⏳ Weekly Writing Contest | November 24: Kindness
Submit your entry by Friday November 29, 5pm GMT / 12pm ET / 9am PT
Welcome to the Weekly Writers' Hour Contest!
This week’s challenge invites you to explore the transformative power of kindness—whether through a real-life memory or an imagined story.
*NEW* This week, our friends at Scrivener are adding their writing software to the first place winning prize bundle. Read more below.
Prompt: Kindness
Write about an act of kindness—real or imagined—in the genre of your choosing.
Unpublished pieces of 500 words or less in any genre are eligible for this contest.
Submissions are due by Friday, November 29th at 5pm GMT / 12pm ET / 9am PT
Keep reading for more information on prizes and FAQs – plus an introduction to this week’s guest judge, .
Happy writing!
The Writers’ Hour Magazine Team
Meet Our Guest Judge:
Natalie Lue is a writer, author, artist, coach and podcaster who helps people pleasers, perfectionists and relationship strugglers overcome their emotional baggage so that they can become more of who they really are. She started blogging in June 2004 after a bad date, and is the writer of one of the longest-running self-help blogs in the world, Baggage Reclaim, and, until February 2023, hosted The Baggage Reclaim Sessions (over 4.5 million downloads).
Natalie self-published her first four books, including Mr Unavailable and the Fallback Girl and The No Contact Rule. Her latest book, The Joy of Saying No: A Simple Plan to Stop People Pleasing, Reclaim Boundaries, and Say Yes to the Life You Want was published in Jan 2023 by HarperCollins/Harper Horizon. She has been featured/quoted in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Stylist, NPR, The Observer, The Guardian, Lorraine, the BBC, and many more. You can find her on social at @natlue.
A Note from Natalie Lue:
Here are a few ideas to get you started with this prompt:
Reflect on your own relationship with kindness. Are you as kind to yourself as you are to others?
Think about a time when kindness, whether its presence or the absence of it, made a difference to healing and recovering from something.
The right decision doesn’t always feel good or make you liked. Consider a difficult decision, one that maybe seemed tough, like it would make you (or the other party) the Bad Guy, and write about how the decision turned out to be the kind thing to do.
A Note from our Editorial Team:
This week’s prompt offers many avenues for exploration. While a universal theme, kindness is also deeply personal and multifaceted. Read on for some ways you might approach this prompt:
Personal Reflection: Reflect on a moment when someone’s kindness moved you. What made it stand out? How did it change you?
Fictional Stories: Imagine a character whose life is transformed by an unexpected act of kindness. Perhaps this act has far-reaching consequences, or maybe it’s a quiet, personal moment that changes everything.
A Twist on Kindness: What happens when kindness is misunderstood or comes at a cost? Explore the complexities of seemingly simple gestures.
Experimental Approaches: Play with form! Your piece could be a letter of gratitude, a poem capturing a fleeting moment, or even a series of fragmented observations.
Follow your creative instincts. Kindness can be a grand gesture or a tiny moment of care. Whatever approach you take, we can’t wait to see how you bring this prompt to life.
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:
$100 USD (£75 GBP)
Publication in Writers’ Hour Magazine
3-months of London Writers’ Salon Silver Membership (£79 value)
*NEW* Scrivener Writing Software (£55 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, November 29 at 5pm GMT / 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 entry will be published in Writers’ Hour Magazine by Saturday, December 14th.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.)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 winners of Prompt Sacred Flavors!
We are thrilled to share the results of the contest for the week of November 3. Writers were tasked with creating a recipe inspired by a sacred place. Special thanks once again to our guest judge,
.First Place: Blue, a recipe by Julia Yee
Second Place: Cake Baby by Halina Watts
Third Place: Sacred and Sacreligio by Rebecca Shields
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 in the next contest!
PS - Write with us
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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