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Creative writing competitions can serve several purposes. One of them is to get you writing. If you have a maximum word count and a deadline it concentrates the mind and can result in work that otherwise would never have been written. If you are given a subject to write about it is even better.

Another consideration is fame and fortune. Not a bad incentive, but here we must be realistic. Competitions are usually for short stories and are held by magazines or publishers. The competitions can vary from very small to very big. A few are free but most have entry fees. This is quite acceptable, as prize money must come from somewhere. However entry fees can be quite high and if you enter a lot of competitions the cost of fees adds up alarmingly.

The small creative writing competitions have a few hundred entries and give you a definite chance of winning. After all some of the entries will be very bad, some will be excluded, as the authors have not read the submission guidelines properly, and a few will miss the deadline completely. This reduces the opposition to something manageable. If you are a competent writer you have a chance of being in the top two or three. But what do you get for your trouble? The prize money will probably cover your entry fee and the price of a coffee at Starbucks. You might only get a free copy of the magazine sponsoring the competition. That is about it. Your name will appear on the list of winners, but few people will read the list. So entering a small competition is little more than writing practice, whatever the outcome. But writers have to start somewhere and a win or a shortlist can cheer you up a lot and inspire you to greater things.

Big creative writing competitions are different. They attract an international entry of thousands. The winner gets an impressive prize and lots of publicity. Not free publicity, do not forget the entry fee, but valuable publicity which can push a career forward. The standard of winners will be very high. They may be competition specialists who are not only excellent writers but know exactly what the judges are looking for. Perhaps they are published authors who, by definition, are very experienced at what they do.

You should never think you are not good enough to enter any competition, but a reality check is needed here. Just to be on the shortlist of maybe 100 writers is to have performed well. If you win you will have earned your fame and fortune.

Of course one sure way to avoid winning a competition is not to have entered in the first place. Have a go, you may not win – not at first anyway – but you will have written your entry. If you do not achieve the success you hoped for in the competition send your story to suitable magazines or publishers. Someone will give it a home.
Then move on to your next competition.

About the Author

Peter Stockwell is the author of award winning children’s book ‘The Horse Painters’. http://www.the-horse-painters.com

Article Directory Source: http://www.articlerich.com/profile/Peter-Stockwell/41227

Many years ago most personal letters, after an extremely formal salutation, began “I take my pen in hand.” We do not see that at all nowadays, but the spirit of that saying still lingers. Pick up the average letter and you cannot fail to notice that the writer has grimly taken his pen in hand and, filled with one thought, has attacked the paper. That one thought is to get the letter writing over with.

And perhaps this attitude of getting the writing over with at all costs is not so bad after all. There are those who grieve over the passing of the formal and dignified letter and others who regret that the “literary” letter – the kind of letter that can be published – is no longer with us. But the old letter of ceremony is not really more useful than a powdered wig to a modern man, and as for the sort of letter that delights the heart and lightens the work of the writer – well, that is still being written by the kind of person who can write it. It is better that a letter should be written because the writer has something to say than as a token of culture.

THE PURPOSE OF THE LETTER

No one can go far wrong in writing any sort of letter if first the care is taken to set out the exact object and desire of the letter. A letter always has an object – otherwise why write it? But somehow, and particularly in the dictated letter, the object frequently gets lost in the words. A handwritten letter is not suitable to be too wordy – it would take too much time and trouble to write. But someone dictating may, especially if interrupted by telephone calls, ramble on about what they want to say and in the end have used two pages for what should have been said in three lines. On the other hand, letters may be so brief as to produce an impression of abrupt rudeness. It is a rare writer who can say all that need be said in one line and not seem rude. But it can be done.

The single purpose of a letter is to convey thought. That thought may have to do with facts, and the further purpose may be to have the thought to produce action. But plainly the action depends solely upon how well the thought is transferred or conveyed in the letter. Words are used in a letter as a vehicles for thought, but every single word is not a vehicle for thought, because it may not be the kind of word that goes to the place where you want your thought to go; or, to put it another way, there is a wide variation in the understanding of words. Where an exactly phrased letter might completely convey an exact thought to a person of education, that same letter might be meaningless to a person with less understanding of complex words. Therefore, it is unwise in general letter writing to resort to using unusual words.

There is something of a feeling that letters should be elegant, that if you wanted to express yourself simply and clearly, it is because of some lack of sophistication, and that true sophistication breaks out in long, deep words and complicated constructions. There could be no greater mistake. A person who really knows the language will write simply. A person who does not know the language too well, and is affecting something, which he thinks is culture, has what might be called a sense of linguistic insecurity, which is similar to the sense of social insecurity. Now and again you meet a person who is afraid of making a social error. He is afraid of picking up the wrong fork in a restaurant, or of doing something else that is not done in polite society. They have an uncomfortable time of it, but any one used to social etiquette takes it for granted. It is the same with the writing of a letter.

There is no reason for writing a letter unless the objective is clearly defined. Writing a letter is like shooting at a target. The target may be hit by accident, but it is more likely to be hit if a careful aim has been taken.

CHILDREN AND LETTER WRITING

In this modern age of email and text messages, the act of sitting down and writing a letter by hand is quite a dying art. It’s a shame to think that the current generation of young children may grow up never having to write a letter by hand, so why not encourage them to sit and write to grandparents and family members who may not possess a computer, or even know how to send a text message. These letters will be received with great pleasure and affection, and will often become treasured possessions.

Before you know it, even writing a letter to Santa will be done on a word processor. How much more fun is writing a letter to Santa when you can get creative with paper, pen and colourful crayons.

The World Wide Web is a great resource for information, so why not research some pen pal sites that encourage communication between children in different countries using the traditional pen and paper. What can be better than that sense of anticipation awaiting the next letter full of thoughtful and personal messages from a friend in another country?

About the Author

M Newbold is a prolific writer who enjoys writing on a wide range of subjects including – family matters, health, fitness, recreation and sports. For a useful resource guide to writing letters, visit my site here: http://www.lostartofletterwriting.com/ lostartofletterwriting.com/