FQ. Q. I want to be published so is it important to enter competitions?
A. Most writers write hoping one day to see their work published. Some will not need to enter competitions, but they are the lucky few who somehow slip through to an editor because of their previous work in other fields or specialist knowledge about a particular subject.
The rest of us pounding away in our writing nooks need to build our skills and reputations as writers to have any hope of having a manuscript obtain a favourable glance from an editor.
Competitions give us the chance to show our abilities to judges from many areas and in all parts of the world. There are competitions everywhere and you may find your writing style and interests meet American, English or, if you are lucky enough to have other languages in your skills, Italian, Greek etc. ( I have a friend who writes children’s stories for the Spanish market. He is an Englishman living in Australia! The world is at our fingertips and sitting on our desks inside our computers. How lucky are we to live at such a time?)
The more competitions we enter, the more people will read our work and the closer we get to possibly winning enough accolades to have a C.V that will begin to make editors of magazines and publishers sit up and take notice.
If you are a beginner, you may be so naturally talented that you will take out a prestigious prize with your first effort. Most of us don’t have the well polished skills to do this.
So begin with smaller competitions which perhaps only offer publication in a journal, a book prize, or perhaps, just a small monetary reward for your efforts.(- TIP; Frame that first cheque and put it above your desk. It will inspire you on the days when the words won’t come! )- It all counts. One day you may go back to that first small winning story and with the experience and skills learned from constantly writing, turn it into your first published novel.
Try and read the winning stories of competitions you enter and analyse them as dispassionately as you can to find what it was that made them the winners. Re-read your own work and again try to see why it missed out. Polish it once more, try it from another angle, maybe play with different aspects and send it out again. Don’t relegate a good idea to lie languishing in the dark at the bottom of a box. If it was a good idea once, it will remain a good idea, it just was not perhaps expressed well enough. Enter it again refreshed if need be.
Liz. ©

F.A.Q Do I have to stick to the rules of a competition? Surely the judges won’t mind a few extra words?
A. Ooooh yes they will! Those few extra words when it comes down to a tie between your work and the story of another writer who hasn’t bent the rules, will cost you the win.
The rules are there to be followed that’s why they are rules. Liz ©

F.A.Q Are competitions worth while entering when I never win and each one costs me money in entry fees, postage etc?
The reasons for writing for competitions are;
1. They make you learn to meet deadlines.
2. They sometimes make you write and think about certain themes and subjects you may normally not try.
3. Because of the above they will help teach you to research a subject.
4. They teach you to express ideas within a limited word count.
5. They encourage you to let go of your ‘children’ and make them compete with others.
6. If you take the trouble to read the winning entries, you will learn to judge the level and competency of your work with a more practiced eye.
7. If you write for competitions regularly you build your body of work steadily and give yourself ideas to return to and develop into other articles, stories and novels.
8. If you don’t win with a story you were sure was an outstanding effort. You are entitled to have a rant, feel disappointed and decide to give it all up for golf or whatever. Remember there are probably hundreds of us feeling the same and you will know that we will all do as you will. After your first practice game of golf you will have thought of a good plot for a murder on the 9th green, a romance in the clubhouse, an article on the history of golf and golf equipment, a travel blurb on the problems of green keeping in equatorial regions, funny golf ticks and habits that people develop, the psychology of a golfing tyrant etc, etc WHY? Because you are a writer and that’s what you do! Let’s face it, golf will also cost you a lot more money than a few entry fees and you’ll probably get wet and catch a cold anyway.
Liz ©