovered during our trip.

All together there were 21 of us for this year’s trip, a much larger number than the 12 who met in France last year. We were all staying together in the wreecher-hof.de - Rügen hotel. This made for a fun and exciting atmosphere and made me feel like I was on a school trip. The writing contest was just a bit of light hearted fun really, we were really all here just to relax and unwind for a week. Most of us were professionals of one sort or another, I was a lawyer and the friend I came with was a tax accountant back in Hamburg. Writing for most of us was an escape, a passionate hobby that we did when we had time for it. Our writers group had been set up about 5 years ago by one of the members who did manage to earn a semi-professional income from writing.

He had found that writing as a freelancer had isolated him a little bit form the rest of society and had wanted to meet other like minded writing fiends. It was as much a book club as a writing club as we all spent a lot of time talking about our favourite books, and about the authors who we admired the most. Occasionally we talked about writing techniques though, and those who were seeking publishing spoke of the various opportunities that were available. It seemed like it could be a very painful and drawn out process to get your work published, and when I heard them talking it made me thankful that I was writing just for fun. We had only held contests a couple of times before, so this was going to be different for all of us.

I eventually decided to write a fictional story of a local Rugen fisherman after seeing some of the old men fishing on the beach. It was such a romantic and captivating image that I just had to write about it. I did not win the contest, but that was fine, I really wasn’t expecting to. To stay in a Ostsee Insel Rügen for a week was more than enough of a prize for me,and something that I will definitely do again some time soon.