Writing Contests

This area is dedicated to some of the writing contests I regularly enter or have entered in the past.  Some of them are prompt based, meaning as part of the contest you are are supplied one or more prompts for subject, character, genre, etc. and have to craft a piece meeting the guidelines usually withing a short time for turnaround.  Contests can be a great way to hone your skills and make your writing more focused.  I've found them both fun and challenging.  Most do require an entry fee and I will indicate that where appropriate.

NYC Midnight - One of the largest overall contests I participate in.  I've competed in both their Flash Fiction and Short Story competitions.  It's a paid entry competition that boasts several thousand participants in each run.  Participants are arranged in random groups and given prompts - typically genre, location, object - and a deadline with which to submit a piece.  Pieces are then judged and depending on the competition the top entries in each group proceed to another round where they are again randomly grouped and given another set of prompts.  And so on until it's whittled down to finalists.  Personally this is a favorite of mine.  It can be stressful and demanding to deliver a completely original piece with random prompts on a deadline, but I find it exhilarating and fun.  All pieces are read by three judges and feedback is provided on each piece.  If you want to learn a little more about my past experience in this competition you can click HERE.

Fiction War - They run a quarterly competition with a prompt and deadline.  It's a much more simple format than NYC Midnight as it's a single prompt.  I placed as a finalist in their 1Q2019 run with a story titled "Rate of Success" based on a prompt of "Matchmaker".  This is also a paid entry competition that touts publishing a print magazine/anthology of their quarterly winners and finalists.  A word of caution though -- while they are still running quarterly competitions, their publication of the winners looks to be 2 years behind schedule.  If you place as a finalist or winner, you cannot have your piece published elsewhere unless you withdraw it and given the 2 year lag your story could wind up in limbo for a while.

Grindstone Literary - This site runs competitions staggered throughout the year in a range of short fiction categories, including micro and flash fiction as well as poetry and even a novel competition.  They are fee based, but generally it's open genre with word count limits depending on the category.  Personalized feedback was provided for the Flash round I competed in last year.  "Heaven's Helpdesk" was my entry there and it placed in the top 20% based on the feedback I received.  That piece has since been published by Flash Fiction magazine.  The only criticism I have with Grindstone is that the entry fees are high relative to the prize for each competition, but I suppose that's minor unless you're on a tight budget.  They have a really well maintained site, good submission process and prompt turnaround against their competition dates.  In fact, they have a submission dashboard where you can view your previous submissions and feedback in a very nice interface.