Good morning everyone! I hope you had a nice fall weekend!
I wanted to discuss Writing Contests a little today. I saw that the Writer’s Digest was holding a short story contest for various genres that closes this week. Thankfully, my scary short stories fit into the genre, so I had my family pick which story was the best and I worked on the story for most of Saturday to finish getting it ready for submission
I really like how the story turned out, and I’m excited that this pushed me to finish the story! I’m hoping that I can work on the other 8 short stories as well now and have them all ready to publish in a short story thriller book sometime soon!
But I wanted to go over our expectations when we submit our work for contests. Does it make you think that your work is the best and that it’s SURE to win the Grand Prize! Or does it make the old self – doubt creep in where you’re SURE you won’t be picked at all and you just hope that the judges don’t laugh at your work.
I think we can easily fall into either (or even both) categories from time to time. I started out with this story excited about possibly winning one of the prizes. But then, as I finished the short story, I started thinking, “I don’t think this is good enough to win. It’s just a regular run of the mill story!”
Now, I want to say that I’m not normally down on myself or my work…which is why I was surprised that I had this moment of self – doubt. What I realized is that it didn’t matter if I won or not! I was happy with how the story turned out, and it motivated me to work on the other short stories too. So no matter the outcome of the contest, I’m already happy with the consequences of getting ready to submit!
I hope this #motivated you to work on those unfinished projects and maybe submit one or two to some #writingcontests! Have a good week everyone, and #keeponwriting!!!
