Ask Sally # 24 - Small press/local Competitions

I've won a few small competitions and have had poems and stories in small press magazines and I was really happy at the time and put it on my website. Now I've heard that these competitions and small magazines don't mean a thing and that the people who run them don't know what they're doing. Have I wasted my time? Should I be keeping these small successes a secret?

No, of course not. You'd be a very rare writer indeed if you could get your first ever story into the New Yorker or win The National Short Story Prize with it.

Everyone has to start somewhere, and these small presses and competitions are an important step on the writing ladder. If you take that bottom rung out, how on earth is anyone ever to get a foothold? Unfortunately there are some people (thankfully rare) in the writing world who, once they've got to the top of the ladder, want to pull it up and ensure no one else follows them. So the minute they get a bit of success higher up, they start looking down on the markets and competitions that gave them a leg up. It's a regretful attitude.

Winning a small writing competition or being published by a small press can mean a lot in terms of building up your confidence, and letting you know you're heading in the right direction. Plus, if you win or get shortlisted in a lot of them, people start recognising your name. Some of the visitors to this blog found me via my placings in competitions.

I also notice how often certain names turn up in various writing comps and I can see those who are going to do very well in the future. I also recognise some of the people who rubbish the competitions using different names. Well, £100 quid prize money is always welcome, isn't it?

With regard to being published in small presses, Stephen King, in his book On Writing says that it doesn't matter if you were only paid $5 or a contributor copy for a story in a tiny magazine. What matters is that someone liked your work well enough to pay you for it, and this looks good with publishers when you're wanting to sell them your novel. I seem to remember Miss Snark saying something similar. That she wants to know that someone other than your mother thinks you don't suck.

There is a popular misconception that the organisers of small writing competitions are elderly men or women who have an attack of vapours at the inclusion of a swearword, but this is utter rubbish. When I came second in the Derbyshire Literature Festival's 1-2-1 competition the winner read out her 'letter' at the awards ceremony and it was littered with swearwords (and very good it was too). The judges of that competition were a couple of middle-aged and very prim-looking women who worked at the Derbyshire County Council offices. Yet they didn't require the smelling salts to get through the winning entry. Mind you, the winner was also a thoroughly decent middle-aged woman who looked as though butter wouldn't melt in her mouth.

There's no harm in aiming higher once you've had a few small successes. We all need to advance, but don't ever be ashamed of the markets and competitions which gave you your first chances. Put them on your website and let others know. If nothing else, when you're getting successes in harder to place competitions and print publishing, it shows people how far you've advanced.

I'll be forever grateful to those judges and editors who gave me my first placings in competitions and/or publishing success.