I’m a sucker for writing competitions that provide prompts, particularly in microfiction (don’t ask me to define it because it varies too much, but maybe no more than 1000 words). I recently entered the Trash Cat Lit pop-up competition, where each writer was given their prompts according to a complex set of choices giving 6 x 5 x 5 x 5 = 750 possible sets of prompts. Probably, no two writers were using the same set.

My prompts were:

setting: a derelict hotel

character: horse

includes: mould.

My story was successful in being chosen for publication. You can read it here. You can read all 14 stories chosen for this issue here. There are some real beauties. Note the different prompts, and remember that they were written with time constraints.