By Jill K Willis You’ve decided . . . gulp . . . to enter your book baby in a writing contest. You’ve agonized over the synopsis, formatted the manuscript, and completed the contact form. You’ve edited it a thousand times, along with your mother and your critique partner. You’ve caught typos, grammatical errors, and plot holes. What more could …
To Judge or Not to Judge
By Tammie Fickas It’s contest season at ACFW – First Impressions just finished up, while Genesis and the Carol Awards are open for submissions. Contests are a great way to hone our craft and get your work noticed. Across the nation, each year, organizations sponsor writing contests, and thousands of writers put their work to the test. Have you ever …
Four Ways to Heed Correction
By Terri Gillespie One who heeds discipline is on the path of life, but whoever ignores correction goes astray. Proverbs 10:17, TLV The deadline for the Genesis Contest looms. Pre-published writers are busy checking and double-checking their submissions to be sure they meet the “guidelines.” One way to prepare is to seek others to critique that precious manuscript. The local …
My Friend Writer’s Block
By Suzanne Bratcher WRITER’S BLOCK: Anything that stops our writing. My high school English teacher would hate that definition. I can almost hear her snap, “What do you mean by anything? For that matter, what do you mean by writing?” To appease her, let’s try a simile. Writer’s block is like a horse that stops dead in the road and …
To Enter or Not to Enter: The Author Life and Awards
by Kimberley Woodhouse Writers ask me all the time about the benefit of entering book award contests. This is a tough one to talk about, because a lot of the contests require the author to enter their own work. And that’s just a bit weird. (Although there are contests that the publishers enter on our behalf.) Let’s go back to …
Pay It Forward
By Patricia Bradley In my writing journey I’ve met some of the most amazing people, writers who have taken the time to help me along my journey. Some have been critique partners, some have been teachers at different conferences or on-line classes I’ve attended, and some have been judges in the contests I’ve entered. This week I’ve been thinking about …
When You Don’t Final—Handling Feedback from Contests
By Rachel Dylan When I first started writing I entered numerous writing contests for unpublished authors. I was excited to enter and see what others thought about these crazy stories that had developed inside my head. These contests were a great way to get feedback and have someone who didn’t know me read my manuscript. I jumped in and started …
God’s Plan for You
By Patricia Bradley “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” Jeremiah 29:11 God has a plan for each of us, a pathway for us to walk, and it doesn’t always include what we think it should. That thought …
How to Handle Criticism
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 …
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