All too often their entry seems to disappear into a literary black hole which not only swallows up their cash, but all details of results, short list and winning entries!

Now before you start getting alarmed, most writing competitions advertised are above board and main reason for dearth of feedback is not dishonesty but disorganization.

A great many writing contests are run on a voluntary basis by secretaries of writing clubs who often have to fit this extra work load in with their other duties, not to mention day job and demands of family so don’t let’s be too hard on them!

Even so, having sweated blood, chewed finger nails and teetered to brink of divorce by spending long hours hunched over a flickering monitor, you do at least deserve some kind of feedback even if this is just a quick email notifying you that results are up on a website.

Unfortunately this is generally not case. To be fair, most competitions do offer to post a result list if a s.a.e. is included with entry, but technological age is now well established so there is really very little excuse for not giving a reasonable feed back service.

The good news is that there are a number of very good writing contests taking place on a regular basis that are fully aware of this problem and go out of their way to make results, judges reports and winning entries prominently available. As you would expect most of these tend to be web based or at least have a very active web presence.

Before we take a look at them, a word of warning! Don’t get too carried away by lure of big prizes! If you are not a regular winner, some form of feedback is what should take precedence since you need to know where you went wrong and what judges were looking for.

Here are a few questions to ask yourself when evaluating a particular competition.

Does contest offer:

1.A postal result service. All competitions should offer this as a minimum as long as a s.a.e. is included.

2.Publish results together with judge’s report on a website. Not really much excuse for not doing this either. A very basic website will suffice and can be designed cheaply or for practically nothing by someone with a little technical ability.

When you're writing your article picture one person that you are writing to. This will make your writing more personable and help you to keep your readers interested in your article.

2. Use lots of white space within your article.

Using lots of white space will help you to make your article look more professional and keep more of skim readers interested in your article.

If you have paragraphs that are too long, try to break them up into two or three paragraphs so that your article will be easier to read.

3. Double check your articles for errors.

Make sure that you haven't misspelled any words, skipped words, or used a homonym such as "their" when you meant "there."

Remember, that spell checking only catches spelling mistakes so you'll need to go over your articles even after using your spell checker to find words used incorrectly and also to find words that were used twice in a row or omitted.

4. Pay attention to feedback you get for your articles.

Getting or seeking constructive feedback about your articles can help you to write better, get back on track with your writing if you're in a slump, and also develop new things to write about.

Even negative feedback or criticisms can help you if it shows you things you can work on. Just don't take everything to heart.

5. Improve your writing skills by trying different things.

When you first start writing your own articles, especially if you're new to writing, you might feel that you can only write list articles like this one.

Nonetheless try your hand at other types of articles that you would like to write such as how to articles or straw man articles.

Also try writing on different subjects that you haven't written about before.