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By Rachel Dylan When I first started writing I entered numerous writing contests for unpublished authors.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 …
Don’t Forget the Old Goals in the New 2015
By Casey Herringshaw Happy New Year! It’s filling all the corners of the internet. Greetings from friends and people you bump into at the grocery store. It’s clogging our social media and reminding us that this is truly a new year. I can’t believe how fast 2014 has gone. Those who said that the older you get the faster time …
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. …
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