Just curious about something. For those of you who participate in the contests here, what makes you decide to enter your story/poem into the contest rather than submit it to a magazine for publication? For those of you who both submit to magazines and participate in the contests, do you find that you spend more time on the stories/poems that you plan to submit to magazines?
Sometimes I'll regret posting something here because I realise afterwards that I'd like it published, but I've got to tell myself that ideas are a dime a dozen, so there's no need to get all sad about it. The amount of time I write for a magazine compared to on here is rarely any different, but in terms of editing I spend more time on magazine pieces. Submitting a story with a typo on here will get a few head-shakes and tuts. Submitting the same thing to a magazine may well result in my work not being considered for publication.
This is why I don't participate in the contests, and I only ever post practice pieces that I have no intention of publishing. I don't purpose-write for contests here because I barely have enough time to work on my manuscript, and when I'm not inspired to write, I have a ton of editing waiting to happen, so short stories just never get their turn.
For any people that think they might want to get a piece published later on, that is why in the Flash Fiction Contest I give entrants the opportunity to put their entry in the private members only area of the sub forum. This makes it so that publishers can not do a word search and find their piece on search engines like Google or Yahoo.
I was thinking of entering a few contests on this forum as a stepping stone--one that would get me some feedback on my strengths and weaknesses. I'm not very experienced at writing. However, posting something online might be a bad idea if I happen to magically write a story that people think was good enough to be published.
