Writing Challenge

Love in the 21st Century

We blog for a million different reasons, but in the end, we’re all storytellers. Creative Writing Challenges are here to…

We blog for a million different reasons, but in the end, we’re all storytellers. Creative Writing Challenges are here to help you push your writing boundaries and explore new ideas, subjects, and writing styles.

To participate, tag your post with DPchallenge and include a link to this post, to generate a pingback and help others find and join the challenges. Please make sure your post has been specifically written in response to this challenge. We’ll keep an eye on the tag and highlight some of our favorites on Freshly Pressed on Friday.

My last relationship, which turned into a marriage, was unexpected — nurtured on the internet, with me in San Francisco and my husband-to-be in Cairo, in the form of Twitter @replies, Skype chats, and long epic emails. I even mused about it on my blog for readers — many of them strangers — to read.

I have told the story about how we met — and how “us” materialized — many times. Some people have very different stories about love and romance and marriage. Others nod their heads in agreement and have experienced quite similar paths.

Photo by Cheri Lucas Rowlands

Photo by Cheri Lucas Rowlands

Long-distance love. Nomadic relationships. Online dating. Marriage in the time of Facebook. Today, love can be complex in new ways. What is love in this digital age? How do we define it? I’m a big fan of the New York Times’ Modern Love series for this reason — it’s a varied collection of personal essays on contemporary relationships, often poignant and heart-breaking, that reveal how undefinable and elusive love can be.

For this challenge, we want you to write about 21st-century love. We encourage you to get personal and share your own story, but if you don’t want to go that route, we welcome commentary, opinion, and even humor pieces on your definition of love in this modern age. Here are some ideas to get you thinking:

  • Romance on the internet: describe a relationship that blossomed online.
  • Online dating disaster: tell us about your awkward avatar-to-flesh encounter.
  • Love, longing, and long distance: write about a romance halted by the many miles in between.
  • Contemporary love commentary: muse on the role of social media in relationships.

We’re really excited to read your stories, essays, and commentary.

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  2. My niece and her husband have a beautiful love story. It was birthed in World of Warcraft. Go figure. 🙂 Hope I have time to write it this week. I have her permission. It’s truly beautiful.

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  5. Ah, geez. I have a story I could contribute, but I’ve already discussed it a lot and even a year later, it still rips me up. Also, the last time I mentioned it, I got targeted by a bunch of woman-hating racists, for some reason.

    Maybe I can discuss it in more general terms.

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  7. This challenge is why I like to participate in these. I’d never independently choose to write on love but I’ve drafted something for this that I kind of like.

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  13. I’m so in. As a gamer and aspiring psychologist, this topic excites me to no end thinking of all the potential material that can be brought up to discussion. I can’t WAIT to read the other bloggers’ stories and vintage points on this subject.

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  14. My whole website started as a result of love thwarted by government and 12 months spent apart fighting to be reunited. That whole saga is now a book, self-published, titled LOVE VERSUS GOLIATH.

    Visit my website and read about it – maybe even buy the book! 🙂

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      2. No, mine is COMPLETELY different – married a (are you sitting down?) an asylum seeker (SO socially unacceptable, don’t you know) and wrote a book about the battle with the government.

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  16. My love story is too long to fit in one post, I am writing a ‘How I met your father’ with 9 seasons in mind 😀 I wrote a small part of that story as my tribute to telegraphy – a communication method that is probably unknown to many. The last telegram will be sent in India on the 15th of July this year, after a 165-years of service! And I have a telegram that played a major role in my life. We have had long-haul flights, emails, IRC chat, long-distance telephone calls and snail-mail all play a role in our love story. We have gone from standing in queue at the post office to send each other packets to standing at the DHL vending machine to get packets ordered through Amazon for our two kids, I hope that my children find the same kind of happiness as I have whichever medium they choose to use.
    My post on telegraphy;
    http://kallucuriocorner.wordpress.com/2013/06/17/the-importance-of-punctuation/

    I am going to read a few of the love stories with a happy continuation…
    Have fun blogging, my fellow bloggers,

    Kallu

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  19. After meeting my now hubby at my birthday party (he wasn’t invited, he went with a friend of a friend of a friend, and so on…) I couldn’t remember his name, so I googled what I remembered from our conversation and found several possible email addresses, and the right one answered. Google made my 21st century love story possible hehe 😉

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  24. For me love is like elastic it can stretch over most of any pain and disappointments experienced in romantic love to the joy of love offered and given by Children, Grandchildren and friends. If you are open to it, free and blessed enough to be a parent /Grandparent just LOVE then see what happens.

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60 Responses While this challenge is closed to new entries, we encourage you to visit the Reader to find other avid bloggers.