Once you’ve finished your story, poem, creative non-fiction or whatever variety of brain-baby you make, and you’ve made it all shiny and nice, you’ll probably want to try and publish it somewhere. Entering your work into writing competitions is a pretty good way to do this, but where do you find them? Here’s my non-comprehensive list of places to try:
Writing magazines! You ARE subscribed to at least one, right? If not, sign up to one right now (or, if budget is an issue, stop by your local library and see if they have any. If they don’t, find a librarian and ask if they’d consider signing up. And then write to your MP, governor or whoever is in charge of these things in your area about keeping libraries open). Seriously, every writer should be receiving at least one writing magazine for inspiration and information. Also, as well as running competitions themselves, any writing magazine worth reading will have a section where writing competitions and publication opportunities of all kinds are listed, often by writing form and genre. Chances are, you’ll be able to find something there that works for you.
Alternatively, there’s the standby: just Google it (using the search engine of your choice; other options are available). Plenty of literary sites list competitions, so hunt around, bookmark a few you like and check them on the regular. Throw in “writing competitions” whenever you’ve got a few minutes and see what you can find.
Of course, any publisher or other entity who have run a competition that has interested you in the past is worth checking again, even if you didn’t end up submitting or your entry didn’t make the cut. If they ran one competition that felt like your thing, chances are they’ll run another at some point, so keep a list somewhere and drop in every month or so just in case.
Obviously, once you’ve found a few competitions you like the look of you’ll want to do an organised-person thing, like make a note of it somewhere so you don’t forget and miss the deadline. I have a spreadsheet for competitions I intend to enter (for someone who doesn’t like spreadsheets very much, I do seem to have a lot of them), with columns for things like competition title, wordcount range, deadline, publisher and a hyperlink. If you’re like me and getting organised is tricky for you, then taking an hour or so to throw something like that together can save infinite headaches for Future You.
So, that’s my incomplete list of places to start your search for competitions to enter. I’ve undoubtedly missed something, but hopefully I’ve given you a few good places to start. Have fun with whatever competitions you choose to enter! Coming soon: How to Deal with Rejection!
Harriet Phoenix 