There's been a little short story competition being held every couple months that people like Cassie and Merrilee have participated in. Round Three of the Search Term Challenge is being hosted this month by ErgoFiction. I'd heard about it during rounds one and two and about Merrilee getting comfortable in the top spot.

This morning I happened across her Do you feel LUCKY? post and looked into the challenge further. The challenge is to write a short story of 1,000 to 2,500 words that includes at least four of the following search terms:

  • bellowing bastard brothers
  • dirty house
  • extra sex
  • give one to me
  • sideshow fables
  • stillborn
  • writes longhand
I have been revising for so long that I have a little phobia growing that I won't be able to write through a first draft again. The longer it takes me to revise the longer it will be until I even start writing another novel and slowly the fear grows. So to start breaking out of that pattern I took up the Search Term Challenge, came up with an idea from those crazy offerings, drafted a scene by scene outline and wrote the first draft of 1,583 words.

Submissions close on February 20th so I have a few days to revise and polish the story. All the stories then get posted anonymously for readers to vote for their favourite. So although I want to share the details of how I pulled a story together out of these terms in about an hour and how it changed between outline and draft I must wait until the results of the challenge are out.

And the question remains... will Merrilee be dethroned?