When I was a senior in high school, I won an honorable mention in the poetry category of the national Scholastic Creative Writing Awards (now the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards). Ken Burns, the award-winning documentary director and producer, also won an award in the contest that year. While it is true that I have not (yet) achieved the fame and fortune that Ken Burns has achieved, I suspect that back then we were equally excited about our respective awards.
As thrilling as winning a writing contest can be, simply entering a competition brings with it many benefits, especially for young writers.
For example, meeting the deadlines and limits on word counts required by writing contests can help writers develop the discipline they need to be productive.
Some writing contests require research into an unfamiliar subject that could turn out to be a lifelong interest, and it could provide the background for future writing.
Of course, winning a cash prize in a writing contest is a very noticeable benefit, and sometimes the winning entries are published as well.
Entering a writing contest also provides experience with rejection, which is an inevitable part of being a writer.
Winning a National Book Award or a Pulitzer Prize has a noticeable effect on an adult writer’s life. Entering a writing contest can have just as powerful an impact on a young person’s life. A number of books for middle school students focus on the effects of writing contests on the lives of aspiring young writers. I’ve described some of my favorites below.
Also Known as Harper
By Ann Haywood Leal
Life hasn’t been easy for Harper Lee Morgan. Her father, an alcoholic, abandoned the family. Her mother has struggled to make ends meet on what she earns cleaning houses. The family has been evicted from their home and had to leave many of their belongings behind. They’re living in a motel, and Harper Lee has to skip school in order to care for her younger brother, Hemingway. The one bright spot in her life is the thought of winning a school writing content and getting to read her poems in front of an audience. Even that hope is spoiled by the nagging memory of how her father belittled her writing talent.
Despite the many setbacks in her life, Harper keeps writing poems. The poems bubble up from within her, and she just has to write them down. Writing poetry allows her to express her feelings about what she sees and experiences, and when someone else finds her poems beautiful, she knows that she’s been heard. That gives her the strength she needs to cope with the chaos in her life, which might otherwise drag her down into despair.
Also Known as Harper calls to mind one of my favorite sayings: Give us bread but give us roses. It is associated with the early years of both the women’s suffrage and labor union movements, and it speaks to the idea that it’s not enough to give poor people food and housing. They need beauty in their lives as well.
Speaking from experience, I can say that author Ann Haywood Leal has very accurately captured the nitty-gritty details of poverty. She has also shown how the urge to create can persist in even the dreariest of circumstances.
You can learn more about Ann Haywood Leal here.
The Wild Girls
By Pat Murphy
When Joan’s family moves across the country because of her father’s work, she isn’t happy about the move. Then she meets Fox — a.k.a. Sarah, a.k.a. the Queen of Foxes — in the woods behind her house. Fox’s life could not be more different than Joan’s. Fox’s mother abandoned the family when Fox was a baby, and she has been raised by her father — a science fiction writer with tattoos and a motorcycle — in a dilapidated cabin in the woods.
Together, Fox and Joan — who begins to use the name Newt — become The Wild Girls. She and Fox co-author a story about The Wild Girls that wins a writing competition. Their performance of their winning entry leads to an invitation for them to participate in a writing class on the Berkley campus.
Their participation in class discussions and their writing assignments allow both girls to explore the complicated dynamics within their respective families — Joan’s controlling father and the tension he creates within the family, Fox’s feelings about the mother who abandoned her. As they learn and grow, the questions they ask begin to influence their family members, even Joan’s father.
One of the most striking things about The Wild Girls is that Pat Murphy treats every character with sympathy, even Joan’s father. When he assumes that he inspired the villain in one of Joan’s stories, she is able to tell him what she learned in writing class, “There aren’t any heroes or villains. There are just different points of view.”
You can learn more about Pat Murphy here.
Write This Down
By Claudia Mills
Autumn Granger loves to write and is determined to be a published author. She is working on her first fantasy novel, and she writes dreamy love poems about Cameron, a classmate who seems much more sophisticated than other boys her age. She decides to take the plunge and submit some of her poems to the New Yorker.
Autumn’s older brother, Hunter, with whom she once had close and loving relationship, has become sullen and hostile to her and their parents. Hunter humiliates Autumn by reading one of her poems about Cameron to his band mates, who include Cameron’s brother. Like many writers before her, she decides to use her writing to get revenge. She writes a snide and sarcastic review of the band for an assignment in her journalism class. Like many writers before her, she learns that revenge is not the best motivation for writing.
Autumn writes an essay about her relationship with her brother and submits it to a writing contest. Then the conflict within her family flares, and she learns to see her brother in a new light. When she has an opportunity to have her essay published, she must decide whether publication is worth the hurt her essay might cause her brother.
Write This Down is a very realistic portrayal of what nearly every writer must confront — lack of self-confidence, ambition, jealousy, and the anxiety of waiting to hear the fate of a submission. She learns that every writer makes mistakes and that the way to address them is to learn from them and then keep writing. One of the most important things she learns is that the pen can inflict just as much pain as the sword and that writers must learn to wield the power of the pen with care.
You can learn more about Claudia Mills here.
Hundreds of writing contests are sponsored every year for writers of all ages. If you or a young person in your life has even the slightest interest in becoming a published writer, I encourage you to find the right writing contest and enter it. Ken Burns did, and look what happened to him!