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CONTEST ENDED – Thank you for submitting your stories!

#75: New Year, New You

For many of us, the last year was like living through a low-budget disaster movie — but the good thing about the new year is that it gives us an excuse to start fresh. And even though flipping a calendar doesn’t necessarily fix all our problems, it’s still good to take a moment and think about everything you do have the power to change.

In that spirit, this week’s prompts are all about fresh starts. From small, personal achievements to huge goals that will change the world, everything starts with the decision to try. What sort of things will your characters achieve this year? What sort of things will you?

This week's prompts

Write about someone who has finally managed to succeed at a long-standing New Year’s resolution.

Winter – 98 stories

Write about someone whose job is to help people leave their old lives behind.

Adults – 246 stories

Start your story with one character making a vow that they never would have made the year before.

Holiday – 102 stories

Write about someone who doesn’t remember their past — and doesn’t want to.

Thriller and Suspense – 205 stories

Write about two characters who each want to change the same thing, but resolve to go about it in very different ways.

Teens – 84 stories

Stories

“Flashback” by Alisa Burdick

Submitted to Contest #75

Zoe awoke in a king sized bed with no idea how she arrived there. A tall man approached the bed. Zoe shook. "It's alright. This is a glass of water." "How did I get here? Who are you? What's going on?" The tall blonde man sat at the end of the bed. "First, this is a glass of water. I usually give people Gatorade but the concierge isn't back with it yet. My name is Scott. Do you remember anything at all?" "I remember going to a club by myself. I remember going to the bathroom and asking the bartender to watch my stuff. It was busy in the club...

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“The Memory Man” by Missy Talbot

Submitted to Contest #75

The 14th of December was a cruel, bitter day; the sort of day best left to be forgotten, save by the poets who would look at the barren trees and flat gray skies and think there was something there worth immortalizing. The town was quiet and still, the streets empty, no one bothering to embrace the agony of the winter cold unless absolutely necessary. I stoked the fire in my office. It was a feeble thing, the flames desperately licking the air the way a hungry dog licked a bo...

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“Imagine That” by Iris Silverman

Submitted to Contest #75

The door opened slowly with a creak. With caution, I looked around. It looked to be half-bookstore, half-coffeeshop, and something straight out of a Harry Potter novel. The—barista?—was wearing a crimson beret and a lemon-yellow scarf, his skeleton-like hands pursuing a newspaper. The customers were odd, too. One woman reeked of onion but smiled pleasantly. Another held a ferret in his arms daintily, letting the creature venture along his back and arms. A third seemed to be whispering to herself and rocking back and forth in the wooden chair...

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“The Vivid Colors” by Stuti Shree

Submitted to Contest #75

It is almost pinching my eyes and everything feels dizzy at once. Eventually, it settles in the too-bright sunlight. The grains of sand feel cold between my fingers. Water of the ocean is touching my feet and running away like a child, trying to make me run after it. Something feels odd and wrong about this nostalgia overwhelming inside me; still I force my steps forward when suddenly it comes to my realization that I am tied with ropes tightened around my wrists and ankles. The other end of the ropes is far from my vision, as if they’re end...

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“No Other Way” by Hannah Shirts

Submitted to Contest #75

When I woke up, all I could hear was the blaring noise of bangs outside. I sat up on the bed I was laying on, and looked around the room. The curtain over the window was open, showing me a crowded street outside, and the source of the loud banging noise - fireworks, taking off and exploding into the sky. I moved out of bed, and made my way through the open door into what appeared to be a living room. My living room? The furniture was spotless. No dust, no other people, and a solid wall between me and the party going on outside. I ma...

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“Marked” by Inkstained Introvert

Submitted to Contest #75

Trigger warning: Mentions of self-harm and abuse You’ve cried a lot, I bet.You can deny it if you’d like, but I’m sure you have. You’re human, after all. From big buff men whose job, they think, is to protect everybody, to train-wrecks of little girls who wail when they don’t get what they wanted for Christmas—everyone’s cried. And I’m no exception. Although I’m not exactly human. It’s 2142, and people call our planet old-fashioned. They say we’re behind the times, looking back on us the way, a century or so ago, those on Earth loo...

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“Window Mountain” by Holly Fister

Submitted to Contest #75

“It’s the final countdown!” The rock and roll ripped through the shredded speakers with a jagged, painful determination that the boy no longer noticed. It was not unlike Dad’s voice, damaged from years of smoking.He turned the key, and the music died. The only sound left was the soft ticking of the car’s engine as it cooled down, but eventually that stopped, too. The boy, small for eighteen, gripped the steering wheel as he stared into the distance. “Campout. The final campout.”Actually, it would be the only campout. A broken promise, a chil...

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“What's in a Name” by Deborah Mercer

Submitted to Contest #75

Nora Marks really wasn’t bothered what her foster children called her. There were things she was bothered about, and let them know in no uncertain terms, like bullying or leaving uneaten food under the bed (though being untidy herself, that didn’t over concern her) but they could call her more or less what they wanted. She was fine with being Nora, or Auntie Nora, and though she didn’t really like it, she quite understood why some of the children preferred to call her Mrs Marks. Once you started forcing informality on people, it rather defea...

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“Screams in the Light” by CM Jewell

Submitted to Contest #75

He awoke with a start. Cold sweat trickled down his neck and down his spine, and a chill which made his hair stand on end coursed through him. He couldn’t remember what had startled him so badly, but the image of pure white light had seared his eyes. The man pushed the sheets of his cold bed off of his stiff legs and painfully got to his feet. The clock on his nightstand read a ghastly early hour, but the man knew he would not find comfort that night. His mouth was dry and sticky. A glass of water was what he needed. ...

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“Carver's Will” by Rachel Kenley Fry

Submitted to Contest #75

They were going to kill him. Carver knew it, he knew without anyone speaking a word that he only had a few moments left to live. And this time last year, he would have enthusiastically proclaimed that this was exactly what he wanted. Actually, in all honesty, he did enthusiastically proclaim it, many times, to many, many people. “I don’t ever want to live hooked up to machines, like a veg-e-table, y’know?” he’d said, cuffing his sons-in-law on the shoulders. “I mean, if I can’t hunt, can’t sleep with my wife, can’t even feed myself, then...

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“Ave Memoria” by Jacques Humanité

Submitted to Contest #75

When I wake from time to time in that dark room, I see the figure sitting by my bed with its head bowed, its elbows on my thighs as it holds a small, silver cross aloft in the pale light shining from somewhere above. “God bless you, God bless you…” Whispers the Thing in a faint, wavering voice. “God bless you, and God keep you.”Following the little prayer, I drift back into the realm between sleep and waking, drifting along ocean tides until at some point a faint light shines once again, but this time it drifts across my vison and then disap...

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“Ending A Pandemic” by Bee Tillotson

Submitted to Contest #75

It's too quiet here, Elle thought to herself as she walked down the snow filled streets late on New Years Eve. The sky was dark and roads empty. Even with everyone excited for the end of the dreadful year, no one could be bothered to visit friends or family in the cold outdoors. Elle wanted the end of this virus. She had not been able to see even her parents for Christmas, and now, she was spending New Years on her own. She took a sharp inhale of the chilling air around her and saw the fog leave her mouth as she exhaled. She needed social in...

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“Carpe Noctem” by Mandy McCool

Submitted to Contest #75

I’ve been called many things over the years: the Spirit, the Guide, Fate… all paint me in a way that portray clarity and endless wisdom. I suppose by definition that is mostly true. I am the clarity that arrives to enlighten those that stray from the path of which they are destined. It is a gratifying position. Time moves forward and the lives I touch will either embrace my visions or turn against me and face a future of sorrow. Either way, I move forward. Time never ceases and thus neither will I. To say that I live is only a half trut...

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“Shortbread and Shotguns” by Holly Fister

Submitted to Contest #75

Jennifer bit her lip and knocked on the door, acutely aware of the probability that her article hinged on which direction this meeting swung. A lady with a bob of gray hair and a red apron opened the door, and a sweet, buttery smell escaped into the winter air.“Well, come on in, sweetie pie. Don’t want you freezin out there.” She waved her in with a white, flour covered hand.“Thank you, Ms. Brenda.” Jennifer stepped inside, although the fifty-five degree sunshine felt amazing compared to the icy blasts she’d left behind in New York City two ...

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“The Empty Space” by Patrick Druid

Submitted to Contest #75

Monica left the party in a hurry, her face red with the tears of shame. She looked back towards the big house where the party had been, hoping to find a a friendly face somewhere, but all she saw were the same people looked back at her. Some were the 30ish red heads holding flute glasses of champagne and various well to do husbands and boyfriends looking back through the windows and porches. It was almost as if they had formed a cordon around the house, making clear that she had been banished like Adam and Eve had been from the Garden of Ede...

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$50

Prize money

735

Contest entries

0

Stories

Ended on 23:59 - Jan 08, 2021 EST

Won by R. A. 🏆

Title: The Violinist

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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