The Thrill of the Chase
When singer-songwriter Nick Cave discovered he’d been nominated for an MTV Award, he sent a polite note to the organisers asking to be withdrawn: he did not enter competitions – his muse was not a horse.
So why enter your own muse in a competition? There’s certainly no obligation to do so – there must be many successful writers who’ve never done it. But for others, prizes are a way of getting one’s work noticed, published, and financially rewarded, and it can even lead to the holy grail: a publishing contract. For me, it’s a way of motivating myself to actually finish work – I need deadlines! I have a deliciously geeky spreadsheet in which I list upcoming competitions with entry criteria, entry fees, details of judges etc. It’s sorted by deadline so I always know which competitions are coming up.
There are the ‘big ones’ like the Forward, the T.S. Eliot, and the Costa, where you have to have had a book published to be eligible, but there are hundreds, if not thousands, of writing competitions for unpublished and new writers. How do you decide which ones to enter? Competitions come in many shapes and sizes. For fiction there are competitions for flash fiction, short stories, first pages of novels, first three chapters of novels, and so on. For poetry there are competitions for set forms (often sonnets), short poems, long poems, pamphlets and entire unpublished collections.
Some of them have very steep entry fees – it’s £17.50 to enter the Manchester Writing Prize, for example, and although first prize is a splendid £10,000 there’s no second or third prize – winner takes all. That’s a pretty expensive raffle ticket. It’s worth looking at how the entry fees compare to the prizes on offer: some competitions are run purely to make money, but this isn’t necessarily a bad thing – some arts organisations use competitions as a way of funding very worthwhile projects. Cash isn’t the only reward, of course: competitions may also offer publication, writing retreats, courses, mentoring and so on.
When choosing competitions one of the best gauges of whether it’s worth entering is to look at who the judges are: there’s a huge sense of satisfaction when your story or poem is selected by a writer whose work you admire. But bear in mind that some competitions have “sifter readers” who only pass a selection of entries to the named judge; other competitions advertise that the judge reads all the entries themselves.
There’s no guarantee that the “best” entry will win; Julian Barnes famously described the Booker Prize as “posh bingo”. I’ll confess to you in the privacy of this blog that sometimes I read the winning entries in competitions I’ve entered and honestly think my work is better. C’est la vie – literature is subjective and what one reader likes, another doesn’t. No point dwelling on it, just send your work out somewhere else. Of course, when work is rejected, it’s the perfect opportunity to re-draft it and make sure it really is the best it can be.
Which brings me to the dreaded R word. You have to brace yourself for rejection. Some writers are so crushed by it they can’t contemplate entering competitions. But I think the best approach is simply to enter them and then forget all about them, concentrating on creating your next piece of work. Then, if you do get placed, it’s a bonus.
What’s your experience of writing competitions? Have they boosted your confidence or are you too terrified to enter? Are they beneficial to the writing process or is Nick Cave right – the muse is too important to be entered in a race?
And if you fancy giving it a go, here are a few handy websites which list competitions:
http://www.booktrust.org.uk/books/adults/short-stories/prizes/
http://www.nawe.co.uk/the-writers-compass/events-and-opportunities/competitions-and-submissions.html
http://www.poetrysociety.org.uk/content/competitions/
7 thoughts on “The Thrill of the Chase”
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Winning a prize can certainly boost your profile and reputation, and advance your career. These benefits are practical and sometimes may even appear necessary. On the other hand, I laughed heartily when I read Nick Cave’s letter. He makes an alternative case very well. Our proliferating prize culture has worried and bothered me for some time, because I think it has contributed in some small way to actually dumbing down debate about art – about its role and value. When we accept awards or prize money, do we align ourselves with the values of those who bestow them? When we fetishize prizes and awards, do we shift the value of art away from its intrinsic content and energy and bestow value upon whatever accumulates reward, prestige and validation? There is so much status hunger and status anxiety in our society – arguably more within the arts, especially as so little conventional status is bestowed upon the anonymous practitioner. As artists (and as audience), I think we need to think long and hard about role and value, and it will be good for us in the long term to be able to find and develop our own thoughts, and not be led too much by those glittering lights.
I don’t enter many competitions but would rather use it to gain recognition.
It’s always fun to enter but there are dangers. You need to make sure you enter a competition organised by a reputable literary organisation, so using the websites suggested by Vicky gives you some insurance against vanity organisers who simply set up a competition to make money for themselves or indulge their own egos. This can result in a student-writer feeling good about winning a competition when in fact their piece of writing deserves far more attention and redrafting than they have given it. As Matt Clegg says, we probably all need to think about “role and value” in our writing.
Thanks for your thoughtful and thought-provoking comments. Another take on the whole “competition business” was put forward by Joel Connolly in the Poetry Review this summer. He dissects the insular world of the “top” poetry prizes in Britain and it makes for rather dismal reading!
http://www.poetrysociety.org.uk/lib/tmp/cmsfiles/File/review/1042/1042%20content%20for%20web%20Connolly.pdf
I absolutely agree that there are dangers with what Matt calls our “proliferating prize culture”. The fact that media discussions of poetry (and other literary arts) so often focus on prizes or lists of “best” poets/writers is certainly a distraction from more important discussions about the value and role of the arts.
However I do feel that, as a new writer, each competition placing has mattered a great deal to me. I’m sure Liz is right that it may breed complacency in some writers, but many others value the feeling of validation that competition placing gives, especially if awarded by a respected judge, and are spurred on to write more and better work. As with everything, it must be a question of balance.
Vicky, this book is very interesting: Economy of Prestige: Prizes, Awards and the Circulation of Cultural Value, by James F English.
Do you know it?
That phrase ‘proliferating prize culture’ is one I’ve lifted from that book.
M
Hi Matthew,
No, I don’t know it, but see it’s in the library where I work so I will take a look, thank you! (Though I’m worried it will be very depressing!). A book I have enjoyed is “The public value of the humanities” edited by Jonathan Bate. It’s focus is on the humanities as an area of academic study and research, but the role and value of the arts is inevitably part of this debate.
All best, V
Yes, he tries to define a difference between the innate value of a work of art, and the symbolic value that a prize attaches to it. He goes into interesting detail on how prizes create the need for yet more prizes – how the Oscars created the need for anti-Oscars awards, which in time become barely distinguishable from the Oscars themselves. And he offers some interesting analysis on how prizes often raise the media profile of prizes more than they generate actual debate on the role and value of individual artists or the arts in general. I agree with you that it is a matter of balance, but it seems to me that coverage of the arts by the media is way out of balance: the glittering prizes, and the gossip and debate about prizes, can eclipse far more interesting and timely conversations.
I’ve enjoyed reading Jonathan Bate before, I’ll have a look at the book you mention. Thanks Vicky –
M