By: Matt Kepp
As the Boxing With Pencils site states, its creators are primarily dedicated to “justice, educating the world about happy pooping one day at a time, and giving the world utterly inane, often crude and totally random shit it needs to be a better place.” In essence, that sums up Boxing With Pencils perfectly.
A somewhat more literary crowd, Boxing With Pencils is unique as a website in that it necessitates interaction between visitors and creates a close-knit community around the ideals of burgeoning and original ideas about art, entertainment, and especially writing. But the site isn’t muddled with untenable concepts, and rather allows for anyone and everyone to join in the conversation.
From critiquing and establishing ideas on how to write a query letter to reviews of books, movies, and the such and even to a weekly flash fiction contest, Boxing With Pencils offers a unique environment for those with a particularly unique voice. While living up to its dedication to providing the world with truly “random shit”, the site can often become confusing to navigate, though it’s not necessarily for those with a specific purpose, really, but instead for those who enjoy a good article about, say, the connection between unicorns and teenage innocence, why Pushing Daisies was canceled, and debating the intricacies of the possibility of zombies being real.
The flash fiction contest that Boxing With Pencils offers is, like the rest of the site, an interesting notion, as well. Each week, the site’s administrator’s pick three words and allow anyone that visits the site to write a story in 100 words or less about anything at all just so long as they include the three words, and by Sunday night they pick the winner and give him/her $5. As a writer it certainly hones your skills in learning the importance of economic word choice, while also providing you with much needed and supplemental monetary incentives. While some of you might think that’s a small amount of money, and you may be right, think about most small presses and consider the fact that they often don’t pay for stories that are much larger than 100 words.
But the fiction contest is only one of many great features of Boxing With Pencils, and as the site grows they are sure to astound and inspire discussion on whatever topic they may choose.
Website here—————> http://boxingwithpencils.com/
Facebook Fan Page——-> https://www.facebook.com/#!/BoxingWithPencils
