Why I Still Haven’t Entered A Writing Competition
Is the thought of being judged worth it?
What do I need to do to become more credible as a writer?
This question often rumbles around my thoughts, and I have a few stock answers I measure myself by:
- Sell more books
- Get more (good) reviews on Amazon or anywhere my first novel is available
- Grow a mailing list of avid readers (this is the number one tip from all the “experts” as you can’t trust the social media algorithms!)
- Do some interviews and get yourself out there and known to readers who love the genre you write in
- Have a great-looking website and an engaged social media following
And, of course, sitting alongside this is my other mantra:
Don’t compare yourself to other writers.
This is the road to mental ruin!
So how am I doing against this checklist?
- I don’t sell as many books as I’d like, but I’ve sold a few, and not just to my friends and family.
- I have a respectable number of reviews on Amazon and as a self-published author I’m satisfied with the average rating (I’ll just forget about the reviews from those who hated my book!)
- This is going better than I’d hoped and growing well.
- I’ve made some enquiries and received some offers, I just need to find the time to do them, but this is looking positive.
- My “day job” is heading up a large Communications department so website creation and social media engagement is a comfortable space for me.
Overall assessment: B-
Teacher’s comments: Making progress, room for improvement.
Yes, but what about…
However, there is one major suggestion I keep reading about which I’ve yet to take the plunge on, and which might elevate me nearer to a B+.
Entering a writing competition.
I often get emails from contacts sending me details of the latest round of competitions for new, emerging, established, self-published or traditionally published authors. So why haven’t I done so?
At first, I wasn’t sure. But after some contemplation, the truth emerged. When I realized the reason, a quote I like from American novelist, Erica Jong, sprang to mind.
“I went for years not finishing anything. Because, of course, when you finish something you can be judged.”
And there it was, staring me in the face. It scared me to put myself out there in a “competition” to be judged. A classic case of writer imposter syndrome.
Is this the curse a self-published author always feels, or is it just me? I grew up on books, my mother and late-grandfather were avid readers. A week seldom went by when the archive of Agatha Christie whodunits (my mother) or John Creasey mysteries (my grandfather) weren’t being rattled through.
Every time we visited his house he would pass over to us the latest novels he’d got through and show us the 10p bargains he’d picked up from his local second-hand bookstore. Books were everywhere.
This sounds idyllic, doesn’t it?
The point is my literary upbringing and influences were prolific and “traditionally published” authors. The idea of the internet, ebooks and the ability to self-publish was not in our consciousness. But my urge to read and then to write was born in this space.
I “wrote” my first novel when I was 11 — filling an entire school exercise book with an homage to my favourite film, “Where Eagles Dare”. I think Alistair MacLean may have had a case for a breach of intellectual property on the plot, but that’s when my writing started.
Like many authors, I attempted the traditional publishing route, submitting to publishers and literary agents with no success but an enormous pile of rejection letters! I was fortunate though this failure coincided with the birth of the World Wide Web and the growth of self-publishing tools. This is the path I have taken with my first, and my soon to be published, second novel. But there is still that part of me that thinks this route doesn’t make me a “real writer”.
Despite this, and always being determined to write and publish, it has still been on my terms. Yes, I know there will be reviews slating my work — there are some on Amazon if you want to be ghoulish — but somehow this feels different. At least to me. Even if they end up not enjoying my work, there was something that caught their initial attention which led them to read my book.
The last frontier to credibility?
With the writing competition, I have this mental image of a cold and dispassionate examiner who has no investment in me. Why would I put myself in a situation which, as Erica Jong describes it, is where I will “be judged”? Why would I put myself up against “real writers” who will be far better than me? It’s that good old imposter syndrome coming out again.
Is this irrational? Almost certainly.
Does it irritate me? More than you can imagine.
Will I get over myself and just enter a competition and be damned? That’s the plan.
As I’ve got older, I’ve been challenging myself to throw off the cautions I had when I was young and push out of my comfort zone much more. I’m hoping I can soon add entering a writing competition to that list.
And who knows, if I win, maybe I’ll get that B+ and be credible after all!
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