Thanks for this fab post. I always knew I was a writer. As a child, my love for the written word knew no bounds. And I started to write poems and articles and letters to the editor and so on. The bug has stayed with me over the years, but I could not keep pace with my goal of writing at least one thousand words per day. Stephen King suggested this goal, but I am afraid I have fallen short of this target. That discipline of writing has eluded me, but I strive to write whenever I feel inspired. Hence, this comment. Cheers.

There are indeed a LOT of writing competitions out there — I’ve mainly entered ones from magazines (here in the UK we have Writing Magazine, which runs two monthly short story / poetry competitions — more than enough for me to be going on with). I think that in the US, Writer’s Digest might be a good equivalent, and they list competitions here: http://www.writersdigest.com/competitions/writing-competitions

Good luck with the journalling, and the fiction.

I do need to work on writing more fiction, especially if I hope to finish my novel. I’d like to enter some contests, but it seems a bit of a big field, especially after googling it. Do you have any tips on what organizations to look for competitions?

Write on 750words.com for my journaling from now on (on a 3 day streak) and it’s actually a lot easier than writing. However, I’m still doing some longhand, but I find that I flow a lot easier when on a computer (and concentrated!)
Will need to work on opening up my document every day for those five minutes of fiction.