2026 📖✏️ submitting to comps & agents

[Wordherder]

Hi writerly people,
I decided this year to enter my words into some prizes and ultimately, to agents.
Anyone want to share their comp successes and thoughts? Would be a lovely, wordy community to keep our spirits up!

Have you managed to enter any?

Hi there,

I'm a writer and enter some competitions and have had some success. I would ask you also to pay heed to the wealth of lit mags and journals that you can submit to for free. Entry fees can stack up and if you are a new writer you may want to get your work out there without much cost and with a view to honing your craft and building your reader base. For some of the more well known comps you will be competing with thousands of experienced writers. I'm not saying you couldn't win, just that the competition is tough out there. I am an editor of one such magazine and we promote our writers extensively and nominate for awards etc.

I've entered the NYCMidnight short story and micro fiction 100 words and found it fantastic for sharing works with other writers - thoughtful and sensitive feedback - and it pushed me out of my comfort zone forcing me to learn so much.

I'm only in the first round of each competition but I understand that each entry gets feedback and a bit less than 20% are chosen to move to the next round. The prize at the end is decent but it would be very hard to win so I'm not focusing on that at all.