Writing and Publishing Fiction

photo by Pitel

Last week I was pondering what contests I should enter this month, and I created a short list of 24 writing contests based on due date and topic or genre of the contest.

This week I'll need to determine a basis for evaluating the remaining contest candidate and narrowing the list to 2 or 3 finalists. Since I am being shallow, I can think of no better criteria than calculating the ROI (that's return-on-investment in business parlance).

Does Entering Fiction Contests Feel Like Playing the Lottery?
photo by Jeffrey Beal

Last week I announced that I would rework the incomplete novel that resulted from July Novel Writing month to enter a short story contest. I could take one of two approaches to begin this task. I could be true to the vision of the artist and complete the story first and then shop around for a suitable contest. Alternatively, I could take the shallow route by selecting a fiction contest first and then rewrite the fiction to improve the chances of winning that particular contest. I'll be taking the shallow route.

An Unpublished Guy visitor made an insightful comment to a previous post about fiction writing. This individual, who has a blog of her own, observed that I used the writing equivalent of leftovers and recommended that I try starting fresh.

Dear—you don't mind if I call you dear do you? Whether you are following William Blake, the self publisher, or Dr. Zaius, publishing fundamentalist, you will want to promote your fiction. If you are self-publishing or subsidy publishing, you will quickly find yourself in street fight brawl. Oh my, you will need to bust knees with a pipe and deliver a proper beat-down with a heavy chain, to get noticed. No one else is going to help you when you are lying in the street in a pool of your own blood, because you came ill-equipped with the marketing tools necessary to survive in the world of self-publishing.

Throwing my hands up, falling well short of 50,000 word novel writing objective.

In the waning hours of July Novel Writing Month, I was approximately 40,000 words short of the contest objective. In an act of desperation, I attempted to make up the difference with another gimmick.