A year of entries

Four entries, not forty

Pick a number you can pay for and recover from. Four to eight submissions a year is plenty for most people with a job. Mix them. One free or cheap prize, so you are in the habit. One prize that publishes a longlist, so a near-miss is visible. One prize judged by someone whose name you would put in a query letter. One that simply pays well and fits the work you have.

Short story writers can do this easily, because the piece is short. Poets can send a small group, if the rules allow more than one poem, and should still read the line limit. Novelists should not enter six novel awards in a month with the same rough opening. Enter two, with a synopsis you would be happy for an agent to keep.

A shape for the year

• January and February: look at the opening filter. Note three prizes that fit work you already have, and one you would have to write.
• Spring: send the finished pieces. Leave the themed prize alone unless the theme is already in the story.
• Summer: one new piece, written towards a deadline that is at least six weeks away. Use the fortnight list only to check you have not missed a prize you already chose.
• Autumn: the big literary prizes and a lot of short story deadlines cluster here. This is a bad time to start a novel and a good time to send a story that has been sitting.
• December: quarterly free prizes often close at the end of a month. Writers of the Future is the obvious one. Send, then stop looking at lists until January.

Script writers can treat labs and fellowships as the “agent introduction” slot. Elise Brown’s Diverse Voices win worked because a judge asked for a meeting, not because a trophy opened a studio door by itself. Put the meeting prizes on the list, and keep a polished pilot ready, not a draft you plan to fix after you are shortlisted.

What to do with a yes

Tell the other prizes that have the same piece, if the win uses up rights they wanted. Add the credit to your biography in one calm sentence. If agents are part of the prize, reply to them promptly and send the full manuscript only when it is the manuscript, not the extract plus a promise. If the prize is publication, read the contract. Anthologies are a credit. They are also a set of rights. Keep a copy of what you agreed.

Then write the next thing. The writers on the stories page did not stop at the prize. De Waal had a novel. Sherwood had Testament already underway for years. Williams had a book from the MA. The prize was a step, and the step only works if there is a manuscript on the other side of it.

What to do with a no

File it. If you got a note, read it once now and once in a week. Change the piece if the note is obviously right. Do not change it because you are stung. Send it somewhere else if the rights are free and the fit is real. Julie Ma’s account is the ordinary one: years of not being longlisted, then a win with a book that had already been rewritten. The silence was not the end of the book.

A last practical word

The Prize Calendar will show you the next deadline. It will not know if your story is ready. When it is, filter, pick, read the official rules, and send. Competitions can be won. They are also a good way to become a person who finishes things and lets strangers read them, which is most of the job anyway.