Competitions and Motivations

Why do we enter writing competitions? Is it because we feel the need to compete with our peers? Is it a need to prove to ourselves that they can win something on our own merits? It is any number of reasons, personal reasons, we all have. Understanding these reasons is important, however, before you just rush out and begin entering contests.

Essentially, a competition represents competing against others. Whomever those others are. It is a contest as to who will win. Writing, as with art, is subjective. What one editor or judge may enjoy, another may despise. Some will understand what the piece is about, while others completely miss the point you were trying to make. Maybe this is the writers fault for not expressing their feelings succinctly. Perhaps it is the fault of the judge, who instead of seeing what the writer intended, twists it into something they thought it was supposed to be. Either way, these are both reasons your work can lose a competition.

As a beginning writer I set out to enter as many competitions as I could. I never thought of them as competing against someone else. I wanted to win a few, in the hopes that those credits on my resume would make an editor down the road look at my work and says, "Wow, this won such and such, I should take a look at this." This was my motivation. Actually placing or winning was always nice, and I admit, a bit addictive. Any addiction will lead you to do more of the same, and I continued to enter contests consistently for 2 ½ years. Only recently did I lose the real need to compete. Many writers enter a competition simply to prove something. If they can win or place, they have proven they can accomplish this, and they are a good writer. Taking this one step further, many writers only enter these competitions to see if they are good writers. This is dangerous. If you enter a competition knowing you may not win, and you are alright with that, then there is no harm no foul. But if you fully anticipate winning, and losing means to you that your work is unworthy, this can lead to major problems down the road.

This goes back to writing being subjective. Believing that the loss of a competition is a testament to your work being good or bad, is like saying that because one person in a crowd of 5,000 didn't notice you at the baseball game, you must not be attractive enough. In that situation you see how ridiculous that is. The same applies in writing.

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