Writing competitions

Are you deep in the throes of writing or redrafting your manuscript? If yes, have you thought further then tomorrow or a week, even a month ahead? With all the distractions that come with life, just making time every day to write should be enough right?

Yes and no because beyond the day-to-day, its important to set goals for the next three to six months, to devise a plan of how else you might get your work out there, before you start the querying process. One way is through writing competitions.

If this hasn’t been on your radar, these are some of the reasons why you should think about entering;

Writing competitions have deadlines and we generally work better to deadlines unless its totally unrealistic and we end up procrastinating

It gives us the opportunity to share our work before we start the querying process
If you don’t hear back, you can use that as a signal to rework and refine your manuscript
If you get shortlisted, give yourself a treat because you’ll know your hard work is paying off and your manuscript is going in the right direction
If you win, this could be the gateway to getting the agent and/or publishing deal you’ve been working so hard for

Whatever your book’s genre and target audience there is a competition out there for everyone, so do your research. But inevitably there will be some duplicitous contests out there, so make sure you also read the small print in detail;

For most competitions there will be an entry fee, so think about your budget and whether you can afford to invest this money and not necessarily see a return on it
The fee should be relatively nominal. If its too high then this is a watch-out
If there is no fee and you enter, then you might be giving away rights to your story
It might just be a marketing tool for an organisation to be able to sell in other services once they have collected all the email addresses from entrants. This might be a cynical viewpoint but it does happen so use your instincts. If something feels off, listen to your gut

Personally, I will be submitting my manuscript to the Bridport prize competition for memoir writing which has a deadline of the end of Sept. My editor was kind enough to share a link to this competition and encouraged me to enter. While it makes me feel a bit nervous to do it, I think its because of the reasons I’ve given above. It feels like it would almost be a judgement on whether what I’m pouring everything into, is worth it. But this isn’t helpful so instead I’m going to reframe this way of thinking. There are so many writers out there with amazing stories, if mine does or doesn’t get any traction, would that really be an indication of whether I’m on the right path or not? No it wouldn’t, so I’ll quieten down that voice and just concentrate on making my manuscript the best I can. That’s all I should be really focusing on anyway.

I’d love to know what you think about writing competitions and if you’ve entered any, how it went and how you think it benefited your work?

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Writing competitions.

The writing process.

Changing minds.