The University of Massachusetts Press has annual fiction and poetry writing contests. The poetry contest closes at the end of September but the fiction contest doesn’t close until October 30th. There is a $20 submission fee for both but that’s not uncommon. The guidelines and submission information is on their Web site. The poetry is for a collection of poems, not for single poems and the winner receives $1,500. Not bad for a poetry manuscript these days.
The winner in the fiction category also receives $1,500 and will be invited to read in the University’s Visiting Writers Series. This is really not for short stories since the manuscript must be at least 150 pages. Even with it being double spaced, 150 pages would be in excess of 30,000 words. While that may not be enough for a full size book, it could fall into the novella category. They do say that a collection of short stories is acceptable. They even accept previously published works. Might be worth the $20 if you have a manuscript that’s just collecting dust or something to work toward for next year. 
The Boston Review is having their Thirteenth Annual Short-Story Contest. Winner will receive $1,000 and have the winning story published in the May/June, 2006 issue of the Boston Review. There’s a $20 entry fee and the deadline is October 1, 2005.
There’s a list of all the previous winners with their winning story. I enjoyed reading some of them. It’s well worth the time to explore the winning stories.
Here is the guidelines for paid awards for non-published creative writing, including a full-length novel, Hackney Literary Awards, offered by Birmingham-Southern College in Birmingham, Alabama. They are offering $5,000 for the 1st place winner in the novel category and $2,500 national and $2,500 state level; 1st $600, 2 nd $400, and 3 rd $250 in the poetry and short fiction categories. They are taking manuscripts for the full-length novels now and will close on September 30th. The poetry and short fiction will not be accepted until Oct. 1st with the deadline being Dec 31st. There’s a $25 entry fee for the novel and a $10 entry fee for the poetry and short fiction. That’s fairly common for most literary contests.
The link also provides a list of last years winners. Unfortunately, there’s no mention of their winning stories or poetry but there is a link to photos of the awards ceremony Here.
Got any short stories or poetry laying around collecting dust? Got a novel completed but no publisher interested? Well, dust them off and send them in to this literary contest. You never know, you could become a winner!
When I first got online in 1996 there wasn’t a lot of writing resources available. I was actively pursuing my writing at the time and I was discouraged with how little information there was available online. While there were a few writers living in my area, none of them were focused on writing for children. In my mind writing is writing, regardless of what genre you choose to market. While there may be some truth in that concept, I have found that the writers of different genes are not interested in a piece of writing that’s outside of their genre. In other words, they aren’t interested enough to read and critique your writing if it’s not in their focused market. I understand that and there may be good reasons to have a single focused genre writing group. I just needed to commune with other writers but because of my genre, I wasn’t welcomed into the existing groups in my town (there were only 2). Oh, they had good enough excuses, such as, we don’t know anything about writing for children, or we want meatier material, you know, adult content; violence, sex and rock-n-roll. Yes, well … obviously none of them had read a young adult novel. Oh, well, such is life.
So I went online in search of like-minded writers. It took awhile to find anything to do with writing. The search engines were not as good as they are today. Google hadn’t even been thought of yet. Yahoo was around but my search engine of choice back then was Excite.com. It was annoying when I’d do a search on writing and get porn in the list of sites, especially when you didn’t know it was a porn site and clicked on the link. Ugh! There were no warnings like there are today and you couldn’t do a search for anything without having porn show up in the search return. But Excite had a directory and that’s when I started using directories to look for what I wanted instead of search engines. It was much easier once you learned how the structure was laid out and no more porn!
Anyway, I did finally find a few good sites on writing. All are gone today except one and it has changed. It’s not as busy with controversy and creativity. It used to be a fun place to hang out in, with lots of different characters to exchange lively conversations with. Conversations that often developed into flame wars. Writers! They can be very vocal and each have well defined opinions and have no problem voicing them, or in this case, scripting them. It was a great place to get character ideas and play with those characters development. And they had a section just for children’s writers! I was in heaven and had found a home for my writer-self. I even met a few writers who have gone on to be published, one has several published books and lots of awards. Kimberly Willis Holt wondered into the children’s fiction forum and we struck up a friendship. She wasn’t published yet but it wasn’t long after I met her that her first book was accepted for publication and I received a signed copy of her first book, My Louisiana Sky. Sadly, the writers forum changed when a new owner come into power and many friendships have gone their separate ways, including my short but treasured friendship with Kimberly.
I have the first two books Kimberly published and now see that she has been busy the last six years or so and more books have been published. Her newest book, Keeper of the Night, looks interesting and I may have to buy it. Her books are so well scripted that anyone would enjoy them, regardless of age. And anyone interested in writing for children and want to explore the development of a writer/characters voice, then they really should read Kimberly’s books. I just found her website at, Kimberly Willis Holt. I would have designed it differently but then, when she knew me I had no interest in creating websites.
The writing resource I found long ago is, Writers BBS Forums, and it’s still a good resource if you can ignore the ads, especially for new writers. There are forums for every genre, some more active than others and there are still a few published authors who participate on the forums and help aspiring writers. It can also be a good place to get critiques and tryout new writing techniques. It’s definitely worth visiting.
A time long ago, when I actually thought of myself as a writer, I bought a book that was recommended by my online writers group. That book was and still is the best book in my library on the craft of writing. While the book is actually about self-editing for fiction writers, it also uncovers the mysteries of what it takes to craft an exceptional story. While the books focus is on fiction writing, any writing genre can benefit from the information found in this one little book.
Self Editing for Fiction Writers
How to Edit Yourself Into Print
by Renni Browne and David King
This book covers subjects like Show and Tell, Point of View, Dialogue, Monologue, and Voice. I had a hard time understanding the show verses tell concept until I read this book and voice, what the hell is voice and what does it have to do with writing? The authors left their explanation of Voice to the end. I’m guessing it’s because Voice in writing is hard to define and they don’t actually define it. Instead of offering a definition of Voice, they offer examples and the writer can draw their own conclusions on what Voice is or isn’t in relationship to their writing style. Here is an excerpt of their first example:
An early seafaring novel by a celebrated nineteenth-century novelist begins with this paragraph:
It was the middle of a bright tropical afternoon that we made good our escape from the bay. The vessel we sought lay with her main-topsail aback about a league from the land and was the only object that broke the broad expanse of the ocean.
Years later the novelist wrote another first-person seafaring novel that begins:
Call me Ishmael. Some years ago — never mind how long precisely — having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world …
The opening of Omoo is intriguing and gives a clear and vivid picture of the waiting ship. The opening of Molby Dick is irresistible. What makes the difference? The answer, of course, is voice. And judging by the writing style in these two Herman Melville novels, even the greatest voices develop over time. Certainly at the time when he wrote Omoo, Melville had not yet found what John Gardner (in On Becoming a Novelist) has called “his booming, authoritative voice.” In the Molby Dick opening, Gardner points out, the rhythms “lift and roll, pause, gather, roll again.” The authority is unmistakable.
Of course, the writer’s voice in a novel generally belongs to a character. The voice in Molby Dick belongs to Ishmael as much as it does Melville. But character voice and authorial voice are intimately connected….
They go on to offer more examples from well known authors. Then they write this:
A strong, distinctive, authoritative writing voice is something most fiction writers want — and something no editor or teacher can impart. It is, however, something any writer can bring out in himself or herself. But oddly enough, you can’t bring out your writer’s voice by concentrating on it.
There is much more to this chapter and well worth reading. Renni Browne is a well respected editor and founded The Editorial Department, a full-service editing and copywriting firm. The firm is now run by Ross Browne, Renni Browne’s son. David King is a senior editor of the firm as of the time their book was published. There are more excerpts from their book on the website, as well as tips, information on workshops and seminars, samples of their work, a free critique program, and a good list of resources. I wish this site had been online when I was actively writing and looking for more resources.
So if anyone passes by and wants to discuss Voice, I’m all ears. Leave a comment and let your Voice be heard!
