C h a z z W r i t e s . c o m

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09/28/2010 • 10:00 AM 3

10 Things that Happen When You Win a Writing Contest

You get the letter or the phone call. You’ve won a short story contest!

What happens next?

1. Dance.

2. Call your spouse. “I knew you could!” they say. “This makes all those times I watched the kids while you wrote…almost worth it! Dinner’s on you tonight, Snoogums!” Get your freak on.

3. Call your non-literary friends. “Congratulations!” they say. Then, “I have to get back to work. I don’t hang around a home office, alone all day celebrating like some people I know.”

4. Call your literary friends. “Congratulations!” they say, through gritted teeth. Make encouraging sounds. Assure them they could have won in your place, but it’s a subjective business. (True, though you will never, can never, think of these small triumphs as mere luck. To continue as a writer, you must know you deserve it all. Otherwise you’ll come to your senses and start making money doing something more people value, like grouting.)

5. Call your parents. “Congratulations!” they say. “How much money did you win?” For most contests, when you buy the celebration dinner tonight, there goes at least half. (I won $1,000 for a short story once. I blew that on paying taxes. Whoo-hoo.)

6. Go out for a coffee. This is an obvious ploy to tell strangers. They don’t care. Tip the barista well.

7. Wait for the prize and or publication. The prize may come along quickly assuming it’s a legitimate contest. If publication is part of the prize, it will be a long wait.

8. Discover typos or tiny changes you’d love, nay, need to make to avoid immortalizing the coming ridicule. They won’t make the changes. The release you signed but did not read said so in a sub-paragraph. You’ll try to pester someone about it, but the happy people who called to say you won will now no longer return your calls. (This is also when you figure out you gave away more rights to the story than you would have if you weren’t so giddy when they called. Don’t blame yourself. When they called to inform, you were like the zittiest kid at junior prom asked to dance by the prettiest girl.)

9. Before you can tell them you’re pulling it, you shall receive rejections from other contests and magazines for the same story who apparently thought it sucked. (Don’t let the spark of your enthusiasm get drowned out.)

10. (a) Publication and then anonymity as history moves on.

(b) Publication on the net will result in comments (possibly even an awful blog post railing against you as happened after one of my tiny triumphs) from a bunch of bitter losers who can’t believe their genius went unrecognized. Oh, they’ll be mean. They’ll demand the judges quit and express disgust at your existence, you know-nothing poseur!

BONUS:

11. Reminisce about your past triumph, write something else, put something else in the mail and sublimate your rage with a passive-aggressive blog post.

Two more contests, Dialogue, and more (motleyvision.org)
Joyce Carol Oates’s ‘In the Absence of Mentors/Monsters’: Narrative Magazine (huffingtonpost.com)
9 (Arbitrary) Ways to Get Your Writing Rejected (psychologytoday.com)

Filed under: What about Chazz?, writing contests, writing tips, Contest, short stories, short story, Winning short story contests, Writers Resources

09/10/2010 • 12:47 AM 0

Writing Contest

Glimmer Train is accepting contest submissions.

It’s September, so it’s Fiction Open over at Glimmer Train. The reading fee is $18 US. First prize is $2,000. They’ll take short stories up to 20,000 words. Submitted for your consideration.

I just submitted a short story. It makes me feel good, the same way buying a lottery ticket gives you a tiny secret potential.

Downtown Books and Coffee (faircarnivals.com)
Young Writers Cup Contest Now Accepting Submissions (prweb.com)
Profile in Courage Essay Contest (freetech4teachers.com)
Getting Paid for Flash Fiction (writinghood.com)

Filed under: writing contests, Contests, fiction, Glimmer Train, short stories, writing contests

06/11/2010 • 12:33 PM 1

Slap (on) a happy face

I just read some advice for short story writers (from The Writer’s Handbook) where a rather harsh critic slams stories where the protagonist is an unlikeable character and bad things happen to him or her.

Uh-oh. In my stories, that’s my thing. I think just about anyone will disappoint you if you get to know them well enough. That’s my worldview. To be successful by this critic’s estimation, I’m going to need a brain transplant. But I gotta be me.

When a short story of mine won an award, lots of people focussed on the torture. However, the reason it won was that in the last sentence there was a twist of transcendence. It wasn’t about torture. It was about the second chance. Read it here.

I got a reply from another judge (different contest, same story) who was very dismissive. He seemed not to have read it very carefully, perhaps deciding early on it wasn’t something he would care for so he wrote it off quickly. For instance he said, “This doesn’t make sense. Why would a collection agency pursue dead files?” Because I made it clear the bill collector is a bad guy. If I spelled it out more, they’d call me pedantic. Sometimes you can’t win.

I’ll have to ignore that particular advice from The Writer’s Handbook I guess. I’ll keep on writing about flawed people and I’ll keep doing bad things to them. (Flawed characters make some of the best characters. Examples? Plenty, but off the top of my head, Breaking Bad, Dexter and Battlestar Galactica and Portnoy’s Complaint.)

Filed under: manuscript evaluation, short stories, writing contests, critics, short stories, writing contest

05/17/2010 • 12:34 PM 0

Reading Raymond Carver (and making changes)

As Raymond Carver once wrote:

It’s August.

My life is about to change.

I can feel it.

Of course, Carver’s character is fooling himself and the reader knows it. I’m saying it, too, but not ironically. What change are you making today?

Over the weekend I edited two more short stories for contest submission. These are old stories reworked so I’m really feeling them now:

Past, Present, Over & Out is about a has-been actor whose wife leaves him to raise two young kids at home. He struggles mightily and learns how to deal with the loss. Then she wants to come back. What will he do?

Sidewalkers is about a social worker for the homeless in Toronto. She thinks she’s really good at her job. Then she meets a crazy woman who holds a mirror up to the social worker’s character. She’s actually a sick voyeur who records other people’s misery for fun and profit. Then she has to decide if she’s willing to change. If she does change, what will she be next?

Both stories are about daring to make changes in our lives and how scary that is. The difference between the original versions and the edited stories are two-fold. The old stories were just clever. Now they have emotional impact.

The second change to the stories that makes them so much better? That’s what the next blog post is about.

Meanwhile, are you looking for more on making empowering changes in your life (TODAY! TODAY! TODAY!) Follow this link to a Huffington Post story on self-empowerment.