For the past few years, the Codex Writers have had what we call the Weekend Warrior contest.  For five weekends in a row, we are given writing prompts on Saturday morning and have to turn in a story of no more than 750 words by Sunday night.  During the week, people vote on the stories.  At the end of the five weeks, whoever got the best point total from their top three stories is the winner.

In past years, I have not placed in the top three, but I’ve ended up selling stories that I wrote:

  • “Buy You a Mockingbird,” “Girl Who Asks Too Much,” and “They Do It with Robots” to Daily Science Fiction
  • “An Early Ford Mustang” to InterGalactic Medicine Show
  • “To Serve Aliens (Yes, It’s a Cookbook)” to Analog

So I figured it was well worth my time to participate in the contest this year.

I was right.  I have already sold one of the stories I wrote: “Nine Tenths of the Law” to Blood Lite 3: Aftertaste.  And I wrote some other stories that I think might end up selling somewhere.

Also, for the first time, I placed in the contest, taking second behind Caroline M. Yoachim (who just happens to be competing against me for the Nebula Award for Best Novelette. A portent of things to come, perhaps?)

Just as an insight as to how my mind works: The last weekend of the contest, one of the five writing prompts was “Write anything you want.” It’s a wide-open prompt, designed to allow the imagination to run wild rather than remaining tied to the idea of a specific prompt.

Given that I could write about anything at all, what did I do?  I wrote a story called “Write What You Want,” about people who write what they want on pieces of paper.

It ended up as the highest-scoring story in the whole contest.


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