Each year Florida Weekly holds a writing contest using photos as prompts. I submitted a story this year after a Naples Writers’ Workshop member suggested we all compete. I was shocked to learn I won out of the more than 250 submissions. My prize was a ticket to the Sanibel Island Writers Conference the first weekend in November.

Attending the conference was another first for me, and now I’m sold on the paid writing workshops. I spent the weekend taking lessons from local and national published writers and attended the panels and readings they offered. Budget permitting, I’m hoping to make writing conferences a regular thing.

You can read my winning submission through Florida Weekly. Read about their contest, too.

Plus, learn more about the Sanibel conference.

This is one of two photographs that served as prompts for the writers from Key West to Alberta, Canada, who submitted a total of 256 entries in the 2017 Florida Weekly Writing Challenge. BETTY WELLS / FLORIDA WEEKLY