I share my writings for free, due to the below two reasons:
1. Many send their writings to all possible places, this way flooding and engaging publishers.
2. With contests the calling for competition is questionable, though it's also true at point 1, that I detail further below.
It's true in both cases, that if another way is chosen for my works to get to the readers, then the field decreases, so it's a win-win.
Regarding calling for competition: I don't think that it's OK to expose the artistic work to this, as it isn't a product - I consider my writings to be artistic, that's why I can't submit them to contest. This isn't getting around judgement – that may even be corrupt –, but the straight path leads to the reader, and the contest is the detour, for such works that would deserve no prize but also doesn't lay claim to one. The judge falls into the sin of taste dictation, while the rest involved fall victim. Especially so that the reviewers have criteria and possibly expecting something from the work that it never wanted to meet, so by genre as by content. Possible though, that it happens in the readers' interest, but my writings aren't made to serve demands, moreover if they told me that it doesn't meet some kind of rule and I should change it, as I'm quite innovative, I could only simply reply to that: – I am turning in my grave.
The writing should cause an impact, that there's a story that the writer wants to tell, and not an order exsits, that they want to fulfill.
More context is given by my writing titled Restoration.
P.S. to the modern age: Things meeting criteria can already be generated by computer nowadays, but whoever is curious to see something uncommon should let the artist keep their freedom. People might be interested in what thoughts, lessons, unknown to them, has another person arrived at during one's life and how one has arrived at these, because they might also develop this skill within them with the help of experiencing, analysing the work, but such a product, that's as if it came off of a production line, won't necessarily serve their lesson of the kind. A machine can't reflect on how life is somewhere. We read writings to be there where the author is.