Melissa Grant Writes

Like everyone else I do have things I’m sensitive about and people whose criticisms hit harder.

Hard to tell me my butt is big from the afterlife, eh, mom?

But when it comes to writing I seem to have extraordinarily thick skin.

Perhaps its from writing an online blog. Trust me, you do hear it all.

I’m pretty sure my friends and family don’t feel the same way about criticism because it’s really hard to get an honest opinion.

Okay let me back up here…

I’m not calling my friends and family liars.

Not REALLY.

But after my first draft I showed quite a few people and the feedback was entirely positive. Like too positive.

As I said before I got a big head for a hot minute, came back to earth and thought, “Ok, this is my first draft. I need more constructive criticism.”

I tried Scribophile, which had issues that I mention here.

I hired Tiffiny, who is wonderful but I’m paying her (I do believe you Tiffiny, really).

So, I circled back to writing contests.

There are a lot.

I entered a lot.

I PAID a lot.

But these is my reasons for entering. The contests have no personal connection to me. Unlike Scribophile they read it in one sitting and are experts. I’m paying to enter, yes, but not as someone who is working for/with me.

But man are they a pain in the ass to enter.

Each contest as its own guidelines so you can’t just keep entering the same thing over and over. They all want different things in terms of formatting, how many words, spacing, the dreaded synopsis, cover letters, summaries, and bios (oh my).

Plus, some were just hybrid publishing houses disguised as contests, so I got a lot of weird ‘offers’ to publish.

Embarrassingly, I even got excited about a couple before I wised up.

All in all I’ve entered about 32 contests. Out of those six have placed, eighteen did not place, and 8 are still pending.

My placements were second place in the Darling Axe First Page Challenge, a semifinalist spot in the Chanticleer Rossetti Awards, finalist spots in both the 2025 Literary Global Book Awards and the 2026 Literary Global Children’s Book Award, a longlist spot with Leapfrog Press, and an Honorable Mention in the Writer’s Digest Annual Writing Competition

So my placement rate is 25% on my really bad first draft with the embarrassing title.

Ok, that’s good enough. I’ll keep going. And yeah mom, I know, that was a sentence fragment.

Get off my case.