AVERIL ROBERTSON

After taking a twenty-four-year hiatus from writing fiction, I have spent the last eighteen months entering many, many short-story and flash writing competitions (and, you know, writing a novel). You’ve got to be in it to win it, right? And what I have found, win or lose, is that nearly every competition operator is kind. Confirming a payment has come through, wishing competitors luck after they submit, then if they don’t end up placing on the longlist, shortlist or in the top three, issuing words of encouragement and reminding us that to a point this is all subjective. So, what might motivate a competition organiser to tell off those who failed to meet the organiser’s standard?

I ask, because it truly baffles me. I acknowledge that their website clearly states what they believe makes a good short story. Obviously, they think what they say is unequivocal, and easy to implement when one is writing. So, if that many entrants are failing to do what they have said is required, it leaves me to wonder not what the entrants are missing, but what the competition organiser and judge is. And I have the answer.

They are missing the empathy required to assume good intent. A writing competition organiser should understand what it takes for people to actually bring themselves to put pen to paper. To dare to express themselves creatively. The vast majority of them will fail to meet the ‘standard’. This is normal. But to chastise them for not correctly implementing your subjective view of a good story seems mean.

In last year’s iteration of this particular competition, when I failed to make the cut, I was very early in my writing-competition journey, and to be honest, I was bitterly disappointed. This year, my failure to make the shortlist came within days of placing in three other competitions. So this year, I looked at the organiser’s message of disdain for our collective inability to do what he said, and I felt anger. How many new writers will be put off by this one man’s rudeness at their apparent inability to follow his instructions? 

Luckily for me, my determination to keep pushing along this writing journey means I shall not be discouraged. I can look critically at my writing and try to assess what I did ‘wrong’. What I cannot do is stop writing. And what I cannot do is stop exercising empathy for every single person out there trying, with nothing but good intent, to lay pen to paper in the hope that someone else will tell them they have something worthwhile to say.