One Writing Competition in Second Life You Can’t Lose

What writer’s toolbox does NOT include that basic implement we call the writing prompt?  For many of us, a writing prompt is equivalent to the common hammer or screwdriver.  It’s ubiquitous, useful for just about any construction or repair job, and often works better than a bucket-load of more sophisticated tools.

Entrance to the headquarters of INKsters on the writer-friendly Cookie Island in Second Life.

So of course the writer’s prompt has made it into Second Life.  But one SL group, INKsters, is particularly great at getting us sometimes-slacker writers to pick up that tool and actually pound out a few paragraphs on a regular basis.

How?  By making it fun, easy, and financially rewarding!

INKsters Competitive Writing Group is the brainchild of the writer behind the hilariously named ItsNaughtKnotty Cannned avatar (note the three capital letter in the first name spell INK).  She speaks for a lot of us writers in Second Life when she says she’s “positively intoxicated by the literary community in Second Life.” The daily writing prompts/competition is one way she spreads the “high” around.

As ItsNaughtKnotty herself explains it:

“The INKsters give you a mechanism, loads of encouragement, and maybe a hint of guilt now and again, all in an attempt to spur you on to becoming a successful writer. I started this group . . . because I wanted to force myself to write everyday and hoped a few people wanted to try to do the same thing. Since then hundreds of people have thought the idea made a lot of sense and I’ve published more fiction than in the rest of my life combined.”

Below is the Second Life home of ItsNaughtKnotty Canned, founder of INKsters daily writing competition.

INKsters was one of the first writing groups I discovered in Second Life, and ever since, I’ve been encouraged, guilted, and humored into markedly increasing my daily writing output, thanks to their daily writing prompts.

The prompts range all over tarnation and back, as you might expect.  ItsNaughtKnotty, with the help of others in the gang, comes up with a month’s worth of prompts at a time–sometimes centered around a theme; other times not.  But it doesn’t matter, because the point is to get you writing–about anything you can.

“They’re designed to expand your mind and suggest a possible direction for you today. Please think divergently and create something beautiful, funny, poignant, interesting or informative,” says ItsNaughtKnotty.

The really cool and motivating aspect of the INKsters daily writing prompts is this:  You know whatever you submit will be actually read by someone (ItsNaughtKnotty herself), and if she picks your submission as the day’s winning entry, you will be paid real money.

(Well, truthfully, it’s not a lot of real money–somewhere in the neighborhood of about a penny in US currency–but it’s 25 Linden Dollars, which is a large enough amount to look very nice in one’s Second Life bank account.)  Plus, INKsters publishes all entries (with winners’ appropriately noted) in a monthly Second Life equivalent of a photocopied ‘zine that’s sent to all INKsters group members and made available to all Second Life residents.

Because of INKsters, I’ve been wielding the writing-prompt tool a lot this year—and have a lot more creative writing to show for it—even though I only enter the contest a fraction of the time (usually because I can’t get my piece down to the 500-word limit, or I forget to submit before the 11:59 p.m. cutoff).

All entries submitted to the daily writing competition are published in monthly anthologies available for free to all Second Life residents.

Plus, I’ve grabbed the brass ring three times in the few months I’ve been tracking the contest. (Of course, two of those three wins were shared with everyone else who submitted that day, because ItsNaughtKnotty liked them all, but still, she liked mine, too!)

Yet even when I don’t win the daily contest, I feel like a winner just because I’ve spent that much more time focused on my creative writing.  And it never hurts to re-read what ItsNaughtKnotty says about the “vagaries of competition”:

“Sometimes your most beautiful work ever is overlooked in the judging process, and sometimes a total piece of poop wins, and those of us who’ve been writers for a long time are so used to this, we don’t even notice it anymore. We hope you understand completing and submitting your writing makes you a champion. The competition is a motivational tactic to help all of us feel a sense of urgency to create something beautiful from nothingness every day.”

How can you not want to write every day with a cheerleader like that on your side?

To get the aid of the writing prompts, you don’t even have to have a Second Life account.  Each day’s prompts are posted on the INKsters blog.

Second Life headquarters for INKsters and the group’s daily writing prompts. The blue mailbox on the left is where you submit your prompt response for the daily writing competition.

But to enter the writing contest, you do need to step into Second Life and deposit your writing in the mailbox that “Shakespeare” manages at the INKsters headquarters in Second Life.  (And it’s worth your while many times over to join the INKsters SL group, which you can also do with “Shakespeare’s” assistance.)

So if you’re in Second Life, or thinking about going there, head on over to INKsters’ welcoming corner of Second Life and discover the amazing usefulness and fun of the daily INKsters writing prompt and competition.  And if you’re not, make the INKsters blog a regular stop on your daily writing journey.

The virtual world offers many more tools for us writers, of course!  What have you found in Second Life that’s enhanced your writing practice?  It’s a big virtual world out there, and I’d love to hear about what you’ve found!

Tagged as: INKsters, writers resources, writing contest