⏳ Weekly Writing Contest | May 4: Write What You Want
Submit your entry to this week’s guest judge Dennis James Sweeney by Friday, May 9, 5pm BST / 12pm ET
Welcome to the Weekly Writers' Hour Contest!
This week's challenge invites you to cast off expectations, quiet your inner critic, and write with fearless abandon—just for you, just because.
PROMPT
Write What You Want: Write as if nothing held you back—no rules, no expectations, no fear of how you’d be seen. Where does your writing go when you're truly free?
Write with complete permission in the genre of your choosing. Take risks, break rules, and follow your instincts.
Unpublished pieces of 500 words or less in any genre are eligible.
Submissions are due by Friday, May 9th, at 5pm BST / 12pm ET.
Keep reading for more information on prizes and FAQs – plus an introduction to this week’s guest judge, author
, author of How to Submit: Getting Your Writing Published with Small Presses and Literary Magazines.Happy writing!
The Writers’ Hour Magazine Team
Meet Our Guest Judge:
Dennis James Sweeney is the author of How to Submit: Getting Your Writing Published with Literary Magazines and Small Presses, a guide for writers. His first book, In the Antarctic Circle, won the Autumn House Rising Writer Prize and was a Debut Poetry Book of 2021 in Poets & Writers. You’re the Woods Too, his second book, was a Small Press Distribution bestseller and a finalist for the Deborah Tall Lyric Essay Prize. Most recently, The Rolodex Happenings won the Stillhouse Press Novella Prize.
His fiction, nonfiction, and poetry have appeared in Ecotone, Ninth Letter, The New York Times, The Southern Review, and Witness, among others. Formerly a Small Press Editor at Entropy and Assistant Editor at Denver Quarterly, he has an MFA from Oregon State University and a PhD from the University of Denver.
Originally from Cincinnati, he lives in Amherst, Massachusetts, where he teaches at Amherst College.
This prompt was inspired by Dennis’s newsletter, Write What You Want.
A Note from Dennis
Following what you want to write—instead of what you're supposed to write—can be a freeing strategy for our creative process. But it's also tough, since many of us have internalized scores of "shoulds" over the years. Here are some tips for finding your way toward an unrestricted writing practice:
1. Try automatic writing. Type for 2-5 minutes without stopping, continuing the thread no matter what comes out on the page. You can always revise later!
2. Record yourself speaking aloud. Whether you write poetry, fiction, or nonfiction, speaking aloud can be a helpful way to deactivate your critical mind and surprise yourself with what you carry within you. Like automatic writing, try not to think too much. Just let yourself talk, beyond the bounds of ordinary language, until you've crossed the territory of feeling uncomfortable and arrived at something strange even to you.
3. When you return to writing normally, pay attention to the "shoulds" and "should nots" that arise in your mind. There are lots of hidden rules and ideas of how it should be that guide our writing. Some of these are valuable; others might be trapping our writing. If you find yourself making a decision (about a sentence, a plot point, a stanza break) based on what you "should" do, switch gears. Make that decision based on what you want to do instead.
4. Revise toward wildness, not away from it. We often think of revising as "cleaning up" a piece of writing. This can sometimes neutralize the most energetic, excitingly off-kilter parts of our writing. Instead of trying to make your piece palatable, make it stranger, more surprising, more fully its distinct self. What this means, on a deeper level, is leaning into the unique energies you bring to your writing.
Sending all good wishes,
Dennis
How to Submit:
Submissions should be made through our online submission platform, Submittable, and formatted as a Word Doc.
For more details, please read the full Contest Guidelines.
The winning entries will receive:
First Prize:
$65 USD (£50 GBP)
Publication in Writers’ Hour Magazine
3-months of London Writers’ Salon Silver Membership (£79 value)
Commemorative Writers’ Hour trophy mug
Second Prize:
Publication in Writers’ Hour Magazine
1-month of London Writers’ Salon Silver Membership (£29 value)
Third Prize:
Publication in Writers’ Hour Magazine
FAQs:
What genres can I write in?
All genres - fiction, nonfiction, poetry, etc - are welcome.Is there a word limit?
Your piece must be 500 words or less. Pieces that exceed this will not be considered. There is no minimum word limit.Do I need to submit in a specific format?
Please follow the instructions outlined in the Contest Guidelines.When is the deadline to submit?
Submissions are due by Friday, May 9 at 5pm BST / 12pm ET / 9am PT. Submissions received outside this window will not be considered.When will the winner be announced?
The winner will be contacted via Submittable, and the winning entries will be published in Writers’ Hour Magazine by Saturday, May 23rd.Can I submit a piece I’ve already published?
Only previously unpublished pieces are eligible for this contest. (Published means anything that has already been made publicly available in print or online.)Can I use AI tools (like ChatGPT) to help write my contest submission?
No. We do not accept any AI-assisted writing for contest entries. All submissions must be the author’s original work and human-generated. Use of AI will disqualify you from this and any future contests.
Is there a fee to submit?
No, there is no fee to submit. However you must be subscribed to Writers’ Hour Magazine in order for your submission to be considered.
Congratulations to the winners of The Local Unknown!
We are thrilled to share the contest results for the week of April 13. Writers were invited to explore the overlooked corners of their neighborhood. Special thanks once again to our guest judge, author and adventurer
.First Place: Plenty Left to Right About by
Second Place: Overheard in Port Burwell, Ontario by
Third Place: The Road I Thought I Knew by
Patel
Congratulations to the winners, and thank you to everyone who participated. It’s a pleasure to share these pieces with you, and we can’t wait to see what you create this week.
PS - Write with us at Writers’ Hour
Come work on your submission at Writers' Hour—our daily silent writing sprints—where writers from around the world come together to work on their projects. It’s the perfect environment to focus, share space with other writers, and make progress on your contest entry.
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