After entering contests and being a part of critique groups for a while, I felt brave enough to volunteer as a contest judge. What does it take to be a judge? It’s more than, “do I like this story or not?” You do need a working knowledge of the different elements of the writing craft: […]
Writing Lesson 3.35 – Contests–Why Should We Enter?
May 25, 2012 By Leave a Comment
I entered my first contest at about age sixteen and didn’t enter again until about eight years ago. Since then, I’ve made it a point to find at least one a year to enter—usually more than one, and with more than one story. I’ve made it to first-round finals several times, but I’ve never made […]
Writing Lesson 3.33 – Formatting Your Manuscript Like a Pro
May 11, 2012 By Leave a Comment
The following post appeared in Randy Ingermanson’s Advanced Fiction Writing E-Zine and it seemed very appropriate to re-post at contest entry time __________________________________________________________________ There aren’t any ironclad rules on how to format the manuscript of your novel. However, there are good ideas and bad ideas. Whenever I teach at conferences, I see all kinds of […]
Writing Lesson 3.29 – Will an Agent Want You?
March 30, 2012 By Leave a Comment
In the current publishing climate it’s very hard to find an agent or a publisher who will represent you. In a blog from Books and Such on Feb 28, 2012 Rachel Kent made an interesting statement we should all heed. I’m focusing on one item from her list. Rachel states, “Today I’m going to cover […]
Writing Lesson 3.28_A Writer’s Biggest Job
March 23, 2012 By Leave a Comment
A few days ago someone on Facebook said, “Write to be pleasing, but never to please.” I could sort of go with that in the sense that we shouldn’t form our words only to give people what they want to hear. But how does one write to be pleasing? I’ve also heard two other seemingly […]
