Official Freewrite 500 Terms and Conditions

septembre 10, 2025 | 3 lire la lecture

The Freewrite 500 Writing Contest — Terms and Conditions

Last Updated: 10-09-2025

By submitting an entry to The Freewrite 500 Writing Contest (the “Contest”), you agree to abide by the following Terms and Conditions.

1. Organizer

The Contest is organized by Freewrite, a brand owned and operated by Astrohaus, Inc. (hereinafter referred to as “Freewrite”, “we”, “our”, or “us”).

2. Eligibility

The Contest is open to individuals who are 18 years of age or older at the time of entry.
Employees of Freewrite, the Flash Fiction Institute, and their immediate families are not eligible to enter.
Void where prohibited by law.

3. How to Enter

Entries must be submitted through the official entry form before Monday, September 22.
Entries must be original works of flash fiction no longer than 500 words.
All submissions must be the original work of the entrant.
Only one entry per person is allowed.
Entries must be written in English.
The deadline for submission is 11:59 p.m. EST on September 22, 2025. Late or incomplete entries will not be accepted.

4. Entry Requirements

Submissions must be the entrant’s own original work and must not have been previously published, including on personal blogs or social media.
Entries must not contain any material that is obscene, offensive, defamatory, or otherwise inappropriate.
By entering, you confirm that your submission does not infringe on any third-party rights, including copyright, trademark, or privacy rights.

5. Judging and Winner Selection

All eligible entries will be judged by a panel of reviewers affiliated with Freewrite and the Flash Fiction Institute.
Judging criteria include length, creativity, and adherence to theme, and overall quality of writing.
The winner will be notified via email.

6. Use of Generative AI Prohibited

The use of generative AI in the creation of a submission for this competition is prohibited.
The organizers reserve the right to disqualify any entry that is suspected to have been generated, in whole or in part, using generative AI tools (including but not limited to text-generating algorithms, large language models, or similar technologies).

7. Prize

The winning entry will be published on both the Freewrite Blog and the Flash Fiction Institute Blog.
The winner will receive recognition across Freewrite and Flash Fiction Institute's social media platforms.
No cash prizes will be offered. Prizes include a Freewrite Traveler, a Words Are Hard writing prompt deck, publication on the Freewrite blog and the Flash Fiction Institute blog, and a free flash gym session hosted by the Flash Fiction Institute.

8. Rights and Usage

By entering the contest, entrants grant Freewrite and the Flash Fiction Institute first publication rights. This means Freewrite and the Flash Fiction Institute have a non-exclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license to publish, reproduce, and distribute the submitted entry in connection with the promotion of the Contest, including on their websites, blogs, email newsletters, social media channels, and more.
After initial publication, all rights revert back to the author, who is then free to republish or distribute their work elsewhere. However, we request that any subsequent publication acknowledges Freewrite and the Flash Fiction Institute as the original place of publication.
The winning author will be credited by name or preferred pen name when their work is published.

9. Privacy

Personal information collected during the entry process will be used only for the administration of the Contest and in accordance with Freewrite’s Privacy Policy.
Entrants may be contacted by Freewrite regarding their submission or related opportunities.

10. Disqualification

Freewrite reserves the right to disqualify any entry that:

Violates these Terms and Conditions,
Is found to contain plagiarized material,
Is deemed offensive or inappropriate,
Is submitted by someone ineligible.

11. Limitation of Liability

Freewrite is not responsible for:

Lost, late, incomplete, or misdirected entries;
Technical failures of any kind;
Any injury or damage to persons or property related to participation in the Contest.

12. Governing Law

These Terms and Conditions shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the State of [Insert State], without regard to its conflict of laws principles.

13. Contact

For any questions regarding the Contest, please contact us at:
📧 hello@getfreewrite.com.

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Freewriting vs. Thinking

If you're new here, freewriting is “an unfiltered and non-stop writing practice.” It’s sometimes known as stream-of-consciousness writing.

To do it, you simply need to write continuously, without pausing to rephrase, self-edit, or spellcheck. Freewriting is letting your words flow in their raw, natural state.

When writing the first draft of a novel, freewriting is the approach we, and many authors, recommend because it frees you from many of the stumbling blocks writers face.

This method helps you get to a state of feeling focused and uninhibited, so you can power through to the finish line.

How Freewriting Gives You Mental Clarity

Freewriting is like thinking with your hands. Some writers have described it as "telling yourself the story for the first time."

Writing for Inside Higher Ed, Steven Mintz says, “Writing is not simply a matter of expressing pre-existing thoughts clearly. It’s the process through which ideas are produced and refined.” And that’s the magic of putting pen to paper, or fingertips to keyboard. The way you learned to ride a bike by wobbling until suddenly you were pedaling? The way you learned certain skills by doing as well as revising? It works for writing, too.

The act of writing turns on your creative brain and kicks it into high gear. You’re finally able to articulate that complex idea the way you want to express it when you write, not when you stare at a blank page and inwardly think until the mythical perfect sentence comes to mind.

Writing isn’t just the way we express ideas, but it’s how we extract them in the first place. Writing is thinking.

Or, as Flannery O'Connor put it:

“I write because I don't know what I think until I read what I say.”

Writing isn’t just the way we express ideas, but it’s how we extract them in the first place. Writing is thinking.

Freewriting to Freethinking

But how and why does it work? Freewriting makes fresh ideas tumble onto the page because this type of writing helps you get into a meditative flow state, where the distractions of the world around you slip away.

Julie Cameron, acclaimed author of The Artist’s Way, proposed the idea that flow-state creativity comes from a divine source. And sure, it certainly feels like wizardry when the words come pouring out and scenes seem to arrange themselves on the page fully formed. But that magic, in-the-zone writing feeling doesn’t have to happen only once in a blue moon. It’s time to bust that myth.

By practicing regular freewriting and getting your mind (and hands) used to writing unfiltered, uncensored, and uninterrupted, you start freethinking and letting the words flow. And the science backs it up.

According to Psychology Today, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex goes quiet during flow state. This part of the brain is in charge of “self-monitoring and impulse control” – in other words, the DLPFC is the tiny home of your loud inner critic. And while that mean little voice in your head takes a long-overdue nap, you’re free to write without doubt or negative self-talk.

“With this area [of the brain] deactivated, we’re far less critical and far more courageous, both augmenting our ability to imagine new possibilities and share those possibilities with the world.”

Freewriting helps us connect with ourselves and our own thoughts, stories, beliefs, fears, and desires. But working your creative brain is like working a muscle. It needs regular flexing to stay strong.

So, if freewriting helps us think and organize our thoughts and ideas, what happens if we stop writing? If we only consume and hardly ever create, do we lose the ability to think for ourselves? Up next, read "Are We Living through a Creativity Crisis?"

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