Blackfoot woman chosen as finalist for prestigious writing contest
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Blackfoot resident Brittany Rainsdon is on her way to Hollywood!
Rainsdon has been selected as a Published Finalist in the “Writers of the Future Contest” for her story, “Half-Breed.” The contest was created in 1983 by author L. Ron Hubbard and spotlights new fantasy and science fiction writing talents.
Thousands of writers from over 175 different countries submitted work to this year’s contest. The contest has launched the careers of 12 New York Times best-selling authors, among them Patrick Rothfuss, Dean Wesley Smith and David Farland.
As one of the contest’s Published Finalists, Rainsdon’s story will be published in “L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future Volume 37,” the latest volume of the internationally best-selling anthology series. Rainsdon will also travel to Hollywood this fall for a week-long workshop where she, along with the other finalists, will get to learn from star writers.
To top it all off, Rainsdon and the other finalists will be honored at a black-tie awards gala. It will be a bit like The Oscars for science fiction and fantasy writers.
For Rainsdon, a stay-at-home mother of four, this is the latest exciting step on her writing journey.
“It’s really cool,” she told EastIdahoNews.com. “They pay me a professional rate for my story and I actually keep all rights to my story. They don’t take any because their whole purpose is to provide a means for new writers to be seen and acknowledged. They’re the only contest in the world that their whole purpose is to promote these brand new writers, find them and give them a platform.”
Rainsdons writing journey began when she was in elementary school. She wrote poems and stories through her high school years but lost touch with her writing while in the busy maelstrom of college life. But she never lost her love of writing and eventually picked it up again about five years ago.
“Writing is something that helps me discover more about myself,” she said. “It just feels good to me. It helps me be happy and it’s cheaper than therapy, you know?”
“I love being a mom,” she added. “I love seeing my kids grow up and the things that they’re able to do but keeping a house clean, that’s never concrete. You do the dishes every day, you make food every day, it’s all a mess and then it happens again. But when I write a story, it’s done. I can go back and look at it and I did something. And that feels good to me.”
Rainsdon’s story, “Half Breed,” is about a torn between two very different worlds and struggling to find a place for herself. The story’s protagonist, Sequoia, is part human, part magical tree spirit known as a Dryad and finds her loyalties tested as tensions mount between humans and Dryads.
This magical story had a fairly Earthly inspiration.
“When we bought our lot, it was completely brown,” Rainsdon said. “So every year, we buy trees and put them in and now we have a ton of fruit trees in my backyard. I think the spark came from thinking ‘What if’ as I was planting these trees. What if there were a race of people like this and how would people interact with each other.”
While finding inspiration for her ideas can be simple, Rainsdon said that her role as a mom can complicate finding time to realize these ideas. So she makes the most of any time she has a chance to sit down and write.
“Naptime is sacred, first of all,” she said. “That is when a lot of writing time happens because I usually have an hour to an hour-and-a-half that I go sit down and write. If there is a deadline coming up, I will probably spend a couple of nights staying up late trying to figure stuff out because it’s important to me. Beyond that, I think it’s really important to be a part of the writing community because a lot of those people can help you keep your focus.”
For more information on the “L. Ron Hubbard Present Writers of the Future Contest”, click here to visit the contest’s website. You can also keep tabs on what Rainsdon has in the works by visiting her website.