Affa
There are a lot of writing competitions on the web; a lot of chances to have your work read and published.
Ian has had success through the years as a fiction writer. He's a regular in the NYC Midnight story competitions. Though the entry-price is steep, Ian has been able to take stories and ideas developed for this competition, workshop them and have them win other copmetitions.
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The "Affa" was a short story competition held in 2020.
I was introduced to my current writing group by a writing competition called "NYC Midnight". They are a rigorously-run contest with a quite high entry fee, and very high standard. One thing they do with your fee is pay readers and you get three lots of critical feedback on your story, and retain the first publishing rights to it. What you do with the feedback is up to you, but I try to use it to grow a story to its full potential.
I've had some reasonable success in this competition (though never making it to the final round). One of the stories I wrote needed a bit of a polish to fit the criteria for the "Affa" competition, but I was thrilled to win it.
Set in regional Victoria during the Australian gold-rush of the 1850's, a Chinese miner must navigate entrenched racism to provide for his young family, back in Shanghai, in order to reunite them in Australia. Is the man in the next claim trying to work him over, too?
The trophy lives in my office and I used the winnings to fund a full edit of my novel "Reputation Alone". This had previously won the Sixth "Paperback in Your Hand" competition, also run by Affordable Manuscript Assessments. I had done the work to improve the manuscript with a structural edit and introduction of a new major character. I needed the second pair of eyes to complete the manuscript and I was grateful to win this award.