When You Don’t Final—Handling Feedback from Contests

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By Rachel Dylan When I first started writing I entered numerous writing contests for unpublished authors.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

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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

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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?

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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 Of the ten or eleven criteria for entry, the most distinctive was that you had to be an unpublished author.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

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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

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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. …

More Right Than Wrong

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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

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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 …

Book of the Year and Genesis Media Release

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Media Information for immediate release American Christian Fiction Writers [ACFW] is pleased to announce the opening of its two annual contests, Book of the Year and Genesis. Book of the Year is open to published members of ACFW. Categories include Contemporary Novella, Debut Author, General Fiction, Historical Novella, Lits (chick-lit, mom-lit, lady-lit, lad-lit, etc.), Long Contemporary, Long Contemporary Romance, Long …