A South Central Cornwall based author, and Roseland Online food writer, Vanessa Matthews, has embarked on a literary challenge inspired by a long held dream to become a published novelist. Vanessa has set herself the ambitious goal of writing 30 short stories or poems, over 30 days for entry into 30 different national and international writing competitions.

Vanessa told Roseland Online, “They say everyone has a book in them, and I’ve had the beginnings of my novel drafted for some time now. However I have struggled to find the time, confidence and motivation to finish it. By setting myself this challenge I figured I would be forced into a habit of making time to write every day, and I could improve my writing skills as I went along. Publicising it means I will feel compelled to finish it too!”

The competitions are wide and varied, some requiring a one sentence poem, others requiring 5,000 word stories and even playwriting. Genres will include sci-fi, crime, sports, environmental and more, many of which are new territories for Vanessa whose experience to date has mostly been writing for editorial and business purposes.

She added, “For me, this challenge isn’t about winning the competitions, but more about stretching my writing skills and being brave enough to share what has previously been a very private hobby. I don’t have any formal writing qualifications so I am looking at this as a bit of on the job training!”

The challenge kicked off on Monday 19th March 2012 and will continue until 17th April. Every day in between Vanessa will create a brand new piece of writing from scratch either in response to a set competition theme or of her own free choice.

She will be recording her experiences daily on a new blog created especially for the challenge www.ordinarylifelessordinary.Wordpress.com and she’d love to have you follow her exploits. We’re also delighted that Vanessa’s works are already getting noticed. Her column was in Cornwall Life magazine yesterday (Wednesday 22nd March), so well done Vanessa!