Bulgarian Creative Writing Competition

The 13th edition of the Bulgarian Creative Writing Competition is underway and it is getting closer to its final stage. The registration started on October 3rd and it was completed by October 25th. 147 schools registered for participation and over 3700 participants took part in the competition. For a second year we have an international participation – 127 students from Pakistan submitted their pieces of creative writing.

The writing days were organized on November 22nd and 23rd. The competition was organized online and the schools had the opportunity to choose one of the 2 dates and organize the writing hour. The students wrote on computers and the computer labs at their schools. They had an hour to write on topics provided by the organizers – 3 topics for each grade. They were unusual and provoked the creative and imaginary thinking of the students. The students really enjoyed them and among the most popular among them were: “Help! My life was hacked!”, “Are you coming too?”, “Memoirs of an old wig”, “The danger of playing with metaphors”, etc.

The first round of judging is planned for January 11th-17th and it will be organized offline. 56 Judges with expertise in different spheres but united by their love for reading and writing will select the best 18 works in each age category. The selected works will advance to the national round of judging which will happen online on January 20th and 22nd and the winners will be announced on January 23rd. The Award ceremony will be organized on January 11th in Sofia and all the winners and their teachers will be invited to be part of it.

The summer months are not an active period for the Bulgarian creative writing competition. But this is the time when the young writers could experiment with their writing skills and give freedom to their imaginative thinking on interesting summer and other topics.

The interested students were offered the opportunity to use the examples given on the web site of the https://www.journalbuddies.com/tag/grade-9-12/ and to utilize their free time to create unique pieces of writing. We hope that at the end of the summer we will be able to read some of these stories and enjoy the talent of the young writers.

And now for those of you who are on vacation or relaxing at home after a hard work day, we would like to offer for reading one of the winning works at the last Bulgarian Creative Writing Competition. Enjoy the reading:

                                   By sparkling and cool river, a camel reflected on the past

                                                                        1st place, 9^th grade

   By a sparkling and cool river, a camel reflected on the past. His tired reflection in the clear rippling water was staring back at him. He never had the time to observe his reflection, he looked similar to every other camel. Despite being well groomed for a simple carrier of luggage and products the years had taken their toll on him. His fur was no longer dense and shiny but full of bald patches and dirt carried by the desert winds, his legs – crooked and unstable, once able to carry him and his rider through the whole desert now barely could support his body weight. His reflection was tired, indeed. From the years, from the hard work and from the simple burden of being an animal in such an unforgiving climate, yet he kept staring. There was no rush. He could stand here all day near the river and watch the distorting ripples of the water dance. Water was rare in the desert, beautiful even. The most important currency in his life. His payment amongst food and good night rest had always been water. Sometimes there was plenty of it, sometimes none. The desert is excruciating and unrelenting. She won’t gift you the essence of life just like that.

    But oh, the desert. The colorful sunsets always mesmerizing, fierce like fire spread among the skies every night, as if preparing you for the freezing night. The sand, so diverse, it either beckons you to sink your feet in its grasp and rest underneath the burning sun or forces you to seek shelter from the hazardous sand storms who engulf everything in their path. Yes, the desert was harsh but it was his home. His life, if you will.

    He closed his tired eyes. He could move forward and try to find an oasis with trees and maybe even other animals. But why would he? His old hooves won’t carry him more than a few miles and he didn’t have those special bags for storing water like the people. He couldn’t navigate himself to an oasis or a village, he never relied on his own senses and knowledge as he’d been domesticated his whole life. He always had someone to look out for him. A human owner who gave him a companionship and safety. Yes, he wasn’t always generous. He never let him rest when they were crossing the dunes, he never shared the equal amount of water and supplies with him, he never praised him when he managed to carry them through the desert under the scorching sun.

‘’But you had me, didn’t you?’’

  Had. Only if you were here.

‘’But you must walk forward. Let the desert welcome you, as it welcomed all of the tribes before you.’’

  The camel squinted his eyes at that. The human tribes. He never understood them. They ate and drank just like him, had kids and families, had four limbs and better ways to navigate the desert but used his brothers and sisters as a transport. He got used to it all. He even seemed to look forward to giving rides to his human. New adventures, new places. There was always something new his eyes witnessed. The fairest life an animal could lead, up until he saw the predator side of his human’s allies.

   He was never perfect and the camel knew that. His scarred face, tanned skin and thin lips which always formed a frown only described the harsh life he had. He carried many blades his kind used most of them dirty from the usage. He never had a wife to clean them up like the others had, which was odd but not uncommon even for the camels. He was an extraordinary man, he remembered. Sometimes during their rides, he talked. He talked about the stars and the sand, about the many lands beyond this one, about a land engulfed by the salty water. Pretty amazing things, most of them unthinkable for a desert animal. Human knowledge had no limits, the camel knew, but so did brutality.

  One evening they arrived at a local village after 3 or 4 moons way from their usual stop. He knew his human traded golden shiny objects, almost like the afternoon sun. He’d take them from the palms of people play with them and whoever won took the rest of the golden suns. Later in his life he learned from other camels that this game was called ‘’gambling’’. The camels laughed at him and told him that someday his owner will lose everything if he doesn’t give that up and start trading products like everyone else. Of course, he didn’t believe them, but it on that one night, the desert spirits weren’t on their side. His owner lost. Everything. All of his tiny golden suns. Desperate, he tried to rob one of the local bandits who had just returned from a big strike. He got caught and ….

The camel got up from the edge and turned his back on the river. He started walking towards east, his human’s lucky direction. He knew he might never reach a village or an oasis, his was old and his senses were dull, but he decided to do one last thing for his desert conqueror – find the star shape he talked about the most – pisces. Creatures said to live in the salty sea, he talked about so much. His favorite one up in the night sky, where he hoped he was resting now.