Day 07 Writing Workout

Welcome to Day 7–an entire week of writing workouts! Congratulations on your progress so far. Workout 7 builds on yesterday’s markets post, but today it’s…

Contests.

Writing contests are excellent practice for writers because they give you guidelines and a DEADLINE. And if you put some $$$ on the line, well, you’re likely going to do all that you can to make that deadline, yes? Most writers aren’t super competitive by nature, but it is a lovely thrill to get that email that says “You’ve been longlisted,” or “You’ve been shortlisted,” or “You have placed,” or, better yet, “You have WON!”

You can find them the same ways that you found markets yesterday. But how do you know what kinds of contests to enter? How do you avoid the scams?

I have a simple rule…one I sometimes break:

50 TIMES.

The first place prize money should be at least 50 times the cost of entering the contest. It’s a simple rule of thumb for me because I am not independently wealthy. To me, if they are asking $20 for entry, the top prize needs to be at least $1000. (I’ve had two occasions where I’ve won $1000–once for a poem and once for a short story. Self-pat.)

As I write this post today, an excellent example of a good contest is the Surrey International Writing Contest. It costs $15 to enter, and the top prize is $1000. So when might I break my rule?

If a contest is prestigious and I’d give my left leg (I need my hands to write) to win it, I might take a stab at it, even if it breaks my rule. Sometimes, if I sell a piece of writing or win a contest, I might risk a bit more money entering another contest. I consider it an act of charity to support other writers. But in my mind, it’s not a great deal.

I also broke this rule in a contest where the prize money wasn’t fifty times the entry fee, BUT, if you won the contest, the judges and publishers would invite you to submit a collection of your stories to see if it was publishable. To me, that was worth MORE than $1000. When I won that short story competition, “The Things We Leave Behind,” put on by Blank Spaces literary magazine and Chicken House Press Publishing, I sent in a collection of 12+1 (a Baker’s dozen) stories. They didn’t think one belonged in the collection, but I replaced it with another they DID like, and my first book, How to Make a Killing Jar, came into the world!

All because of a contest.

I entered another contest because of the judges. It DID fit my 50 rule, but I also entered for another reason. It had two well-known judges: Jack Whyte, who has more than a million books in print, and Diana Gabaldon, who has more than 50 million books in print and a very successful TV series. When I won that short story contest and they both put glowing comments about my story IN PRINT in the writing conference anthology, I had COVER BLURBS for my first book.

I owe contests many thanks.

Another however: I will break my rule if I have an amazing piece of writing that fits their contest perfectly OR I have an amazing idea for it that I am motivated to write. I figure that if your contest motivated me to produce a great piece of writing, maybe I owe you a little, yes?

That’s me. You are always free to find what’s comfortable for you. And if money is no issue for you and you ARE independently wealthy, send me an email at writeracebaker@gmail.com because I have ideas about what you can do with some of that money. Smiles.

And how about all the contests where I didn’t even place? I owe them greatly also. MANY of my completed pieces have come as a result of a contest, and some of those stories appear in How to Make a Killing Jar or will be published in Bathing in Fire, my second collection coming out sometime before 2026, or a chapbook of poetry I’m publishing with another small press in March 2026: Mosaic: Bright Lives, Broken.

Don’t underestimate what contests can do for you and your writing… and join me again for Writing Workout #8, Track Star, coming soon to a blog near you or on my Insta @acebaker99 .