Contests can provide you with a showcase for your work, a chance to bring your work before judges who are also editors, agents, or published writers in their other incarnations. And you don't have to win the contests to be a winner.

The hurt of rejection goes deep into the heart of any writer, but new, inexperienced writers don't know how to get up, grab a new pen and keep writing. It doesn't help to encourage them by saying simply, "Keep writing!", or "It happens to everyone." It just doesn't work that way. They will have to cry and go through a time of mourning their self-confidence. It's almost a requirement - a rite of passage on the journey to publish-dom.