The Fickle World of Competitions

A very short extract from my latest book.

https://coverstorybooks.com/so-you-think-youre-a-writer-ian-gouge/

Not very many years ago I attended the Zoom event at which the top three prize winners in the National Poetry Competition were reading their successful entries. The chap who came second or third (I forget which) started his introduction by confessing that his winning poem had been rejected in fourteen other competitions — and now here it was, one of the best three in the land. Or at least from an entry of c.15,000.

And right there is the essential fact which underlies all such competitions, poetry or prose: the outcome is entirely subjective.

Which also suggests — by logical extension — that your average creative writing competition is essentially meaningless. Being a prize winner doesn’t mean that your work is ‘the best’; neither does not winning mean it’s not ‘the best’. Give the same pile of entries to an alternative judge or set of judges and I guarantee that the list of ‘winners’ will be different. Yes, most likely there will be some overlap, but an identical list of winners and short- or long-listed pieces? I don’t think so. And there are recognised writers — particularly poets, including those who teach poetry on courses and retreats — who enter their work into competitions and are unsuccessful far more often than we might imagine. That, in part, is one of the joys of the democratic and anonymous judging process.

Not winning a competition doesn’t mean you’re a ‘bad’ writer.

So what does all that imply?

Well, we like competitions don’t we? Or most of us, I suspect. They are an opportunity to measure our writing against others’; they act as a gauge as to how we’re doing.

"Validation"

And let’s face it, there is nothing like getting the email which congratulates you on making a short-list or winning a prize. It is the kind of positive reinforcement that can work wonders. Just as you are having doubts about what you are writing, up pops something that starts “Congratulations!” and all is right with the world again. Refuelling.

And the best endorsement of all comes outside of competitions, unprompted, from someone who has read our work and feels moved enough to let us know they enjoyed it.

So, on balance, competitions are ‘a good thing’ — provided you enter them ‘eyes open’ and in the right spirit, without expectation, recognising that they prove nothing, and that the real prize is the potential acknowledgement that there is some quality in what you are producing.

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