Contests and Writing

I finally got some good news in regards to writing. I submitted one of my fantasy short stories: The Wizard, The Shadow and The Tree to the Dream Quest One writing contest and got second place and $250.00 (it can be found here: https://www.dreamquestone.com/the-wizard-the-shadow-and-the-tree). I re-edited the story to be even more descriptive, and I really do feel that I’m finding my voice as a writer. Before, I understood of showing, and not telling the audience of what’s going on in the story, but I really do feel that I am understanding that and writing that on a much deeper level.

The other thing that placing in this contest did was validate my progress so far as a writer. It’s one thing to have friends or family read and critique my work, but to have someone in the writing world to read my work and to praise it favorably is a totally different thing. Unless It’s really tough to gage if I’m really moving forward as a writer or not. I’m writing or editing on a daily basis with no real measure of improvement, as it’s not like martial arts where one gets a new belt the higher one goes. It gets very discouraging because there’s no real metric for progress for someone who is unpublished, or in my case, self-published but hasn’t sold many copies and got no feedback.

Writing is like anything else in that it’s something that needs to be constantly worked on and cultivated to get better. I’ve had to re-edit my works on a constant basis as I’ve learned more and got a better idea of the type of writer that I want to be. I’ve found that I like a certain level of description with my writing that involves using all the human senses, and I’ve gone back to my works to implement that idea.

This has definitely given me renewed vigor with trying to become a published author. I have been focusing on my short stories as of late to submit them into contests, and I have found that I have been enjoying re-editing these works, as the finished product feels like a different story than before. While I’m happy to have accomplished something involving writing, the ultimate goal is still to become a professionally published author.