Tend Towards

[R] How To Make a Contest Entry

A Recipe by TimberWoolf

Tools:

Cookie-cutter language.

Symbolism Pans.

Thematic Tension Oven.

Binary-Ideal Awareness Trays (also known as a 'Plot' in some less-fashionable circles)

Ingredients:

500 ml of Inspiration

1 Good Idea

1 cup of Motivation (preferably whiskey)

½ a network of Peer Support

1 Contest Prompt

Optional Ingredients:

Humour as a decoration

Chocolate for the depression

Ice Cream for the 'because why not'

Preparation:

Familiarise yourself with the Contest Prompt.

Preheat your motivation and thinking-brain to a nice temperature of 'chaos'. Grow restless. Lie awake at night, haunted and tormented by the desire to write, to create, to synthesise.

Step 1:

Mix your Inspiration in with your motivation. Shake rapidly until an idea sets in. Add the good idea and mix thoroughly until you have a workable idea. This workable idea should be pliable and squishy.

Step 2:

Shape your workable idea with the cookie-cutter words and lay them on the binary-ideal awareness tray. Arrange them into a neat pattern that resembles the general shape of a finished product. Don't worry if it seems a little floppy, this is normal.

Step 3 (Optional Decoration):

Decorate your entry with some hints of your optional ingredients. Maybe a pinch of humour, or a sarcastic character, or a really sad puppy that warms and melts the heart when consumed.

Additionally, this is where you can introduce your network of peer-support, if you please. Give them a taste. If you don't want to do it just yet, you can introduce it at any point following this.

Step 4:

When you happy with the prepared products, transfer them to the Symbolism Pans and shove them into the Thematic Tension Ovens. Let them bake.

Let them bake slowly, while the heat builds up, increasing the pressure, faster and faster until it looks ready to explode!

Then yank open that oven door and take them out to cool. Let your peer-support network sniff and stare, but don't let them taste it. Let them wait. Go on a brief(ish) hiatus. Take a break. Have a smoke and a cuppa. Maybe get a massage.

Step 5:

When you've well and truly forgotten about your Contest Entry sitting on the cooling rack for the past three days, have a revelation that, yes, that still needs to be done, so, hop back into the kitchen and check up on it.

But also, that was a very relaxing massage, so you're not so strung up any more. You're not lying awake at night, tormented and tortured by the ideas or the words. You're calm, very zen.

Take a nibble, and if you like it, be self-satisfied and send it out to all of your friends.

If it tastes a bit off, don't worry. There's still time to add a pinch of this and a hint of that.

If it's horrible, rock-hard and better used as a construction material than a delicate desert, shrug and say you're not the best baker. Yet. Your time will come. And they will all taste the incredibleness of your ARTISTRY! MUAHAHAHAHA!

Step 6:

Take a nibble at the other bakers' works. Pretend it's all about seeing the exotic flavours that they use and finding something that you like, but don't let anybody know that you're really just scoping out the competition.

Final Note:

And there you have it: a wonderful, lovely little contest entry. This recipe has been brought to you by TimberWoolf-bored-at-work Studios.

Enjoy!