Writing Advice: Dealing with the Competition Wait

So you’ve just entered a competition. For weeks now you’ve been lovingly tweaking and sculpting your short story, poem, screenplay, or whatever until it’s the best version of itself you can possibly manage. You’ve checked and rechecked your cover letter, made absolutely totally sure that you’re sending in the right version of your baby, and now it’s winging its way into the big wide world of literature.

So now what?

I said “competition” up there, but this applies whether you’re sending a poem to a competition, a story to a magazine or a submission package to an agent or publisher. Whichever way, it’s the same thing; for better or worse, you’ve done everything you can, your part in events is over and all you can do is wait until the judges get back to you (or, more often, until enough time has elapsed that you can assume you haven’t won). Whatever you’ve submitted to, you now have a long, agonising wait until you know if your entry has made it through. So how do you cope with the weeks of suspense?

Simple. Forget it and do the next thing.

Write another story. Find another competition. Dig out an unfinished project and see if you can revive it. Do the next thing. What you did yesterday doesn’t matter. What are you doing today?

I’m not saying forget it entirely. You’ll probably want to record somewhere what you’ve submitted, where to, and when you expect a reply. I have a spreadsheet and a separate folder for anything currently under submission. It’s good to check these things once in a while, to avoid missing the opportunity to submit that story elsewhere. I like to have a few submissions out in the world at any given time, so it’s nice to have that information available.

(Plus, I would definitely forget what’s gone to where and do something stupid, like send the same story into the same competition three years in a row, if I didn’t.)

Focusing on other projects will also distract you from the uncomfortable truth that the odds are sadly not in your favour. Fun as it is to fantasise about the respect and validation you’ll get from winning, and what you’ll do with the prize money (not that you care about such things, for you are an artist, amirite?), writing is a harsh business. The rejection rate is something like 97%. That’s not encouraging, but the alternative is never to submit anything.

The more stuff you have out there, the less each individual rejection will sting. So keep submitting, enjoy your fantasies of winning (but don’t get too invested), and above all, keep writing. The next thing ain’t happening by itself.