I think Virginia Woolf intended for writers to understand that their work reflects who they are, where they have been, and what they will become.

Through an understanding of ourselves and becoming comfortable in our own skins, process of writing becomes more spontaneous and uninhibited. When we comprehend our unique writing gifts, we are aided in creating great stories. We become more confident more we accept and know ourselves.

When we tune into our needs and desires, we are more apt to free ourselves to use material from our own lives and lives of those who enrich us. Our characters become richer and more complex as we open ourselves up to all that we know about human condition.

So how does a writer begin? Start by looking at what motivates you as a writer. What keeps you coming back for more?

Some writers are driven by passion, others by fear, and even more are driven by both. What we wish for is also often what we fear. This plays out at an unconscious level for people all time.

Screenwriters, for example, wish to sell their scripts, dream of seeing their work on big screen, but may fear success that comes with it. It is only natural to fear what we know little about. We are creatures of habit. Change is never easy no matter how attractive outcome.

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.