Are writing contests really worth it?

Yes your thoughts are right .Its choosen in the judgement of others .Judges who find itinteresting in.their eyes only.If they are picking entries that are dumb aswell.It wreaks to me bribery or misconduct or favoritism.to someone they know.Who can.judge any way? .Keep writing forget these competions and let God be your only judge.Let him.guide you creatively.Aswell these recommendations from other writers here are right.A critque group would really help you grow.

They were Worth to me, every time I won a prize for entering one! I have won numerous writing contests, and have received plaques, Broadway tickets as prizes, Dinner for 2 at nice restaurants, and other sillier prizes from Newspaper contests.

I can't imagine it's any fun for the losers who never win a prize....but it's very rewarding to see your entry picked as one of the BEST.

even a second or third place finish is cool, when there's HUNDREDS or 1,000's of entries! I once won a writing contest for the NY Daily News! A city of 9 MILLION people.

That was pretty freaking cool to see my entry as the WINNER!

You can try it but do not be sad if you do not win. They are hard to win, you can succeed in writing in other ways

Is it worth it to you?

Spoken like a true looser of writing contests.

I felt the same way about beauty pageants until I won one.

Writing contests are similar to submitting unsolicited manuscripts to publishers, out of 100 manuscripts submitted to a publisher very seldom is one ever published and the writer usually get the manuscript returned with a note indicating "unsolicited manuscripts are not accepted for review.". If you want to have a manuscript reviewed for possible publication you need a literary agent, to take it to a publisher, do a presentation and and then push for publication. It is not about a writer's opinion of the process to get published, but understanding the process and understand that of thousand of submissions, only those considered MOST saleable are published.

I'm sure that if you were to stop and think about it for a moment, you would realise that the wide majority of contests that are open to the general public are often won by contestants who don't deserve to win anything. When you were at school, was your class president the best and most qualified candidate of all those in the running? Do the people who win whatever prize they're competing for on reality television shows deserve the win more than all of their opponents - the record deal they get, or the funding to open their own restaurant or modeling contract, do they exemplify what's best in their respective field? No, it's a fecking popularity contest. Everyone knows that. The president of the PTA is always some nosy shrew who has nothing better to do. If you want people to gain an appreciation for your writing, write well and focus on targeting people who recognise talent. If you're looking for accolades you're not writing for yourself. That's your first problem. Don't get jaded.

Are you only sending your stories to competitions, or are you also sending them to editors? Go through all the stories you have submitted to competitions, see if you can improve on them, tidy them up, and try them on suitable magazines and anthologies.

Writing contests are mostly just "open calls" for submissions.

As such, their point is to get some cheap content.

For the author, it is just one more possible market.

Why would any publisher waste their time with authors who can't produce works worth publishing? They aren't a charity. They aren't a non-profit public school. Why would they spend their free time critiquing a losing work?

If you're looking for people to stroke your ego, try paying tuition.

If you're looking to make money, produce and sell professional product.

Don't write for the contest. Just write what you want to write. If it's good enough than find one that fits your genre/topic/subject and do it that way. Or, you could submit your work to literary magazines to be considered for publication. Are you getting your work critiqued before you submit?

There are a lot of assumptions about your talent in this post.

So stop writing for contests, write because you want to write.