writing contests

I was invited to read poetry at White Rock City Hall

I finally did it. I have a website as a writer. I want to welcome you, dear reader, to my fledgling site. I hope you will find it fun and informative. 

The other day I entered the writing contest of the Friends of the White Rock Library. It helped sharpen my prose and gave me a project to work on intensively for the month of July. I also just received the final entries to the literary contest of our local writers' club. It's a ton of work, but I'm sure that having a contest inspires people to write things that they never would have written otherwise. It's been that way for me. 

I learned from Semiahmoo Arts' Double Exposure poetry challenge, that if you give people a deal, they may well respond to it. But not too good of a deal! Last year, entries had been free. I wrote one poem that didn't win anything.

This year, the fee was three poems for $5. I spent the most time on a longer poem that I quite like, called "The View from Below." Then I thought, perhaps for the same price, I could churn off another two. One of those, a haiku called "Woman hands out soup," won the contest! I was invited to read both poems at White Rock City Hall. 

The other striking aspect was that this win came right after my first submission to a literary journal was rejected. I tried to rationalize that I could now use the material for other purposes, but it still hurt. But some of that rejected material formed part of the winning poem! Amazing! 

We used a similar 3-for-1 pricing in our club's literary contest. I favour long poems sometimes, and we allowed people to enter a long poem for the same price as three short poems. Our poetry numbers were up quite a bit this year. 

If you are thinking of writing something new, do consider entering a contest. Even if you don't win, you will support an organization that is doing good work helping other writers. And you will have created something that you might never have done otherwise. 

- Irene Plett

TOPICS: writing contests, poetry, White Rock Library, Friends of the White Rock Library, Semiahmoo Arts