In the beginning

It was a competition that encouraged me to to write. I’d always planned to ‘knock out a novel’ at some point in my life but there was always something with a higher priority and lower importance that seemed to get in the way (drinking, watching TV, etc.).

As the saying goes, deadlines force results, and for me, it was that first competition deadline that drove my writing ambitions. My first short story, Body Recyclers, was entered into the Bristol Short Story Prize (BSSP) last year. Their fifth competition is being launched this week which I’ll be entering with hopefully better results! I’ll also send a couple of flash stories to the Reader’s Digest 100-Word Story. It’ll be a busy month.

It’s not just about winning…

The point of this article is that these competitions serve two purposes for me, well, three if the entry is successful. If successful, the marketing value would be immense. I would no longer be ‘new author Colin Marks,’ I would be ‘award winning author Colin Marks.’ Plus, I’d win enough money to replace my sick beer fridge, my broken pride and joy.

But even without the prestige of winning, these competitions are rewarding. First, it forces me to try something new, like fitting a complete story into 100 words. All those Creative Writing courses and books instruct us to frequently practice different techniques and styles, but how often do we do that? It’s hard enough to find the time to write what I need to write, let alone find additional time to practice along the way. Competitions force you to do just that. Writing exercises are always done half-heartedly and with little enthusiasm, but when you write for a competition, where the quality of your output will be judged, the motivation level sky-rockets.

The second benefit, is that writing something to a restricted length forces the prose to be tight. The 100 word flash is an extreme case, but even the BSSP’s 3000 word limit is challenging. I’m currently writing a novel which I hope will be ready in a few months, though my self-imposed end-of-year deadline is currently looking frighteningly ambitious. After stripping down my 100 and 3000 word competition entries until they were tighter than the trousers at a Weight Watchers gathering, my novel now feels incredibly bloated. That first edit is going to be brutal, large sections of text will be slashed and any long-winded descriptions will be kicked into the bin.

The challenge

My aim is to enter at least six competitions a year. I will always enter the BSSP as this one is special, it opened my eyes to a whole new creative world, plus I live in Bristol so it’s local! The others will be varied so I can regularly try different techniques. It’s worthwhile and I do benefit from it.

Competitions are easy to find on the web, with sites like Prizemagic and Story giving a comprehensive list for those based in the UK.