“Why I Write” Contest Winners!

Announcing The Winners!!!

The time has come to announce the winners of WordHustler’s March Writing Contest, “Why I Write.” It was a tough decision for our WordHustler staff- from over hundreds of submissions, we selected three Winners and six Honorable Mentions.

Winners:

Robert Michael, Murfreesburo, TN

Quanie Mitchell, Cupertino, CA

Amanda Rosko, Ontario, Canada

Honorable Mentions:

Adam Thompson, Denton, TX

Cheryl Scheir, Dover, DE

Donna Eggert, Tabernacle, NJ

Elva Osterreich, Alamogordo, NM

Celoris Gates, Clarksville, TN

Magz Wiseman, Aberdeen, Scotland

If you didn’t win this time, you still have a chance to enter April’s writing contest, which celebrates National Poetry Month. Look for contest rules HERE.

The three winning essays are posted below. Read on to see how these three WordHustlers were eloquently able to capture the true spirit of what drives us to write.

Scribere Iussit Amor- Love Commands Me to Write
by
Robert Michael

“Molière compared writing to prostitution, first you do it for the love of it, then you do it for a few friends, and finally you do it for the money. But I want to write for the sake of writing, to mold, to change, to create a work of art, a story with a purpose, a lesson to be learned, a moral, a theme. I know I’ll have to support myself. Money is secondary.

“I want to get a point across. The more people I influence, the better. If only a few are interested, I’ll be happy. If only one cares, I’ll be satisfied, even if I’m the only one. I want to be possessed by a higher light. I write for love.”

The above is what I entered into my journal when I was an eighteen-year-old freshman at Boston University. Now, decades later, I’ve had time to reflect.

Now I see that my life, as much as my writing, has followed the same path that I saw before me when eighteen. I’ve lived, and written, to mold, to change, to create with a purpose, a lesson to be learned, a moral, a theme. I’ve supported myself as a university professor, and this has given me time and space to write a dozen history books and half a hundred articles on the Holocaust. My moral intent was to help repair the world.

Recently, I’ve turned to writing poetry, plays, short stories, and a novel–to be possessed by a higher light. I still deal with the Holocaust but I’ve also written on the history and meaning of the martial arts, PTSD, childhood memories and I’ve revealed to readers my imaginings about a taller, better-looking, smarter, braver me.

But overall, I’ve discovered in my teenage scribblings the key to it all. Love still commands me to write.

Robert Michael was educated in Orthodox-Jewish survival: in a tenement childhood with absentee parents; in U.S. Army, serving with the Army Chief of Staff in the Pentagon and in a combat outfit (in Bitburg, Germany, C Battery, 4th Missile Battalion, 6th Artillery Regiment, 7th Army); as an editor in New York City publishing. He trained in chi gung, in tai chi, in ju jitsu and Kempo karate; in fiction and poetry at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. He is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Boston University, a Woodrow Wilson Fellow in Philosophy at Columbia University, and an NDEA Fellow. He is an Emeritus Professor of European History at University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and has completed a novel and poetry and 3 plays. His creative non-fiction saw print in Black Belt Magazine, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and the Jewish Magazine (August 2008) and his short stories “Mr. Christian” in Poetica, “Students” in Word Catalyst, and “Direct Pressure” in Fiction at Work, 2009. He is the author of The Dark Side of the Church; Dictionary of Antisemitism; Holy Hatred [Nominated for National Jewish Book Award]; a half-dozen other books and more than fifty articles on the History of Antisemitism and the Holocaust. He follows the advice of Socrates, Captain McNelly of the Texas Rangers, and the Jewish Zealots at Masada and Warsaw–the brave keep on keeping on.

Websites:
http://www.umassd.edu/cas/history/faculty/rmichael/
http://www.geocities.com/leahcimrobert/author.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Michael
http://jewdysseos.blogspot.com/
http://jewdysseos.wordpress.com/
http://umassd.academia.edu/ROBERTMICHAEL

Why I Write
by
Quanie Mitchell

I learned to write on my grandmother’s porch, listening to my mother and aunts gossip about the people in church, the people in town, whoever was getting cheated on by their husband, or, whoever’s husband spent all the bill money at the casino and came home with his lips balled up and his hat in his hand, embarrassed to tell his wife that the water was going to be shut off at any second. My grandmother, the ring leader of gossip, would shake her head and say, “That bastard can’t keep a job long enough to keep a pack of meat in the freezer. I don’t see why she won’t leave him.” My mother and aunts would nod in agreement, sip their coffee, swat at the mosquitoes, and shout at each other because the train was passing and no one could hear anything.

Then, my grandmother would suddenly decide that she needed eggs, and my mother would suck her teeth and say, “Didn’t we just come from the store?” But we would all pile into my mother’s Thunderbird anyway, and somehow, the eggs turned into sugar, bologna, milk, and a whole host of other things that made my mother’s blood boil as my grandmother strolled out of Winn Dixie with a basket full. She would say to my grandmother, “Eggs, huh?”

My grandmother would wave the comment away and say, “Your ass.”

I would giggle and peak inside the bags to see if my grandmother had remembered to bring the chocolate candy I begged for (most of the time, it was half eaten by the time she got into the car), and then, it was back to the porch. I find myself glued to the computer most mornings, unable to get my family out of my head and creating characters that are variations of the strong willed women who shaped me. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever written anything that doesn’t involve a trip to the store, or someone saying, “Lord have mercy, chile,” while fanning themselves in the heat.. I write because I love to put these women on the page, let their mouths get them into trouble, and find out how in the world they are going to get themselves out of whatever mess I’ve created for them.

Quanie Mitchell was born in Southwest Louisiana with a book in one hand and a crawfish in the other. She holds a B.A. in English from Louisiana State University and a Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from San Jose State University. She has been the recipient of the James Phelan Literary Award for fiction, the Louis King Thore Scholarship for Creative Writing, and she has also placed first in the feature film category of the Broadcast Education Association’s National Student Scriptwriting Competition for a screenplay entitled “Beauty Secrets.” She is currently working on a novel.

 Why I Write
By
Amanda Rosko

Why I write is a mystery even to me. I certainly don’t do it for the money as there isn’t any. I have yet to be published and am driving myself mad waiting for the letter from the publisher to finally show up in the mail. It’s become a joke with my roommate how obsessed I am with checking the mail box.

I feel guilty whenever I don’t write. When I do I feel guilty for not writing enough. My favorite section in any store, aside from the books, is where the pens and journals are kept. I spend the majority of extra cash I have on them, and then have my characters running around in my head while I’m at work, or on the treadmill, or in bed. Anytime except when I’m sitting at my computer and actually need them.

I’m super jealous of other writers, and hate hearing stories about first time authors who broke in with their first novel while I toil away on my ninth. It makes me bitter, which I don’t want to be. It forces to me acknowledge that they had something I didn’t. A better story, and a lot more luck.

Writing isn’t something I want to do, it’s something I have to do, otherwise I would have given up a long time ago. The good news about this, the only bit of silver lining, is that I can go through the above in my head, smile, and sigh in relief. I understand that a lot of people don’t want to write, they want to, “have written.”

I have written almost ten books, and am not stopping because I want to see my name in print. I want to walk into a bookstore and see my book on the shelf, pick it up and hold it in my hand, and I’m not going to stop until I get it. That makes me a real writer, and that’s why I write.

Amanda Rosko has been writing romance for six years, mostly under the pseudonym Rizzo Rosko, and is eagerly awaiting the day she gets The Call that’ll make her a published author. For free stories, visit her website at rizzorosko.com.