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.

I'm happy to say I've finished my novel, as much as I think it's finished but am not sure about where to submit.
Good news is that it placed in the top 100 of Cheshire Novel Award and the feedback pulls apart the synopsis and not the chapter sample.
I also got a short story on the Alpine Fellowship shortlist (38 on list) and a poetry pamphlet comp down to the last seven.
I'm a bit stuck now. Anyone else want to share where they're at, going into Autumn?
Do I submit now it's the Book Fair? Or wait?

This is very timely to me as I have a chequered history with competitions. I haven't entered many and mostly enter free competitions. Being part of a writers circle meant there were two or three competitions a year. One was the international prize and one lady refused to enter it because there would be over 200 entries each year so she thought the odds were too great-I guess we all do what suits us.
I keep my eyes peeled for competitions at Libraries/in Writing Magazine, etc.
I had to really kick myself to enter the latest competition, at a sad time in my life. But this was the best time because the raw feelings really sizzled on the page and the Judges must have felt the same as they awarded me joint second in the poetry category and invited me to read the poem onstage (which is tomorrow, better print it out)!
I read it through about three or four times before submission.
Mysteriously, the prize will only be revealed tomorrow-I hope it's not a bottle of wine because I don't drink.😂
Last year I entered the same competition (it's yearly at the same time each year-and free to enter). But what I submitted then came nowhere and in hindsight, I can see why.
Good luck!