I recently had a friend tell me that she wanted to make writing more a priority in her life, and asked me to help her find contests to submit to as that could make a good goal to work towards. I thought my answer would make a good blog post, and I don’t think she will mind using her question as inspiration for this post (edited for clarity):
With contests/submissions, it depends on what kind of writing you do. Every genre has different magazines and publishers, and your avenue for publishing will differ based on how long your work is. Do you write short stories, or do you want to write novels, or perhaps novellas? The genre will also determine who you send it to. But it also might be the case that you won’t truly know where to submit until you’ve spent a lot of time revising a piece and getting feedback. For example, I’ve been told by writing friends that two of my short stories maxing out at 5,000 words need to be longer based on the amount of ideas I have inside–so it’s either cut ideas I like, or expand on them. But any longer and that will place these stories into long short story or novella territory, which will change my publishing route.
Having a goal to publish in a specific magazine is nice, but the specific goal can shift because you don’t really know what kind of story you have until it’s written and revised. I’ve found that having a more general, writing-based goal works better for me, like, “I will finish this draft by this date and will spend 90 minutes a day working on it,” or, “I will submit to agents in July.” If you write short stories, yours might be, “I will write a first draft of a new story in May.” I think that would be a good start. I prefer to have the story tell me what kind of story it is, rather than try to fit it into guidelines stipulated by a magazine or contest. Producing art should be enjoyable – it is less about the product than it is about the process. And learning to enjoy the process makes all the difference.
I ended my answer with a writing recommendation: Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear. It’s a quick read and you could honestly read just a short chapter and be energized by it. It’s written by the same woman who wrote Eat, Pray, Love and her philosophy is just so relaxing and inspiring. I had two other creative friends recommend it to me (one is a spoken word poet/rapper, the other a drawer/artist), so I’m passing on the love.
