By Donna L.H. Smith I hope to bring a fresh perspective to a sensitive subject. As writers, we’re regularly critiqued, edited, and otherwise told to change our text. It can get downright discouraging if we don’t have the proper attitude toward it. If we have rejection issues (like I do), it can feel personal, when it’s really not. It’s about …
Are you at the table?
By Karen H. Richardson It started with an email that thousands of other writers received. It was an invitation to participate in the ACFW First Impressions contest. Of the ten or eleven criteria for entry, the most distinctive was that you had to be an unpublished author. That’s me. I have a manuscript that is very rough. It is a …
Demystifying Contest Scores
By Lisa Godfrees We’re writers. At some point in our careers, we entered a writing contest. Some of us found encouragement there. Maybe we received kind remarks from a judge that gave us courage to continue. Maybe we semi-finaled, finaled, or won. Maybe an agent contacted us because they were impressed with our entry. Some of us came away discouraged. …
Contests from a Judge’s Perspective
by Lisa Jordan Rejection, though undeniably painful, does not have to hold us back from accomplishing what God wants us to do. ~Jennifer Benson Shuldt After entering one of my first writing contests, I was determined never to enter another. After all, my low scores attested to judges’ inabilities to recognize talent, right? Uh huh… Actually my own inflated view …
Giving Back
by Roxanne Rustand Way back at the beginning of my writing journey, I’d been a lifelong, avid reader, but I knew nothing about writing fiction. I started my first story just for fun, not imagining it ever becoming a book length manuscript–not dreaming of ever sending it to a publisher. I loved going to booksignings and meeting Real Authors, but …
Writing Contests – What’s In It For You if You Enter?
by Pamela S. Meyers Wanda Writer signed on to the ACFW eloop and scanned the list of posts. She kept her finger poised over the delete key, clicking on it every so often, picking and choosing which posts to keep and which ones to banish. She paused at a reminder from the Genesis Head Coordinator that there was still time …
Writing Contests and You!
By Roxanne Rustand ACFW is a wonderful source of education, networking, and industry information, and offers another opportunity: its annual contest for unpublished writers. There are other non-ACFW contests during the year as well. Entering contests can be very helpful, and here are a few reasons why: 1. If your critique partners have seen your work over and over, they …
More Right Than Wrong
by Arlene James Judging contests and critiquing manuscripts are activities that can swamp a writer if she isn’t careful, but they can also be rewarding, I believe, for both the unpublished and the published. I sold into publication before professional organizations such as ACFW existed. What training I received, I got in college. It wasn’t of much use, frankly. (Back …
Congratulations Christy Award Finalists
ACFW sends our congratulations to the 2012 finalists for the Christy Awards, especially to the many ACFW members! The 2012 Christy Award nominees are: CONTEMPORARY ROMANCE My Foolish Heart by Susan May Warren* (Tyndale House Publishers) Larkspur Cove by Lisa Wingate* (Bethany House, a division of Baker Publishing Group) Wolfsbane by Ronie Kendig* (Barbour Publishing) CONTEMPORARY SERIES, SEQUELS, AND NOVELLAS …
Five Reasons Why Contests are Important
by Beverly Varnado Before I attended my first writer’s conference several years ago, I wrote several articles and devotions for an unpublished writer’s competition sponsored by the conference. I worked and reworked the pieces, making sure I’d made them the best I could. Then I sat on them. As the final deadline for submission approached, my nervousness grew. How could …