The Write Idea

The Write Idea is a writing forum that can be found here. It was started up by Helen Whittaker (as she was then) and is now run by Donna Gagnon-Pugh and Doug Pugh.

The Whittaker Prize, named in honour of the founder of the site, was a competition run there between 2008 and 2012. The annual contest tool place over a number of weeks in which the contestants were given a series of writing challenges, each to be completed within two weeks. The entries were then marked out of 100 by an independent judge and a rolling total was kept. Separate competitions for fiction and poetry were run in parallel. In 2013 a Not the Whittaker competition was run along similar lines, with the variation that the scores were chosen by popular vote.

The STIRRED POeTS was a competition run on a number of occasions. There were six rounds, and a prompt would be put up at the start of each one. Entrants would then have a week in which to compose a poem which would then be anonymised and judged by public vote.

The TWIWrite Zone was a multi-disciplinary competition run on a number of occasions. There were six rounds, each based on a particular form of writing (fiction, flash fiction, poetry, non-fiction, etc.). A prompt would be put up at the start of each one, and entrants would then have a week in which to compose a piece which would then be anonymised and judged by public vote.