Enjoying the Benefits of Writing Contests

Are you trying to start a career as a freelance writer? If so, you might want to consider participating in writing contests in order to help establish a name for yourself and to gain experience in the writing field. In fact, there are many benefits that participating in a writing competition can provide to anyone that is interested in starting a career in writing or who simply wants to find a way to make some extra cash from home.

Get Experience With a Writing Competition

One great benefit to participating in writing contests is the fact that you can gain a significant amount of writing experience while participating in the contest. By following the contest rules and taking time to craft a quality piece of writing, you will learn more about your personal strengths and weaknesses in writing. This way, you can improve your skills and become a stronger writer.

Get Exposure When Participating in Writing Contests

Even if you don’t win, simply participating in a writing competition can help you gain exposure. First, the person or people reading the essays may be impressed by your writing style or may like your writing voice or tone. As a result, you may be contacted by those individuals to complete writing projects for them.

Even if you are not contacted by someone involved with the writing competition, your piece may still be published along with other entrants in the competition. As a result, someone else may see your writing and be impressed by your style. Or, when contacting potential clients for jobs they have available, you can refer to your published piece as a sample for those potential clients to read. Not only will these potential clients see a fine piece of writing that you created, they will also see that your piece has been published. Published pieces are even more impressive to potential clients than pieces that have not been published.

Gain Confidence and Make Money

If you do win some of the writing contests that you enter, you will certainly gain a boost in your confidence. After all, it feels great to win contests – particularly when it was your own personal talent that helped you win!

In addition to the confidence boost that winning a writing competition can provide, you can also win some money or some great prizes. So, if you want to put a little extra money in your pocket, participating in writing contests can be just the way to do it!

Hey Folks,

Just wanted to announce the first UFW challenge.  You get to choose one topic in one category out of the following list.

The Topics and Categories:

Category 1- word count limit (must be more than 1000 words less than 5000)

1) Re-write a great speech from history like the "I have a dream" speech with an UF twist.

2) Send out a twitter asking your followers to give you a random sentence, and create off of that.

3) Write a news story of someone or group of people who were killed by a vampire/demon/ghost etc.

Category 2- word count limit (must be more than 500 words less than 2000)

1) Write a killers confession letter as a vampire/demon/ghost etc.

2) Write the obituary of someone who was killed by a vampire/demon/ghost etc

3)  Write a love letter (letter of interest) to someone who is not of your "kind"

Category 3- NO minimum word count Max: 200

1) Write a urban fantasy based greeting card (graphics allowed)

2)  Write an recruitment ad for a vampire/demon/ghost etc.. based business.

The Rules–

1.  You must be a member of urbanfantasywriters.com  (its free) Please fill out your profile page with your website link and bio. sign up here

   1a.  NO anonymous story submissions
are accepted.

2.   You must be over the age of 18.

3.  ALL content of submissions must be LEGAL, following types of content are NOT allowed: pornographic, obscene or excessively
profane content or content intended to advocate illegal activity, drug paraphernalia,
hate, racial or ethnic intolerance.

4.  YOU OWN your content, so you are freely allowed to post your submission on your site and ask for us to remove the content from our site in the future.

   4a.  All poems and short stores and submissions herein are the copy written property
of the respective authors.

5. DEADLINE– All submissions must be received NO later than June 15, 2008 at midnight. Any submissions received after that deadline will be disregarded.

6. Word count limits are listed next to the categories.

PRIZES

Category 1-

First prize will receive, a front page spot on www.urbanfantasywriters.com, Name and link in the "winners circle", a tee-shirt, and a year of Author Hosting. (more information on Author hosting soon), and a promo spot on www.urbanfantasywriters.com sidebar.

Second prize will receive, Name and link in the "winners circle", six months of free Author Hosting, and a text link back

Third Prize will receive,Name and link in the "winners circle", three months of free Author Hosting

Category 2-

First Prize- will receive a front page spot on www.urbanfantasywriters.com, Name and link in the "winners circle", a tee-shirt, and six months of Author Hosting. (more information on Author hosting soon)

Second Prize– Name and link in the "winners circle", will receive three months of Author Hosting.

Category 3-

First Prize will receive a front page spot on www.urbanfantasywriters.com, Name and link in the "winners circle", and three months of Free Author Hosting.

TWO WAYS TO SUBMIT WORK

Our Submission page

or email us (for larger content)

urbanfantasywriters [at] gmail [dot] com