You really can win writing contests and earn an extra income in five figures every year, just by doing what you truly enjoy - writing stories.
The plan is to submit stories to writing contests, regularly and systematically.
Just win writing contests month after month and you need never face the despair of being endlessly turned down by literary agents.
The clue is to look at each one of your entries as 'products', each one tailored to a given contest.
To win regularly, you have to become mercilessly business-like in your attitude.
This is the hardest lesson for a start-up writer to learn.
We all start out by writing to amuse just ourself or maybe our writing group.
It takes an entirely new mindset to craft a story for the market.
In this case, our 'market' is the judge of a fiction competition.
Is it worth the effort? Absolutely.
You can earn a great deal of cash - if you regard fiction contests professionally.
Simply look at the advantages of story contest writing as a pastime - or even a part-time job.
It doesn't matter if you are - at home, travelling to the office or on the beach.
You can always write a contest entry.
And after a while, you may be able to pay for all your holidays from your writing wins.
You'll have a story contest dynamo - and you can switch it on whenever you want some extra cash.
There's another big benefit too.
Before long, you will have accumulated a hoard of stories.
Whether they've won prizes or not, you can often sell them to publishers.
So your writing will make you yet more cash.
If you enter contests regularly, you'll discover you've enlisted in a college of creative writing.
Your story skills will get better with every story you write.
And this university will actually pay you for your training - in prize money.
Moreover, you'll evolve into a serious author and join the company of fascinating people of your own kind.
You'll discover a wealth of semi-professional writing fans on the Net, often with their own web sites.
They will invite you into their society of dedicated writers and contest entrants.
It's instant fellowship! As soon as you've won contests, your reputation will rise and people will follow your stories.
A wealth of contest prize opportunities More than 2000 writing competitions appear on the web every year.
That includes merely short fiction in English.
There's no barrier to how many contests you can submit to, if you abide by the entry rules which are rarely onerous.
Nor does this total include other genres like plays, poetry and novels.
It also omits the many contests that are not listed online.
They might be published in newspapers or magazines.
Not-for-profit bodies, colleges and manufacturers also mount writing contests with good cash prizes.
The best way to keep abreast of the thousands of contest opportunities in the world is to do regular web searches.
You'll discover new listings every day.
The most profitable fiction competitions are rarely the most prominent.
Every few days, take time on the Net to hunt out keywords like 'writing contest directory', 'fiction competition list' and 'short story contest'.
Do add the year, say '2012', or you'll be returned a lot of ancient entries.
But here's a tip: carry out that search in as many different search engines as you can.
Why use more than one search engine? You'll find that Bing, Yahoo, Dogpile, Google, and so forth, will list their findings in a totally different way from each other.
What appears at pride of place in Google may be lost in page 200,000 of Yahoo - and vice versa.
Some of the most interesting contests won't appear at the front of a Google list at all.
Its search ratings are based principally upon the number of sites that link to other sites.
But Dogpile's logic is more rational.
If you arrange your writing contest machine in a business-like fashion, it will not be long before your hobby rewards you with a comfortable monthly paycheck.
And it's fun too!
The plan is to submit stories to writing contests, regularly and systematically.
Just win writing contests month after month and you need never face the despair of being endlessly turned down by literary agents.
The clue is to look at each one of your entries as 'products', each one tailored to a given contest.
To win regularly, you have to become mercilessly business-like in your attitude.
This is the hardest lesson for a start-up writer to learn.
We all start out by writing to amuse just ourself or maybe our writing group.
It takes an entirely new mindset to craft a story for the market.
In this case, our 'market' is the judge of a fiction competition.
Is it worth the effort? Absolutely.
You can earn a great deal of cash - if you regard fiction contests professionally.
Simply look at the advantages of story contest writing as a pastime - or even a part-time job.
It doesn't matter if you are - at home, travelling to the office or on the beach.
You can always write a contest entry.
And after a while, you may be able to pay for all your holidays from your writing wins.
You'll have a story contest dynamo - and you can switch it on whenever you want some extra cash.
There's another big benefit too.
Before long, you will have accumulated a hoard of stories.
Whether they've won prizes or not, you can often sell them to publishers.
So your writing will make you yet more cash.
If you enter contests regularly, you'll discover you've enlisted in a college of creative writing.
Your story skills will get better with every story you write.
And this university will actually pay you for your training - in prize money.
Moreover, you'll evolve into a serious author and join the company of fascinating people of your own kind.
You'll discover a wealth of semi-professional writing fans on the Net, often with their own web sites.
They will invite you into their society of dedicated writers and contest entrants.
It's instant fellowship! As soon as you've won contests, your reputation will rise and people will follow your stories.
A wealth of contest prize opportunities More than 2000 writing competitions appear on the web every year.
That includes merely short fiction in English.
There's no barrier to how many contests you can submit to, if you abide by the entry rules which are rarely onerous.
Nor does this total include other genres like plays, poetry and novels.
It also omits the many contests that are not listed online.
They might be published in newspapers or magazines.
Not-for-profit bodies, colleges and manufacturers also mount writing contests with good cash prizes.
The best way to keep abreast of the thousands of contest opportunities in the world is to do regular web searches.
You'll discover new listings every day.
The most profitable fiction competitions are rarely the most prominent.
Every few days, take time on the Net to hunt out keywords like 'writing contest directory', 'fiction competition list' and 'short story contest'.
Do add the year, say '2012', or you'll be returned a lot of ancient entries.
But here's a tip: carry out that search in as many different search engines as you can.
Why use more than one search engine? You'll find that Bing, Yahoo, Dogpile, Google, and so forth, will list their findings in a totally different way from each other.
What appears at pride of place in Google may be lost in page 200,000 of Yahoo - and vice versa.
Some of the most interesting contests won't appear at the front of a Google list at all.
Its search ratings are based principally upon the number of sites that link to other sites.
But Dogpile's logic is more rational.
If you arrange your writing contest machine in a business-like fashion, it will not be long before your hobby rewards you with a comfortable monthly paycheck.
And it's fun too!