‘Another rejection,’ a friend emails me. She’s been sending stories to competitions for a year or so, and the “no” responses are beginning to wear thin.
I open my Excel spreadsheet and tot up the total submissions I’ve made since January. As well as competitions, I submit to literary magazines, have applied for several fellowship and residency opportunities, and more recently have started sending manuscript samples for callouts.
So far, my grand total for 2026 stands at fifty-one, a third of which have been rejected; the remainder are held in that time-honoured, liminal queue. I know, it’s a lot, and I won’t do that many next year, and I know this year’s enthusiasm has been in large part due to my shortlist success of 2025, which perhaps spurred me on a little too far.
But guess what: Wheels was ready and baked for a long time before a “yes” email dropped into my in-box, and that’s the thing. Competition judging is such a gnarly, subjective business. I’d been sending the same story out since 2019, making a few tweaks year on year. The veiled, mysterious, seemingly impossible world of competition-entering saw that little collection of words spat back repeatedly on a riptide of never-ending rejection emails – until at last, someone spotted it, fished it out of the swell, and bothered to read it properly.
At this point, it’s worth mentioning that comps are not for everyone; to have written something is, in itself, an achievement for which you should be proud. Besides, one person’s brilliant story is another person’s kitchen roll – who really knows how we judge success? But if you insist on giving it a go, here are my seven heavenly virtues for approaching the restless, addictive world of the comp:

1 Don’t stress
You are entering a mosh pit and must understand from submission number one that you are one of many. If your work has legs, it will get up and run (hopefully in the right direction).
2 Stick to genre
If the callout is for ‘spooky, paranormal tales that give us goosebumps”, don’t send in your best fluffy romcom; there will be other competitions for that.
3 Follow the rules
If the word count is 5000, don’t send in 6214 with the caveat “I can’t make it any less without losing the meaning”. Oh, and stick to the deadline. The judges are wading through cartloads of entries, and they won’t wait. Also, if the instructions say your work must be double-spaced in Times New Roman on numbered pages with the title saved as the story title, then that is what the format needs to be.
4 Don’t watch the pot
Stop checking ‘Submittable’ every two days and do something else, like throw yourself back into work (your other work), or get the garden sorted, or crack on with the next story in your collection.
5 Is it really ready to go?
Only a very few stories will be perfect, but yours must be as close as possible. I always re-edit mine if I’m sending it to another comp (I often do multiple submissions), invariably finding tweaks that I hadn’t noticed. But the way I see it, as long as that specific version I send is as watertight as the previous one, submitting it makes sense.
6 Have you shown it to anyone before sending?
If you’re not ready to show peer readers, then how can you send it to the wider world? Writing is for sharing, and your stories will thank you (and your readers) if suggestions are picked up.
7 Don’t despair
You’re doing this for the fun of it, yes? No? If it’s all too stressful, then take a long look at whether competitions are for you.

My closing advice comes from a Bridport Toolkit Webinar, during which a major literary agent responded to the question: ‘Do you recommend sending to lots of competitions at the same time?’ His response (paraphrased for this blog) amounted to: ‘I don’t see why not, but remember, the more applications you make, the more rejections you are likely to receive. Can you handle it?’
I have decided that in 2027, I probably won’t approach the melee with such elan. I currently have four or five stories on the submission roster. If I hone that down to two and shorten my hit list, then my bank balance, as well as my emotional and keyboard battery, will be thankful.