Young Writers Society

Throwaway account. Posting this here to vent because I don't know where else to.
I thought I was good at writing fan fiction, I really did. In fact, I thought it was the one thing I was good at. However, I've entered a dozen different writing contests, and I haven't gotten one victory. I never thought I was going to win first place, but a couple of times, I was so sure I would at least get an honorable mention. Spoiler alert, I never do. I have failed each and every time I try, and it always crushes my spirit every time. I might be able to live with it if it weren't for the other evidence that proves I'm no good. I have half the followers of people who've been writing for years less than I have. People who I should automatically be better than are better than me. I try my absolute hardest every single time, and for that, I get absolutely nothing. I don't know if I can keep writing if I'm just going to fail like this every single time. If I'm not good at writing, then I'm not good at anything.

Writing contests are no judge of how well a writer you are! They’re a judge of how well you conform to the standards of a contest : / people who never write can end up winning over someone who’s really passionate just because they interpret the prompt a different way. That should absolutely not stop you from pursuing writing if it’s something you love, and it’s no judge of how good a writer you are.

As for followers on YWS, the followers aren’t really followers— they’re more like friends. The way people get those friends is usually through being active in certain areas of the site. I’ve met a ton of people through roleplays and storybooks. People meet each other through forums. There are lots of ways to make friends on YWS, and it usually doesn’t have anything to do with how long you’ve been on the site or how well a writer you are; it really depends on how active you are in the parts of the site where you interact with others. Not being active in those parts is completely fine, but people are more likely to follow you if they’re writing with you, like in a roleplay, than if they’re just reading your published writing. Don’t interpret that as a failure, it really has nothing to do with your skill level or the skill level of people who haven’t been here are long.

Lastly, I would say that the way to get better at writing is to keep writing!! You can’t stop just because you’ve lost a few contests. J. K. Rowling (however much I dislike her) is a great example of this— she was turned away from around a dozen publishing agencies before she found someone who would publish Harry Potter. Now look where it is. It’s one of the most well known fiction series in the world. If she had given up a few publishers in, nobody would have Harry Potter today, and I dare say the world would actually be greatly impacted by that. Don’t let the contests discourage you— they’re learning opportunities. She may not have been turned away because the work wasn’t good, just because it didn’t fit the kind of books they published. Really, the hard journey of a creative soul is that it’s hard to fit into the criteria others lay out for you, and that can include contests. It can be really difficult to write for a specific prompt, and some people are just more skilled at that in particular than others. I know I’m not. That doesn’t make you bad at writing at all.

Really, I hope you keep trying. It would be a shame for someone who’s good at writing to stop just because a few judging teams chose a few works other than yours : /