Contests

Most authors seem to have a love-hate relationship with contests. Someone said in a chapter meeting that the word that most often comes to mind when discussing contests is "crapshoot". Contests are usually described as the best way to get your work in front of an editor (if your entry finals) while also obtaining valuable feedback from judges.

A good contest will:

• Have a publishing house editor or agent as its finalist judge.
• Use as many published authors as possible for its initial judges.
• Publish its score sheet on the website so you can see where the scoring is weighted.
• Encourage judges to write comments on the score sheets.
• Provide a mechanism for wildly varying scores if more than one judge reads the entry.

There are a few things to keep in mind when entering a contest.

Choose your contests carefully. Most RWA-sponsored contests are well-respected and competition at those contests can be fierce. Ask around and you'll discover which contests pack the most punch in terms of getting your entry in front of an editor or agent. You'll also learn which are the most competitive.

Remember, too, that contests are a very good way of getting a published author's feedback on your work. If you're unsure of your skills, contest feedback can confirm your progress or point out weaknesses you can work on -- which is great if you don't happen to have a published author in your critique group.

Learn to do other things while waiting for contest results. Waiting to hear back can be excruciating. The best you can do is treat a contest entry like your 401k -- chuck it out there and forget about it. If the abandonment method doesn't work for you, try starting a new book or finishing the current one. Don't go back and look at that entry. Don't rewrite the entry the day after you mailed it off. Out of sight, out of mind -- that works for me. Yes, you will eventually look back at those pages and kick yourself, but chalk that up to experience and an improved writing sense. Don't beat yourself up for what, three weeks later, appear to be stupid mistakes. They aren't stupid mistakes. They are simply where you happened to be when you sealed the envelope. Think of them as "places to start improving craft" instead.

Don't take scores personally. There's a delicate balance between using scores to your advantage by learning from them and using them to beat yourself up. Any scores you receive are neither a harbinger of doom for your publishing future or a guarantee of an immediate sale. Stories abound of writers who couldn't final to save their lives but sold a book and of those who finalled in contests all over the country and still didn't get an editor request.

The scores are about the work at hand, not about your career.

Similarities in scoring can pinpoint strengths and weaknesses. So you're staring at your score sheets wondering how the heck one judge could give you 80 pts out of 150 and the other could give you 135. The best approach is to put the score sheets side-by-side and look at each score category. Are the two scores for a single category similar? Make a note -- that's something you can either pat yourself on the back for or something you need to work on. Are the two scores in different zip codes? Don't even bother looking at your work for that issue unless one of the scores confirms your sneaking suspicion that you don't have enough conflict between the heroine and hero, or your love scene looks like it's been doused in Welch's grape juice.

Be prepared to final. If you final in a contest and your entry ends up in front of an editor, she may very well ask you for a partial or the full manuscript. If you've only gotten up to chapter 4, what do you do? Stop sleeping? Forego your relationship with your significant other? Send the kids to their grandparents for six weeks?

Some people can quite successfully use just such a premise to goad themselves into finishing the book before the contest winners are announced. I'm not one of them. I've tried twice now and not been able to do it. My SO suggested that I go ahead and finish the book first, then submit it to a contest. That makes perfect sense in hindsight (but remember, no mistakes -- just "less than optimal choices"), so I think I'll try that for a change...

Don't burn your bridges. No matter how annoying the scores or how devastated you feel by a judge's comments, don't burn that bridge behind you. The judge who said you have no emotional conflict today may be the published author you ask for a cover quote tomorrow. Contest etiquette suggests a nicely written Thank You note is appropriate to send to judges, and many contests, even if they don't supply judges' names, will forward your notes.

All that said, I think entering RWA-sponsored contests is a good way of dipping your big toe into the world of romance publishing. The contests probably look a lot like the publishing biz, with editors having their own preferences, the pressure to perform and succeed, and the agony of The Wait.

Go ahead. Take the plunge. Just remember to take a hot bath when you feel anxious.