I spent a great deal of time this week uploading student entries to a writing competition. While I have written about the importance of writing competitions and contests for adult writers in the past, this week I witnessed up close, the power of these contests for our young, budding writers.
Contests are a great way to get your writing in front of objective eyes. To get another’s perspective on your writing. Judges are not your critique partners, your writing group members, or your beta readers. While these are all critical to our growth as writers, contests and competitions provide another layer of feedback.
For my 9 and 10-year-old writers, I have found the following to be incredibly motivating and helpful as they worked on their submissions.
- Having a deadline
o For most of the writing our students do in our writing club, there are few hard and fast deadlines. While this is positive in the sense that then the quality of the writing is the focus, it can also contribute to a lackadaisical approach to writing time. There is no urgency, which can translate to no focus.
- Having Guidelines
o The strict guidelines of the contest (word count, topic, etc) can help even the most unfocused writing find focus. It also gives peer-reviewers a place to start in their feedback.
- Having great models to look at
o Most writing contests, especially for young writers, have samples and past winners’ writing available to look at. It is so helpful to budding writers to see what has worked and what has not. Our club sessions where we examined these samples and discussed the trends and the decisions these writers must have made, were some of our most productive.
Important things for all writers to remember when submitting to contests:
- Know the rules and guidelines and FOLLOW THEM! Font size or spacing may not seem like a big deal, but they are there for a reason and you do not want your work invalidated for something like that.
- Pay attention to deadlines and give yourself plenty of time.
- Do not enter something that has not yet been thoroughly worked on, revised, edited, etc. That does an injustice to you and the judges.
- Use the feedback of the judges’ rubrics and comments. It may be difficult to read harsh assessments of our writing, but it is the only way to grow and strengthen our skill.
So, as you plan out your writing projects, goals, and submissions’ schedule, be sure to add a competition or two!!
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