What to Do After Losing a Writing Contest

 I entered the annual Toronto Star Short Story Writing Contest and….I didn’t win.

I figured this would be a good opportunity to turn lemons into lemonade and teach some actionable steps that young, aspiring writers could use should they face the cold hard shoulder of rejection when entering writing contests.

Mind you, this advice pertains to contests for short stories, but it could also apply to competitions for full manuscripts and novels.

Celebrate the Personal Wins

Congratulations! You completed a thing! So maybe you didn’t take home the top prize or make it into the honorable mentions, but at least you have a final product that hadn’t existed when you initially entered.

If you didn’t create a new entry and had just recycled an old story, then maybe this is the wake-up call you need to start creating new content.

Be Kind to Yourself

I find the best practice is to enter a contest where you are guaranteed at least some form of feedback if you don’t win. Obviously, I don’t practice what I preach and enter open call contests, but it can be maddening to get rejected and not know why.

You can drive yourself nuts hypothesizing all the reasons you didn’t win.

-Maybe the judge was in a bad mood the day they read your entry?

-Maybe the judge read a similar story that they didn’t like before reading yours?

-Maybe one judge LOVED your entry but the other judges couldn’t care less?

-Maybe you placed 4^th in a contest that awarded prizes only to the top 3 finalists and you were JUST edged out by something ridiculously minor?

Stop it. Breathe. Your imagination is not your friend in this situation.

The best thing to do is to be objective about the loss and understand that sometimes the results are out of your control. The sooner you recognize this cold hard truth, the sooner you can pull yourself out of a potential post-contest funk.

Be Honest with Yourself

Be honest; was your entry really that good?

Like, really, truly the best you could have submitted?

If there was any hesitation when you answered that question, then deep down you know that something could have been better.

-Maybe your pacing was too slow.

-Maybe the ending was underwhelming.

-Maybe there was a line of dialogue you suspected to be too hokey or too cliché.

Identify where your suspicions may lie in the failure of your work to garner critical praise. Take the loss as permission to change elements of your story where you weren’t 100% happy with the final outcome.

Just Keep Writing/Keep that Creative Momentum!

You wrote the story. You submitted to a writing contest. It didn’t pan out. The end?

No. Unlike the competition, your story is far from over.

There are many options you can take after losing a writing contest. You can start from the drawing board and revise your entry; you can try your hand at writing an entirely new story, or you can abandon the contest route entirely and try to submit to a literary journal or magazine.

The worst thing you can do is wallow in feelings of inadequacy and swear to never put yourself or your writing out into the public again.

While that may seem like the easiest option, it’s important to resist the urge to quit. Better yet, take the fact that you didn’t win as a blessing in disguise.

It’s just the universe’s way of communicating you still have a lot to learn in your writing career. After all, if it was easy to win a writing contest, it wouldn’t be so special when you actually did, now would it?

What do YOU think? Do you have any strategies with coping with an unsuccessful contest submission? What’s the best way to move on after the disappointment of a lost writing contest?