The Writer’s Workout; What’s it all About?

A Guest Blog by Theresa Green

Hello, fellow Reading Addicts! My name is Theresa Green and I’d like to first say thank you to Kath for being so kind to let me jump in for a bit and talk about a fun, interactive writing community called The Writer’s Workout. As a group, we motivate each other and discuss topics essential to the process of writing. With weekly prompts, monthly contests, and occasional workshops (the next is Pitches on March 3rd), we strive to be better writers.

The best part (in my opinion) about The Writer’s Workout is the annual contest, the Writer’s Games. It’s a two-month-long competition with weekly challenges that are open to all genres and skill levels. The Writer’s Games are set up in a similar way to the Olympics, with weekly “events” and a 10-point scoring system. Each week in May and June, an event is announced and registered participants have 72 hours to write a short story that meets the guidelines. The judges have the following 90 hours (a little less than 4 days) to read and score all the entries. A winner for the current event is announced at the end of the week, and the next event starts two hours later. The scores accumulate so if you participate in all the events, you’ll place higher overall. At the end of the seven events, an overall winner is announced to reign supreme until the next year.

But that’s just the Individual portion of the Writer’s Games. We take a break in July so participants (and judges) can write for NaNoWriMo Camp. The break also gives writers time to register for the Team portion, which is a whole different can of worms. Beginning in August, teams of 7-12 writers compete against each other in seven all new events, each with its own winner. Don’t know seven writers you could stand to work with for two months? That’s okay, the registration form includes an option to have the judges place you with a balanced team that will complement your strengths and weaknesses as a writer, as you have described. The judges want to see you put your best work forward. At the end of September, there is but one team to rule them all.

Here’s the best part about the Writer’s Games: the winners of each event are published in the annual Games Anthology and all the proceeds go to the one place that brought us all together: NaNoWriMo.

As an added bonus to this year’s participants, we’re offering feedback on each entry. To help us in this monumental task (last year, we had 96 registered participants for the Individual portion), The Writer’s Workout has created a summer internship. It’s unpaid (we do this for free), part-time (based on how long it takes you to read/analyze/score all the entries each week), and virtual, so you can judge from your sofa in your pajamas.

If all this sounds fun to you, apply here:

You can join our group on facebook, and check out our website (we have a prompt contest in progress, jump in!):

Questions, comments, and concerns can be directed to me via email

We’d love to meet you, let’s talk books!