Why I Still Enter Vocal Challenges

There have been a lot of pieces written recently about Vocal Challenges.

Let's be real: Challenges are Vocal's biggest draw. Who wouldn't jump at the chance of winning thousands of dollars in prize money, with unlimited entries either for free or for the cost of membership? Most of us signed up for the challenges, but became disillusioned when announcement after announcement came and went without acknowledgment of our stories.

It can be very discouraging, to pour your heart and soul into things with little to no return. Disappointed Hopes are a bitter beverage, and not in the tasty way that a nice Lemon, Lime and Bitters is. It can be hard not to give up.

But that is the nature of any competition: there are a limited number of winners, and those of us who don't make the cut have to hope for better luck next time.

I will say that I'm liking Vocal's move from "1st, 2nd, 3rd Prizes" winners to "1st, 2nd, multiple Runner-Up Prizes".

It's a good way to reflect the growing number of entries and members into Challenges. Prior to about the Doomsday Diary Challenge, which gained over 9,000 entries, Vocal was more of an unknown, with maybe five hundred entries per challenge.

Doomsday Diary was followed by the Summer Fiction Stories Challenge, 8 challenges over 8 weeks, themed around classic novels. I had at least one entry in each, and while I didn't win anything, I did manage to make a Novella out of it.

(It also coincided with the Delta Lockdown, which totally didn't influence me in any way...)

At the end of 2021, came the Vocal+ Fiction Challenge, with 25 people getting $5,000 and publication in Vocal's first book, and 100 Runners-Up getting a free year of membership.

That marked Vocal's step toward two big prizes and several smaller wins, away from the traditional 1st, 2nd, 3rd model, and boy was it a hit!

The crieteria was 'A fiction story between 1,000 and 5,000 words', and such a broad requirement lit a fire under people! With so many members having enthusiastically joined the Foggy Waters horror challenge just a month earlier, there were no shortage of fiction stories to enter. I had 18 entries in total, and I think the overall total was nearly 12,000!

That's a lot of potential winners, even when you take into account the expanded prize pool.

It wasn't until earlier this year, with the January-February We Have A Dream Challenge, that I finally placed in a Challenge: "Tiny Inspirations", practically a throwaway piece entered among several other articles that I thought had a better chance, was selected as a Runner-Up.

The thing is, all Vocal Challenges are determined by judges, who are human and have their own personal tastes about what is 'good' or 'not as good'.

Maybe that lines up with what we as the creators think is good, maybe it doesn't.

My biggest sales pitch as an Indie Author is that "I write the things mainstream publishers won't try to sell". I make bank on Autistic or otherwise Disabled main characters, on racially- or gender-diverse characters, on same-sex love interests or no love interest at all, on Main Characters in their thirties or forties, on stories that veer wildly from the usual mainstream storylines. TL;DR - my writing tends to appeal to niche audiences, not mainstream ones.

Even if "Tiny Inspirations" remains my only win ever on this site, I'll keep entering the challenges.

I recognise that this is a privilaged take.

Vocal is a bit of extra money per month, not my sole or even my main source of income. I have a day job and an Indie Author gig that earns me a few hundred a year. Vocal and Medium are merely my extra side gigs.

The Challenges are a fun hobby that would go a long way toward paying off my home loan faster, but I don't have to choose between Vocal or my Netflix subscription (I get the spare slot on a friend's family account as part of my babysitting fee) every month.

Some people aren't that lucky, and choose to quit Vocal and it's Challenges rather than continue to not place. For some, it's the continuous disappointment on top of pre-existing mental health struggles. For others, they just aren't making enough from Vocal to make back the cost of paying for membership. Whatever the reason for bowing out of Vocal, I respect their decision to do so, and wish them all the best in their future endeavours.

It probably helps that the last few Challenges are things that I've actually been interested in.

Not so much the Sleep Resolution one - I barely summoned the willpower for a single entry - and I don't have pets, so I skipped the Life Unleashed one entirely. Fiction and I have a very good relationship, however, and I was on a short-story kick during the Return of the Barn Owl. I work in Disability and Aged Care, as well as being Autistic and non-Straight, so anything to do with Lived Experience of Diversity or drastically under-paid and under-appreciated professions regularly touted as "Heroes" by governments desperate to avoid paying us a living wage was right up my alley.

I'd already written a few love poems, and added a few more for the Valentine's Day challenge. Historical fiction combines two of my favourite things, and of course everyone had an opinion about the Ukraine War currently happening. I wasn't particularly motivated by the Mother's Day challenge, but writing has always been a form of therapy when my actual Psych is busy, so I went ahead with two freeverse poems.

But the Fantasy Prologue Challenge? Oh, my darlings. Oh, sweet summer children...

I'm an Author. I have entire folders of Works In Progress cluttering up my hard drive. Many of them are Fantasy. I'd posted several prologues here before, most of which only required a little re-working to meet the challenge standard, and actually went to the effort of writing/posting a few more.

Maybe the challenge will get me to actually write the stories I'm supposed to be working on, instead of getting side-tracked.

Stranger things have happened in Fantasy...

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