"Now is
the winter of my discontent." Hardly original but appropriate. The
weather, our most overly-used conversational topic, has been less than stellar.
Snow is wonderful. Sub-zero temps not so much. In any case, just a few months
back I finished a novel, my first complete beginning to end, edited, formatted,
ready to go novel. Exciting? Yes. The querying of agents and publishers? With a
bow to redundancy, not so much. There's the waiting and wondering; leaves me
feeling restless to begin something new. Or perhaps revisiting something
old. If there were a piece of oak attached to my frontal lobe I could not
be more stricken with writer's block. Thus I had an idea. A simply marvelous
idea. Well I liked it anyway and so did the rest of my fellow Guild members.
We're sponsoring a writing contest. Can you hear the skip of happiness in my
words? I hope so. I'm so excited.
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| Use them |
It's not our first writers' contest, but it has been awhile so why not? We love
the craft of wordsmithing. Why not open ourselves up to the works of other
like-minded wordsmiths and enjoy? And we want it to be fun. Oh. Never doubt
that we take our writing very seriously. But we've titled this latest contest
"Plays with Words" since we want it to be more about the shared
experience of penning something than a down and dirty competition. We will give
entrants work a good look over with an unjaundiced eye, that is our promise.
Red pens may flash! But in the end it will be about the writing process
and what it brings to each writer's life as it is shared with others.
We've learned one valuable lesson (at least one, most probably more) from our
first contest. Comparing apples to apples. Thus we are splitting the contest in
a unique way. Poetry vs. poetry, short story/essay vs. short story/essay. There
will be prizes in each category. More than one actually. Why not fire up the
computer or pull out your best pen and notebook and give it a try? It's not
difficult. But we do have a few rules. It must be an original work of the
person submitting it and it can be no longer than 7,500 words (that gives a lot
of leeway). There is no specific age criteria -- good writing is good writing
regardless of age. There is no specific genre criteria. If you write sci-fi,
romance, thriller, anecdotal...any and all will fit. Send it via snail
mail to Writers Contest, 141 N 4th Ave., Park Falls, WI 54552 or use the
hotmail address found on this site to send it via email, placing Writers
Contest in the subject line. We'll take it either way. Read it, respect it and give
it our best critique.
First
day for accepting submissions is Thursday, Jan. 15. Last day for accepting
submissions is Monday, Feb. 16. The final decisions will be made at our Monday,
March 2 meeting and the winners will be notified within that week by their
contact of choice. Monday, March 9 beginning at 6:30 p.m. we will host an
open read in the board room of the Park Falls Public Library. Participants are
invited to read their works and accept their prizes. We'll have a refreshment
table. Some of us might horn in with a work or two of our own.
We ask that
participants place their name, the word count of the piece they are sending and
their contact information on the entry. That's it. Hope to hear from you very
soon.
