If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again (and then try some more).
There are writers out there who get published right away, or who win the Writers of the Future contest with their first submission. I am not one of them.
After my daughter was born in 2020, I committed to follow my dream to become a writer. I started writing new stories and submitted them to markets full of excitement and (naive) optimism, expecting to get a mixture of acceptances and the odd rejection. After all, I thought what I was writing was great, surely editors would too…right?
My reality check
I received rejection after rejection, all of which were what are known as form rejections (no feedback or reasons stated for rejection). That is normal in the industry. I know that now. But at the time, those rejections stung. They knocked my confidence and made me question whether becoming a writer was actually possible, or just a childish dream.
Then, towards the end of 2020, I came across the Writers of the Future contest. I looked at the impressive list of judges (including Brandon Sanderson, Larry Niven, Kristine Kathryn Rusch and many others) and then the alumni of past winners and published finalists, some of whom became New York Times bestselling authors and all-round major names in the industry; the likes of Patrick Rothfuss, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Nnedi Okorafor, and Dean Wesley Smith to name but a few. And the prize for winning? Not just prize money, a trophy and publication in the annual anthology, but also a week long writing workshop in Hollywood taught by speculative fiction legends such as Orson Scott Card, Kevin J. Anderson and Tim Powers with flights and accommodation paid for.
I got excited. This was a high profile and prestigious contest with a track record of launching the careers of aspiring writers. And, to top if off, it’s free to enter and there are four opportunities to submit each year. Then doubt started to creep in. The contest receives literally thousands of entries each quarter from all over the world. What chance did I stand, just some ordinary guy from Wales (UK), to win such a contest when I was having difficulty selling any of my short stories?
Nonetheless, with the wind out of my sails, I downloaded a free volume of Writers of the Future, which I received after signing up to the contest’s (also free) online writing workshop. I opened it up and randomly selected a story from the index. By complete chance, that story was written by a writer from Wales. I was dumbstruck. How many writers from Wales have been published in Writers of the Future, and what were the chances of me receiving THAT volume and opening up THAT story and finding a writer from Wales? I thought, hang on, is this the universe telling me something? Maybe I should enter, maybe it isn’t so fanciful that I could win after all. Enthusiasm restored and, seemingly with fate on my side, I submitted a story, which I thought was my best at that time. Surely this was my moment…right?
A longer and bumpier road than I desired
A few months later I received an email telling me my story had not won. However, it was not a form rejection. My story was awarded a “Silver Honourable Mention” and I’d receive a certificate for my efforts sent in the post from Hollywood (again, free of charge). Even though it was still a rejection, it was a kind of grading, it gave me feedback about the standard of my writing. And it was a huge boost. A Silver Honourable Mention means it ranked in the top 50-75 or so stories for that quarter. The other ranks are Winner (ranked 1st, 2nd and 3rd), Finalist (top 8), Semi-Finalist, then below are Honourable Mention (which represents roughly the top 10% of entries), Rejected with Comments and Rejection. Your story can also be Disqualified if it does not comply with the guidelines, such as if you include your name in the story (it is judged anonymously).
Buoyed by that success, I joined the Writers of the Future forum, which is filled with writers from across the globe trying to win the contest and break into the industry. I was pleasantly surprised to find that it wasn’t a competitive atmosphere at all. Rather, it is a hugely supportive community where writers are genuinely happy to see other forumites (as we’re called) win and improve. I started to get more involved, through exchanging draft stories and providing critiques, and generally getting a better insight into the experiences of other writers. Up to this point, I was writing into a vacuum, with no feedback outside family. The support and encouragement from the forum was huge in keeping me going and trying to improve. It is just a great space for aspiring writers to get involved and find like minded people. If you are at all interested in writing, I’d recommend you check out the forum as well as the online workshop.
I kept submitting to the contest, to begin with once or twice a year. After attending a Q&A session on the forum, I focussed on writing stories that were a maximum of 7,000 words, as the advice was these are generally “easier” to sell and fared better in the contest. Through a mixture of receiving and providing critiques with other writers on the forum and just sitting at my keyboard and spending time actually writing, not just thinking about it, I felt that my writing was improving, slowly but surely. But my results in the contest were a mixed bag for the first two years (two Rejections and two Honourable Mentions) and I had seemingly hit a plateau. I was dividing my limited writing time between stories for the contest, plotting novels and writing short stories for other markets. With my work and life commitments, I was stretching myself too thin and my stories were not as good as they could be.
Then, in 2023, I committed to winning the contest. It offered the greatest prize and the best opportunity for me to break into the industry. And I knew the only way to win, and to keep improving, would be to submit a story every quarter. That is the tried and tested method of past winners. From that point, I submitted a story each quarter, always at 7,000 words or less, and this taught me how to plot and draft stories to a deadline, and it also taught me the importance of starting and finishing a story. There are countless “Chapter 1” files on my laptop of story ideas I started over the years and never finished. No more. If I started it, I would finish it (for better or worse).
However, even though I knew I was improving, and my feedback from writers on the forum was getting better and better, I still wasn’t getting any closer to winning. I wrote a number of stories that I felt were my strongest, and received another Silver Honourable Mention followed by a streak of five Honourable Mentions. Very respectable but, after three years of entering, I still wasn’t any closer to winning.
I’m not going to lie, even though an Honourable Mention is a solid achievement, I just knew I was a better writer than when I started entering and my lack of success was starting to get me down. I have very limited time to write as I have a full time job, a wife I don’t want to neglect, and two young children who want to spend time with me (for now at least!), and I had committed all my writing time to entering stories to the contest. My novel ideas remained in my head, as did other short story ideas that didn’t fit the contest guidelines. It seemed I was getting no closer to winning than with my first entry and I wondered, again, if I was wasting my time trying to become a writer. Was it, after all, just a childish dream?
I must have posted a comment on the forum that suggested I was a bit disappointed about my latest result. Doubt had again crept in, I had started to wonder whether it was sensible to put all my eggs in one basket and just write stories for the contest. Then, one of the writers on the forum got in touch and encouraged me to keep going. We’d exchanged stories before and he said he believed I could win. He had, in fact, recently been announced as a winner himself in Volume 40 so this was high praise. (James Davies, who wrote the excellent “Ashes to Ashes, Blood to Carbonfiber”, which you can read by signing up to his newsletter, it is definitely worth it, or better yet buy Volume 40 and read all the winning stories).
The pick me up was just what I needed. He also sent me a spreadsheet analysing previous winning stories from the most recent volumes (Volume 39 and Volume 40). I saw that, in fact, quite a few stories were much longer than the 7,000 word limit I had imposed on myself. This realisation made me think of a story I had started a few years before that I’d been really excited about, but I had not finished because I could not keep it below 7,000 words. I thought, you know what, I’ll just write the story until it is finished, until I have told the tale I want to tell, and worry about the word count later.
And I did. I finally finished writing “The Stench of Freedom”, which came in at nearly 15,000 words, and I was happy with it. I had told the story I wanted to tell, and I submitted it.
A missed call
A few months later, during halftime at Swansea City vs Gillingham in the League Cup on a Tuesday evening, I received a voicemail. It was from Joni Labaqui, the Contest Director for Writers of the Future. She wanted to speak to me right away. I was stunned. My mind whirred with excitement and I struggled to watch the second half as I wondered what the call could be about. Of course, there was a part of me that thought, am I a Finalist? But, no word of a lie, I had the week before contacted the forum administrator to ask him to change my address as they kept posting certificates to my old house even though I had updated my account with my new address. He was on holiday at the time and asked me to contact Joni. Common sense kicked in and I thought, it must be about the address. Surely, I could not have won. My wife looked at me like I had two heads and said, “why on earth would she be calling you to talk about changing your address?” But, I couldn’t allow myself to believe that I was a Finalist. Then, around midnight UK time, Joni called me from Hollywood and said: “Congratulations, Joel, you’re a Finalist in the Writers of the Future contest.”
I was in complete shock. Joni told me there’d be about a two week wait until I found out if I had won, which was one of the longest waits of my life. You see, Jody Lynn Nye is the Coordinating Judge, which means she selects the top 8 stories from the thousands of entries each quarter. The Finalists are then sent to that quarter’s judges (I think there are four different judges each quarter), who then decide among themselves the three winning stories. What was lovely about the first call with Joni (other than the fact that (1) she is really nice and (2) it was happening at all!), was how she had recognised my name from my previous results lists (they are published each quarter) and was really happy for me that I had been selected as a Finalist.
The first week rolled by. No news. Each time my phone buzzed my heart raced. Then, week two passed by too. Still no news. By the time it was midway through the third week I was expecting to hear I had not been chosen. After all, I’d have found out by now if I had won…right?
The second call
I’m not even joking, but I was about to set off to watch the next round of the League Cup (I rarely go to football matches) when Joni emailed me. There had been a delay but the results were finally in. She said to expect a call in the next few hours. Well, there was no chance I could sit through Swansea City versus Wycombe Wanderers on a wet and windy, cold and dark Tuesday night knowing that I could receive a potentially life changing call at any time. I made my excuses and sat, nervously, in my house all evening, chewing my lip to oblivion.
Evening turned to night and still no news. My wife went to bed and I stayed downstairs, anxiously awaiting my fate. Midnight rolled around again. Then my phone buzzed. A withheld number. Nervously, I answered.
It was Joni. As cliched as it sounds, I closed my eyes and held my breath as I waited on her next words.
“Joel, are you sitting down? Well you’d better be. Congratulations, you’re a winner of Writers of the Future!”
What’s more, Joni told me Tim Powers had chosen my story as his favourite and Kevin J. Anderson had also picked my story as one of his winners. To be honest, after that, I can’t really remember much of what we talked about, I was in such a daze. It didn’t seem real. I wondered if I had fallen asleep and dreamed it. Perhaps used to this reaction, Joni followed up with an email to reassure me it was not a dream, I was a winner of the Writers of the Future contest, my story would appear in Volume 41 and I would be jetting off to Hollywood in April 2025.
When I first told my wife about the contest, she told me she knew I would eventually win it, so long as I kept submitting. And she was right. After four years of trying, and on my twelfth submission, I had won.
What did this teach me?
While the road to your destination may not be as smooth or as fast as you hoped, that may be the best thing for you as it can give you an opportunity to learn and to grow. After all, you learn more from your losses than your wins, right? It may even be that the road is bumpy because you’re not yet ready to reach your destination. But unless you keep going, there’s no way you’ll get where you want to be.
The rejections and feedback helped me learn to persevere and put the work in, to focus on improving my craft, and the unwavering belief from my wife and the support from the Writers of the Future forum helped push me through periods of self-doubt. Together, it helped me grow and I’m a better writer for it.
There are some writers who get published right off the bat, or win the contest with their first submission. I am not one of them. And that’s fine by me.
