The boy sat on his chair, with his hands above the keyboard. He thought about what to write.
He recalled that the competition deadline was merely a week away. But he still had not even started on his piece. He looked at the brochure again. "WRITING COMPETITION!" the title read. His mum had encouraged him to enter the writing competition, and now he was taking it on as his personal task for the holidays.
As the boy reflected on his previous writing efforts, he realised how hopeless his task of winning was. Every story he ever wrote was based on other stories. He had little imagination, and unfortunately, imagination was the key to writing.
Suddenly, he had a brainwave. This time, he came up with an original and imaginative story.
The words shot towards him like a storm of leaves. Words were coming easily, flowing through him, faster than he could type. He typed faster than he ever had before. He continued to type, amazed how easy writing this story was. The boy could not stop writing. He looked at the word count and saw the number "248" starting right back at him. He was not even halfway yet.
Then he heard his mother's call of saying time for bed. He continued writing the piece, ignoring her. He had to make up for the time he had lost in thinking about a topic to write.
Finally, he finished. The word count now read "498".
"Perfect," he thought, "just under the word limit." He knew this was the story that would win.
He went to the website and searched for the competition. He found the page but there was no "Enter" button.
Confused, he then re-read the page again. It read COMPETITION CLOSED.
