The winners of April’s Word Weaver Writing Contest share their thoughts on the contest, writing in general, and other stuff.

Today our honorable mention winner, Carrie Ann Alexis, answers a few questions about our contest and other writerly things.

(Click HERE to read her contest entry)

1. DAN: Did you write your story for the contest or was it part of a larger piece or something you had written before?

Carrie Ann: I had actually written this for a #BlogBattle, a weekly writing prompt competition meant to inspire writers and entertain readers.  I revised and added to it for this contest.  But I feel these are my best developed characters.  My main characters is a culmination of several guys I had gone to school with and worked with in a hair salon when I was a hair stylist.  He is actually one of my favorite characters to write.

 

2. Tell us about your writing process. What is the journey from idea to published piece /completed story?

Not sure that I actually have a process.  I have only been writing short stories for the past year.  I need to give a shout out to Rachael Ritchey here, she started BlogBattle and it is because of it, that I have started writing on a somewhat consistent basis.  This weekly writing prompt competition gave us one word as inspiration to write a short story.  So, with that, I would first look up the word in the dictionary, google it, or look for a photo for inspiration, and see what I would come up with.  Sometimes I could get one line as an idea, or a conversation between characters and go from there.

 

3. Where do you do your writing?

I usually do a lot of my writing in my head as I do dishes or fold laundry.  Then I get all those ideas out, and do the actually writing of the story as I sit on my lazy boy rocker with my laptop.

 

4. Do you have a writing goal you want to achieve?

I’d like to write one novel.  I know once I achieve that, more will follow.

 

5. What helps you the most when it comes to writing?

A thesaurus and dictionary, and google.  I like to write things from a different perspective, or use words for their literal meaning.

 

6. What does writing success look like?

For me right now, writing success would be completing a novel.  Ideally, I would love to be able to write for my livelihood.  I’m not looking for fame, but I would love to be able to make money doing what I love, and write stories that people can relate to.

 

7. What are you working on now?

Actually just trying to balance life, work and kids, lol.  I would like to focus more on my writing and my blog.

 

 

8. There are a lot of writing contest out there. What drew you to this one?

The hype!!  Seriously, I have enjoyed your blog and your books, and I knew it would be a great opportunity to participate.  I would have been happy with just a critique of my work.  I was floored to receive an honorable mention.

 

9. Have you ever entered a writing contest before?

As I have mentioned above, I was participating in the weekly Blogbattle.  Two of my stories received the Creative Writer Award, which is a badge for your blog that is given to the story that receives the most votes as the best story for a particular week.

 

10. Will we see you again in the July Word Weaver Writing Contest?

I plan to.  If I don’t get something together, I’ll look forward to reading the stories, and meeting some more fabulous authors.

 

11. Did you know the piece you submitted was special?

Not at all.  There was actually another story that I was going to develop further that I had written that I actually liked better, lol.  But this character is easy and fun to write, and it fit with the theme of travel.

 

 

12. What’s next for you?

I will continue to write short stories, and keep working towards completing my first novel.

 

Thanks so much for sharing these insights, Carrie Ann!

Gang, check out her other stuff at these links:

www.carrieannalexis.com

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/Carrie-Ann-Alexis-1758248077798962

The next winners will be coming up on the blog soon. Stay tuned!