Signing Up for Short-Story Competitions

An author friend advised me to submit some short stories to competitions and see if I can get any traction with judges. There are hundreds to choose from, so have sent submissions to two here in New Zealand. After making endless excuses about focusing on writing books, I decided to take the plunge.

One is called, ‘The Beard’ a thriller suspense with a twist of about 1,500 words. It uses the basic plot of an exercise in the recent creative writing university course I completed last month. This has been submitted to the Graeme Lay Short Story Competition.  The other is being submitted to the Sunday Star-Times annual Short Story competition which allows up to 3,000 words.  This closes on the 5th December, so I am still working on, ‘The Present From the Past.’  It’s about an antique writing desk and the history and experiences it has been through over the past three hundred years. Far fetched but what the hell – in for a penny!

It’s been fun trying to condense the characters and action into a few pages – a great exercise to reduce the waffle factor. Anyway, I’ve put myself out there and will see if anyone takes notice.