She Writes, Therefore She Can: Reflections on My Daughter’s First Writing Competition

“So what does winning mean to you?” I ask my ten-year-old daughter, after the initial excitement subsides. 

We had noticed Ginger & Pickles’ flyer advertising a Halloween poetry competition on a visit to their snug children’s bookshop in Edinburgh, during a family getaway. 

Their prompt was to write about a potion.  I thrilled to see Isla brew up half a dozen verses with ease. 

When the bookshop owner called to announce that Isla had won, the news triggered a slew of memories about my own school-age writing competitions. 

To me, the prizes had felt like stepping stones towards my coveted writing career, and a balm for my social awkwardness off page. Winning was once so important to me. I wonder if it has the same significance for Isla.

“Does winning change your life in any way?” I press. 

Isla jokes about the challenge of making room on her crowded bookshelf for her prize book.  

Then she pauses and adds: “It does change something.  Entering a competition was about seeing how good my writing is.  I wanted to know if I can write, and now I know that I can. It makes me want to write more.”

I know well how affirming that glow of approbation can feel. 

But hearing Isla articulate it suddenly makes me uneasy.  For I also remember the acute sting and residual ache of Not Winning — how laurels granted to another seemed to make a mockery of my aspirations and even my very identity. Moreover, competitions are an unreliable source of motivation. I weathered a decade of frustrating, inexplicable writer’s block in my twenties. Looking back, I suspect that I may have stopped writing, in part, because I had outgrown youth writing competitions and was entering the adult sphere, with fewer opportunities and intimidating odds. 

I want to impress upon Isla the hard won lessons of my return to writing in my thirties: That writing is its own reward, and a vehicle for a richer, fuller life. That the true stepping stones on a writer’s path are not competition victories but rather, the words you set down; that if you give competition adjudicators the power to tell you that you “can write,” you also surrender to them the power to tell you that you can’t; that every time you write, you, yourself, prove with greater certainty that you can — and that writing today is the only way to find out what you will be capable of writing tomorrow. 

I resist the urge to sermonise. Some lessons can only be learned first hand. 

And then I discover that Isla is already working it out, by herself — years younger than her mum. 

“I didn’t think I’d win, but I wanted to enter anyway,” she tells me. “A contest is fun because it gives you a topic, so you do a type of writing that you’ve never done before. I just love writing.”

“I know exactly what you mean,” I reply. “These days, I feel that I’ve already won, simply by writing and sending something off.” 

Indeed, competitions remain important to my writing process — and many of my fellow writers concur. Eighteen years ago, a writing competition finally nudged me to overcome my writer’s block and draft a 10-minute spoof on Pride and Prejudice. Though Lydia Bennet Returns did not garner a prize, it provided the seed for my full-length play, Lizzy, Darcy and Jane, a transformative four-year journey in the company of the peerless Miss Austen.  Competitions provide possibilities and submission dates — helpful carrots and sticks that spur many of us to generate ideas and carry them through across drafts.  I no longer see competitions as stepping stones to Destination: Writerdom, but like a lot of writers, I appreciate them as waymarkers to keep me on course. Whereas once, I wrote to enter competitions, now, I enter competitions to write.  Happily, it would appear that my daughter does, too. 

So my thanks goes out to organizers of competitions for all ages, as it’s no small job to publicise, compile, read and select.  Thank you, not so much for crowning a Writer-of-the-Day as for the daily writing you inspire; and not for telling a winner that he or she “can write” but for signalling to all of us that we must get on with writing, and get on with it now, because a submission deadline approaches. 

Ginger & Pickles Bookshop runs frequent creative writing competitions for kids. Visit their website or follow them on social media for updates.

The Potion

 By Isla McLeod

 

A bubbling cauldron, the witch and her cat

Sit by the fire, both dressed in black.

The green liquid is stirred over a flickering flame. 

Beware: If you try it, you won’t speak again. 

 

The potion is finished and poured into a flask.

If you want to know what it does, please just ask.

The witch will use it to agonise her foe.

It could, perhaps, boil their toe.

 

The witch gets on her broomstick and flies.

Maybe she is trying to poison the sky.

But no, below her an unfortunate enemy.

He is her first victim, the witch has her opportunity.

 

The witch throws the flask straight to the ground.

In agony, the man turns around and around.

He groans and moans and a cackle from above

Tells the man she made the potion that no one loves.

 

The sinister draught is made once more.

This time the witch stirs it on the floor.

Each time she stirs, it turns darker green.

The potion is finished with a few sardines.

 

The witch works the concoction to its full extent.

Now it works with vicious intent.

The potion is sinister in every way,

Whether drunk or you take one teaspoon a day.

 

With one last prey, the witch stops for the night.

But she will be back, and full of spite.

So, way up there, where you see the moon,

Always check for a fiend on a broom!