I’ve been running the Twenty-Four Hour Short Story Contest for a few months now.
And for the most part it cost me a little Steem every week. But 
Until now the contest has contest me a little Steem each week. Which is fine as I have gotten to meet several really good writers here on Steemit, and I have grown my followers by a fair amount.
I used a lot of the 72 Steem to promote this week’s contest. Hopefully that will bring in more people, and by promoting with Smartsteem I know I will get roughly the same amount of Steem back if not more. Thus hopefully continuing to fund the contest even further into the future. As I say in the contest, I am not a whale, there be no whales here c'ptain...
The history and idea behind the contest
One blogger I read a lot is Dean Wesley Smith.
He is a prolific writer. For many years he wrote Star Trek, Men in Black, and books for other media properties. Now he is 100% indie-published. He keeps more money and has more freedom to write that way.
He also does a lot to change people’s thinking about writing. He describes a lot of myths. One myth he tries very hard to destroy is that a story must be rewritten for it to be any good. He is very much against constant rewriting of fiction. And to prove his point he shares the example of Harlan Ellison.
Harlan would write stories on typewriters at bookstores, no word processors for him—thank you very much—, and when he would finish a page they would hang it in the window of the store. And the page would be clean with no mistakes or need to go back and rewrite. I find that fascinating.
And one point people began to believe that he already had the stories done in his head. So he started taking ideas from people there in the store, and would write a short story based on their phrase or idea. Chris Carter of X-Files fame did that with him.
Chris Carter gave him the prompt of a 102 year old pregnant corpse, and Harlan went off and running with a story.
So out of that fascination I designed the Twenty-Four Hour Short Story contest. In the very early days, I only gave 24 hours. But I realized that wasn’t enough. People would come in after the contest was over. I give more time now, but not unlimited, but it seems to work.
So even if you're not a writer checkout the tag twentyfourhourshortstory to read some very cool stories.
So thanks to and for the support.
P.S. I’ve kinda fallen into the schedule of posting a new contest on Sundays, so be on the watch for them then.