My Issues With Vocal Challenges

Introduction

This is not a negative post. Let’s face it we all got into Vocal because of the prize money they offer for their challenges. When I joined I truly believed my writing would be good enough to win a challenge. It turned out I was so wrong, and while I might win or place one day I am not holding my breath.

So What Is My Problem?

I have written previously about my fear of repeating myself. Part of this is caused by the number of Vocal stories that I publish. I often go back through my catalogue and I often think “Did I write that?”. I don’t think I have written a bad Vocal story although people have told me that my work is lazy and rubbish, but that is hardly constructive criticism. Others have pointed out errors in the form, grammatical and spelling errors, and I love that sort of constructive criticism.

I always feel it is wrong for ME to enter more than one piece in a challenge, though I often succumb and give in to temptation and feel really guilty and submitting and publishing such stories. Once I have published one I feel I need to drop out of Great Incantations for posting purposes, but I do drop in to comment on other people’s creations, just because I am not writing challenge entries does not mean I cannot support others.

I do have problems with the short format challenges, the Blue Haiku really did my head in. I just saw so many entries by others that I was unable to reciprocate and read things. It made me feel like a selfish failure. That is how I feel about the latest 100-word story. I have written one entry and am trying not to write another.

I think the concept is fine, but the prompt is the form, not the content. I suppose I do like prompts that give you a subject to write about rather than just the form because that is how I now come to view Vocal Challenges, just as prompts.

So although I feel that I should not enter more than one story in the challenges, that is just the limit I put on myself. What the whole Vocal model has done is given me a reason to write and to spread my ideas. This piece itself is inspired by the nature of the Vocal Challenges although I do like anything that prompts and inspires me.

I do tend to enter all challenges, I think there were only two that I felt unable to enter, and that has mushroomed into me considering myself as a poet and publishing almost thirteen hundred stories on Vocal and publishing four anthologies with a fifth one in the pipeline.

I may not have won a Vocal Challenge but I have lost count of the number of Top Stories I have been chosen for and have never had a month where my subscription payment was higher than my earnings. Vocal gives me more than I give them financially.

I feel many of my stories would have been worthy challenge winners, but that is because writing on Vocal has given me the confidence to be able to say that.

In Conclusion

Many people tell me that I am a major player on Vocal though I often don’t feel that, but when I step back I realise I have built a worthy presence and I will keep doing that, and maybe, just maybe that Challenge win or place will come.

I am also a Top Creator in Confessions and Beat, so Vocal obviously do rate me highly for those acknowledgements.

I think Wet Willie's "Keep On Smilin'" is a perfect song to listen to while reading this, because that's what we should all be doing

Thank you so much for reading this.