You don't have to win it, to be in it.

I’ve always found entering writing competitions a bit of a funny thing. I suppose it’s a direct mirror of what I suspect we all feel, all the time, as writers. That our work is concurrently both the worst and the best we’ve ever produced.

Just before you click that “enter now” button you’re pretty much convinced it would take some crazy act of god for you to be denied walking away with at least a 2^nd or 3^rd prize - and, if you’re being completely honest, taking 1^st place seems by far the most obvious outcome.

Then you press the button.

At an unspecified time after that (which could be seconds, minutes, hours or days) post-entry clarity hits and you’re embarrassed to have sent what could only be described as the worst 300 words ever to clumsily meet up on a page in the history of humankind.

But – other than the ubiquitous “writers dread” that seems to rear its head however and wherever one shares one’s work – I think writing competitions serve a great purpose beyond the hope (misplaced or otherwise) of winning.

The real win is that getting something finished and sent is a valuable psychological tool in what can be the lonely and slow moving process that is writing.

It can take months and years to finish a novel to the point where it can be shared. And if that sharing is with an agent or editor, then that’s still often far from the end of the journey for that piece of work.

But with a short story, poem or bit flash fiction, you can get it all tied up within a week, if not quicker.

Written. Edited. Sent. Thankyouverymuch. Next!

And I think that’s a really valuable thing. It can give you the sense of moving forward. It gives you “closure” on a project and let’s you mentally move on to the next.

For me, that means I can feel less stranded in the middle of an endless/impossible/stupid/all encompassing project (delete as appropriate depending where you are in your novel) and it gives me a little bit of daylight to cling to, and feel like I’m actaully achieving something.

So, I say don’t focus on the winning, and don’t get to tied up in the format of the contest you’re entering. Have a crack at poetry if you don’t normally, or maybe crafting a tight little 100 word story. Whatever the format or theme, it’s going to give you a lovely little writing-muscle workout. And that can only be a good thing for whatever longer project you’ve got on the go, and for your writing mental health.