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CONTEST ENDED – Thank you for submitting your stories!

#46: Write It Down

Whether you've been composing stories for years, have a number of published books under your belt, or are just getting started on your craft, if you're here to write — you're a writer.

Like our community, our prompts this week are all about writers at different stages. Maybe you'll pick the one that most relates to you at this time, one that provides a retrospective into previous legs of your writing journey, or one that looks ahead to future goals. In any case, we're looking forward to reading your words, writers.

🥇 Winner

“Turf Wars” by CMF Wright

🏆 Winner of Contest #46

They don't want to reconcile. They don't want to like each other. They can't even share a pen without fighting. For the sixth time that morning, I separate the bunnies, stroke their foreheads, and whisper the universal mantra of bunny bonding: This is a happy warren. You are happy bunnies. Happy bunnies don't bite their friends. "I think you should bond them at my place," says my sister. She sits behind the pen, her trademark Moleskine in her lap—black, of course; she wouldn’t be caught dead with anything beige. Ever si...

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⭐️ Shortlisted

“The Agony of Forgetting” by Elle Clark

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #46

The last line we wrote together was utter horseshit but I can’t bring myself to delete it. The stars shone forth from his eyes like lasers. I stare at the horizontal blinking line for so long that the screen saver comes on but I still can’t hit the delete button. Drivel. Meaningless drivel. Worse, I can’t remember how serious it had been, either. Had we known how crap it was and laughed? Had we thought we were challenging Shakespeare and rejoiced? I can’t believe I don’t remember. 18 months and I’d finally bee...

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“The path to Hell” by Agathe Burrier

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #46

Lili glanced around as she helped herself to a biscuit. It wasn’t any good – rancid, and old – but she hadn’t come to him for his cooking. The air was quivering hard all around her, hot and heavy against her skin. She couldn’t make out much of her surroundings. “I heard that you’re done writing”, she said, and watched him turn around to look at her curiously. “I suppose I am”, he agreed pensively, making his way back to her. “It feels strange, to finally be able to say such a thing.” They both looked at the Book. From the outside, it was pla...

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“Sequel to the Apocalypse” by Joshua G. J. Insole

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #46

1Baldahr Seltro didn’t mean to cause The Great Undead Uprising of the third century (third century post-Reckoning, that was) but cause it he did.To understand how Mr Seltro caused this slight little mishap, one must first understand the difference between intelligence and wisdom. You see, Baldahr possessed plenty of the former — bucketloads, in fact — but almost none of the latter. Intelligence, they say, is knowing a tomato is a fruit, not a vegetable. Wisdom, as the saying goes, is knowing not to put a tomato in a fruit salad. (Not that it...

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“dead cat” by Masha Kurbatova

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #46

I’m laying in bed, not so much a bed, a bedframe with a memory foam mattress that accelerated my spinal problems all through adolescence. The scene is familiar, it’s nightime, the yellow light bounces off yellow walls and reflects off the window and even the moon shies away, and there’s a ladybug making dumb circles around the room, droning like the teeniest fighter jet. My carpet is nasty -- I never bothered to vacuum all the years I lived here. Old drawings from high school are tacked up here and there, pretty faces disto...

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“Writers' Group Therapy” by Bowen Bowie

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #46

Writers’ Group Therapy. I wrote about the day my mother vanished because Mr Timms who ran the group said to write about something true. My mother was a woman of habit. When I walked in the door after school, she was always at the kitchen table. She was always just finishing up making a plate of cheese and gherkin sandwiches for me. She would look up as I walked in and say, without a smile, “I wasn’t expecting you yet. You can pour your own cordial”. Of course, she was expecting me. Our routine never varied. Until the day it did, the day it...

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This week's prompts

Write a story about someone experiencing a lightbulb moment of writing inspiration.

Short Story – 140 stories

Write a story that takes place in a writer's circle.

Character – 72 stories

Write a story about an author who has just published a book.

Adults – 88 stories

Write a story about someone returning to their craft after a long hiatus.

Narrative – 185 stories

Write a story about someone who has just finished writing their first story/book.

Adults – 133 stories

Stories

“Turf Wars” by CMF Wright

🏆 Winner of Contest #46

They don't want to reconcile. They don't want to like each other. They can't even share a pen without fighting. For the sixth time that morning, I separate the bunnies, stroke their foreheads, and whisper the universal mantra of bunny bonding: This is a happy warren. You are happy bunnies. Happy bunnies don't bite their friends. "I think you should bond them at my place," says my sister. She sits behind the pen, her trademark Moleskine in her lap—black, of course; she wouldn’t be caught dead with anything beige. Ever si...

128 comments 128

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“Blood, Sweat, and Tears.” by Batool Hussain

Submitted to Contest #46

‘Mama’s decisive girl,’ her mother used to say. ‘You got it from your daddy. A tenacious soul he was.’ It was her daddy’s dream, after all, to see her become a writer, but God willingly, both of them left her early, too early thought Rosé. A tear streamed down her face, then another. Quickly, she wiped them away.It was when the clock struck twelve that Rosé realized it was the meeting day with Mr. Danniell. Grabbing the essential documents, she hurried down the staircase straight into the car. The hippocampus in her brain kept indi...

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“8:46 Peaceful Assembly” by Emily Nghiem

Submitted to Contest #46

“Single-file! Whoa, buddy, back up. Around the barrier. Everyone, Single-file!”The line captain herded us like cattle, directing traffic toward four separate sound stages. I didn’t expect a mixed team of volunteers and police to handle such a diverse crowd of thousands at the Houston rally.“How did they organize all this in three days?” I asked my friends, who had talked me into videotaping the event. Justine and Paula showed off for the camera, blowing kisses in full body paint. Justine flashed her body, covered in an ocean of metallic blue...

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“Silver Crown” by Sophia Wayne

Submitted to Contest #46

The cold bit at his skin as the breeze hit its hardest smacking in and out tearing through the very fabric of his leather vest. On a mine in the land of the Neroshi, the snow was falling again. He looked up to the sky and felt a shiver go through his spine. He tightened his fur coat around himself. Even after spending all of his life fighting through the cold in the land blessed by Thirel, the god of the sea. Even with the blood of the First Gods running through his veins, the cold still hammered his skin and dried his lips.The axe...

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“Half the Truth” by A. Y. R

Submitted to Contest #46

It was on the day the stars began to die when I first met him. He knew of my future, yet I had no recollection of his past. Somehow, strangely, I knew him. Like one knows a reflection they see in the mirror. Even though he looked nothing like me, I recognized a part of myself as I looked into his eyes…*** I began trapped in the time rift, slowly decaying in my prison, the ship’s oxygen depleting. My reality was fading, and I would soon be erased from existence. I could only hope that happened before I began suffocating. In a few m...

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“Perhaps one day...” by Yoomi Ari

Submitted to Contest #46

I felt a raindrop fall against my skin, followed by several others, but I didn't have the heart to go back inside. I moved over and sat on the edge of the roof, crossing one leg over the other, leaning back on my palms to observe the remaining constellations uncovered from the clouds. The moon hung full and hazy beneath an eclipse of blazing stars, allowing me to see the rooftops of the identically bleak buildings surrounding my own. My body was a fountain for the incoming rain, the water making my eyelids heavy. I closed my dull grey e...

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“Dear Wren...” by Mira Caplan

Submitted to Contest #46

What I'm about to say sounds like a line out of an over-dramatized, teen romance novel.I actually can't believe that this happened to me. Oh. My. Goodness. (Katri, chillax. Katri, stop hyperventilating. Katri, CALM DOWN!!!) Sorry about this...I'm just REALLY happy right now. No, I didn't win American Idol. (I'm not even old enough! Yet...) I didn't enter America's Got Talent or The Voice... (That's still on my list, though!) Ok. This is the first page, and it's such a coincidence that there's a new notebook for a new chapter of my ...

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“To my dearest brother” by Sophia Wayne

Submitted to Contest #46

Dear Lucas, I don’t know what to say here. I feel really stupid but you know me and you know that I can’t leave spring creek town without finally letting go of all my pain. I’m sorry that I have been running away for so long. First I want to tell you how much I love you and miss you. It’s been six years since I have seen your face. But I still remember that untidy red hair that mom always told you to comb and how dad always said you were kissed by fire, your beautiful almond-shaped eyes, your daring dimpled smile and the way you l...

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“Renaissance” by Phoebe Barr

Submitted to Contest #46

She asked me, last night, to tell her a story. She’s changed since the day I pulled her out of the collapsing star that was our home. Since I snatched her from his gaping black-hole clutches and fled, holding her too close and too tight like I was turning her back into a part of me, since I drove haphazard and wild out of the state with her clamped in my arms, swerving through traffic and through tears. Her eyes are a little less wide and afraid. Her voice is a tiny bit clearer. She asked me to tell her a bedtime story. It’s not the kind o...

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“Enjoy This Time” by BeInspiredAbstracts/Etsy SarahGreenwood

Submitted to Contest #46

JournalDay #1 My therapist said I should write stories about my feelings/experiences as part of a cognitive behavioral therapy. So here goes. I’ll try anything.One of my favorite activities when I was young was dragging my old things out to the curb for someone to haul away as one of their new possessions. I’d find a piece of cardboard in the garage and use black spray paint to carefully spell the word “FREE,” an...

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“The End of All Days” by Izzy Kitsune

Submitted to Contest #46

Thunk. Another book is dropped onto my desk. “This one needs to be completed by tomorrow morning”. I look up and see my boss walking away. I exhale slowly, trying to calm myself. All day, my boss had been dropping more and more books to be edited on my desk as if I wasn’t already in the middle of other books too! Not that I wasn’t grateful to have gotten this job though, not at all. I had graduated English Literature in Burfield, England when I was 21, and soon after, I had landed this job in editing! Still, I had so much work to do and hard...

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“The Agony of Forgetting” by Elle Clark

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #46

The last line we wrote together was utter horseshit but I can’t bring myself to delete it. The stars shone forth from his eyes like lasers. I stare at the horizontal blinking line for so long that the screen saver comes on but I still can’t hit the delete button. Drivel. Meaningless drivel. Worse, I can’t remember how serious it had been, either. Had we known how crap it was and laughed? Had we thought we were challenging Shakespeare and rejoiced? I can’t believe I don’t remember. 18 months and I’d finally bee...

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“Enemy of the State” by Nandan Prasad

Submitted to Contest #46

The woman was nervous. She was constantly fidgeting; crossing and uncrossing her legs, adjusting her hair, glancing at the thin sheets of paper in her hand.Her name was Aishwarya and she had come here to get her first book published. Her name was called and she jumped up and hurried to the little booth at the end of the corridor.“Close the door and sit down.” The person inside was a tall, thin lady. She had high cheekbones and expensive silver earrings. Aishwarya thought she looked rather like a Victorian era noble or a famous singer. They w...

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“Kin” by Illisha Flint

Submitted to Contest #46

Muddy shoes dangled above the trickling stream. Attached to the shoes was a trio of voices, badgering and exclaiming and remarking. Their discussion was disturbing the peace of the forest- or so an outsider would say. To them, they were entertaining the trees. “See, I have the perfect relationship between the protagonist and her friend. And yet, every single backstory I try to come up with for either of them is just...sooooo cliche.” “Tell me the basis of the backstory for your protagonist.” “Her parents just died-” A sharp intake of air...

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“A Queen's Crown” by Amiable Sorceress

Submitted to Contest #46

Mia and I walked through Queen's Crossing trail, pushing away overhead branches to clear a path. Mia looked into my eyes questioningly, but I turned away to focus on the trail. "I heard Queen's Crossing has a magnificent castle to the left of here, almost perfectly preserved!" Mia garbled on about the palace as we neared a sign. It was a bright day, and the woodland seemed even more tranquil than it was yesterday morning. "You go ahead. I'll meet you here in a couple...

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$50

Prize money

618

Contest entries

0

Stories

Ended on 23:59 - Jun 19, 2020 EST

Won by CMF Wright 🏆

Title: Turf Wars

Submissions must be between 1,000 - 3,000 words and will be approved and published on Reedsy Prompts within 7 days of the contest closing.

Read the full terms & conditions or check out the FAQ if you have any questions!

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