Entering Competitions

I’ve managed to finish my short story (to the detriment of my novel) and they’ve been entered into the first couple of competitions I listed before. I’ve entered the Edinburgh Short Story Award, Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook Short Story Competition, Bath Short Story Award and The Creative Future Writers’ Award.

I used my first short story I’ve written this year (not my first short story ever). I ended up going through it multiple times, tweaking various issues such as POV, descriptive language and speech tags.

The Edinburgh Award has a short list of 15 so it’s the ‘easiest’ so to speak to place in. The Writers’ & Artists’ Competition only has 3 places announced so is the most difficult. Of course, it’s hard to say because I don’t have entry figures for any of these in the past in order to make true comparisons. The Edinburgh and Bath awards are open worldwide, so I’d assume they have higher entry numbers.

I think it’s the best story I’ve written. That may not be saying much though. But I edited it more thoroughly than ever so it’s as good as I’m currently able to create. Of course, that means I still have a very long way to go. However, I want to see where I am at, hence entering the competitions and, as you’ll see, the literary journals…

I found a story I’d submitted to multiple journals almost exactly 2 years ago. I had no luck with any of them. I was able to download it from Submittable as I’m 2 laptops down from when I originally wrote it (I’ve got much better laptop insurance now…). It wasn’t great, honestly.

There were some typos. There was some tense switching. Some of the plot was confused. I realise now that, by submitting to US journals, I also needed to change some of the vocabulary since I’m from the UK. I also discovered I was formatting my stories wrong for journals. So I learned quite a bit by going through the process of a major rewrite of the story.

In the end, I created a story that was much better written than the version I sent out 2 years ago. So, I’ve sent it out again. This time to 20 journals of various rankings except the lowest. I’ve been published in journals who have a more lax publication policy. I’m very grateful to them for accepting my work. But now it’s time for me to work a bit harder and see what happens. Most entries were free. A couple weren’t but I didn’t spend more than £2 a time. The decision making on whether the story can be published with them is between 4 and 12 months. That’s why I sent out so many. But this isn’t nearly as many as I sent out originally where I must have tried at least 50 journals of all standards. I can’t remember if I got any feedback whatsoever.

And I’m writing a fantastical third short story, based in Las Vegas (I visited in September). I aim to submit this to some other competitions this year- namely the Exeter Writers Short Story Competition, the Brick Lane Book Shop Short Story Prize, the Bridport Prize and HG Wells Short Story Competition, Seán Ó Faoláin International Short Story Competition, Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize and MSLexia Short Story Competition.

So, time for me to head back to the third story and get writing! I changed the plot majorly but I think that’s for the better. I was introducing magic but then not using it as a major plot point which seemed silly. I’m going to focus on this story, and put my novel on the backburner. If anything, I need to go back and look again at the initial idea as I’ve realised it’s not that special. I was only a week or so in, so maybe 7000 words so it’s not a big deal if I have ditch it all.

Will update you once I’ve finished my latest short story. Ciao!