Carteret Writers 18th Annual Writing Contest

Entry Fee: See Guidelines
Deadline: March 10, 2009

Guidelines: http://carteretwriters.org

Carteret Writers is a group in Morehead City, North Carolina, that meets monthly and holds an annual writing contest. There are five categories to choose from:

  • Flash fiction up to 750 words
  • Fiction up to 3,000 words
  • Nonfiction up to 2,500 words
  • Poetry up to 50 lines
  • Children’s fiction up to 2,000 words.

If you’re writing a novel, the fiction entry may be an excerpt from the book. Cash awards are $100 for first place, $50 for second, and $25 for third. All winners will be published in the Carteret Writers magazine, Shoal. Awards will be presented at the general meeting in May. Entry fees vary for members and nonmembers, and they have specific formatting guidelines and a cover sheet to use. You may obtain a pdf copy of the guidelines by emailing literary1 at gmail.com. Good luck, and happy writing!

 

 

How Do You Revise Your Writing?

You’ve typed THE END. You’ve celebrated finally making it through that first draft. You’ve let the manuscript rest on a shelf for a couple of weeks or months. Now it’s time to revise your writing.

How do you do it?

Here is a simple, four step plan that makes the revision process go more quickly. Each step focuses on one aspect of the writing. Even if you see other things that need fixing, don’t stop to change it. Concentrate only on the aspect that is the focus in that step. After the four steps, the manuscript should be perfect. This process works equally well on short stories and novels.

The Four Step Plan for Revision

Print this out and place it on your writing desk for quick reference.

  • Step 1. Revise for plot continuity. Read the manuscript through, looking for any dropped plot lines, any holes in the plot, and any improbabilities. If you work from an outline, most of these problems get worked out in the outline stage, so this step doesn’t take too long. If you’re a pantster, (you write the story as you go along, with no outline,) this step may take a bit longer, and may involve some rewriting.
  • Step 2. Now that the plot is secure, revise for character. Read through the manuscript again, making sure that the characters are deep, they have realistic feelings, motivations, and dialogue. If you can laugh and cry with your characters, then you’ve portrayed them well.
  • Step 3. The plot is perfect, the characters are true to life, and now it’s time to revise for details. Are the settings and actions so real that they jump off the page? Are the details woven invisibly into the action, the dialogue, and the settings, without narrative drag? This is one of the hardest areas to find a balance. One of my writing instructors once said, “If the detail doesn’t move the plot or characterization forward, leave it out. Likewise, if your plot or characterization are flat, show me more details.”
  • Step 4. Final polish. Take this step slowly and carefully. Meticulously check all the grammar, syntax, style, and punctuation, with a style book at your side. Make sure the manuscript is formatted perfectly.

Once these four steps are complete, it’s time to print the final copy and do the happy dance around the kitchen. At this point, you can be sure you’ve created the best story you possibly can.

Five Day Descriptive Writing Lesson: One Sense Each Day

I recently read the book The Girl With No Shadow, by Joanne Harris. Her writing mesmerized me in Chocolat and she did it again with her latest novel. It continues the magical story of Vianne Rocher, who now has two children, and a chocolaterie in Montmartre.

Even though I’ve never been to France, I feel as though I know the area, thanks to the descriptive prose of Joanne Harris. Each page of the book allows the reader to see, feel, taste, hear, and smell the events happening. I had to get a box of truffles to go along with my reading.

How can we teach writing as descriptive as that? Of course, Joanne Harris has worked years to perfect her craft, so we can’t expect to see writing like that in a class of students we are with for one year. But we can target one descriptive concept and have the students work on it, lesson by lesson for five days.

Five Day Descriptive Writing Lesson

Students will create a descriptive passage using all five senses in this lesson, focusing on one sense each day. Begin each day with a brainstorming session to find ways of describing the focus sense.

  • Day 1: Sight. Choose an object or person. Brainstorm as a class what it might look like. Have the students describe it with colors, size, shape, and movement. Have them use powerful, vivid words.They should skip lines on their papers so they can add more details tomorrow. 
  • Day 2: Sound. Have the students take out the same paper and insert sounds into their descriptions. Have them rewrite the description, incorporating details from the two senses.
  • Day 3: Touch. Today the students will continue to work on the same paper, adding any descriptions of feeling, touch, or contact. They should rewrite the description again, including all three senses.
  • Day 4: Smell. Here is where it begins to get interesting. Have them describe what the person or object smells like. Then rewrite the passage again.
  • Day 5: Taste. This is the day you will be certain to hear groans. Taste might be one of the hardest senses to describe, unless you are writing about food. Once they’ve added their details about taste, have them read it to a partner, and then revise it into a final draft.

By focusing on one of the five senses each day, students will be able to be more aware of writing with detail. The brainstorming each day helps them learn new ways of describing things. In the end, hopefully they will be better descriptive writers.

The First Line Spring 2009 Contest

Entry Fee: FREE

Deadline: February 1, 2009

Guidelines: http://www.thefirstline.com

“Herman Sligo was  a bit actor who played Uncle Emil in three episodes of the popular television series The Five Sisters.”

Use this first line, verbatim, create a story between 300 and 3,000 words to enter in the First Line Writing Contest. This is a quarterly contest, so if you miss the deadline for the May contest, there will be another one, with a new first line, coming up in August.

The editors say they like to make the online magazine eclectic, so they accept stories in all genres. That being said, they will publish the winning entries in their anthology. Winners are notified 2-3 weeks after the deadline, a quick response time in the publishing world.

The first lines are always intriguing, making this a fun writing project. Winners receive $20 and a copy of the anthology. Submissions are all done via e-mail, so check the website for guidelines.

The Cats Protection Writing Competition

Entry Fee: FREE

Deadline: February 27, 2009

Guidelines: http://www.cats.org.uk/thecat/latest/comp.asp

“Forget dazzling doggerel, we want creative catterel!” So states the website for this contest about cats. Cat Magazine, based in the UK is sponsoring this contest for short stories or poetry. Short stories should be 1,000 words or less, and poems less than 500 words. The contest has no entry fee, but they are suggesting a donation of £5 to help defray the costs of administration. The winner receives a new laptop and the runner up receives other prizes, such as a thesaurus and desk accessories. The downloadable entry form has three past winning entries on it, as well as a bio of the contest judge. Be sure to download it and read them.

Bring Your Writing to Life with Details

Details are what make a piece of writing stand out from the crowd. The details are what sticks in a reader’s mind, long after the book has been closed. The details are what bring the writing to life.

Is writing the details a skill that can be learned, or a talent one is born with? While I don’t know the answer to that, I do know that a writer can improve on that skill by reading like a writer. Here’s an example of a writing exercise that helps me.

When you read a fantastic passage in a novel, read it three times.

  • Read it once to get a sense of the story.
  • Read it a second time to see how the author created the effect he did.
  • Read it a third time to dissect it and figure out how you can do the same with your writing. Focus on the details. It’s the details that make the writing memorable.

 Compare these two passages:

“Each year, when people die, relatives forget to stop their mail and it continues to be delivered to the deceased.”

That’s a nice, dry fact, nothing too original or interesting. Now read how Joanne Harris writes about that topic in The Girl With No Shadow. 

“It is a relatively little-known fact that, over the course of a single year, about twenty million letters are delivered to the dead. People forget to stop the mail – the grieving widows and prospective heirs – and so magazine subscriptions remain uncanceled; distant friends unnotified; library fines unpaid. That’s twenty million circulars, bank statements, credit cards, love letters, junk mail, greetings, gossip and bills dropping daily onto doormats or parquet floors, thrust casually through railings, wedged into letter boxes, accumulating in stairwells, left unwanted on porches and steps, never to reach their addressee. The dead don’t care.”

The second passage gives vivid examples and details that make the beginning of this book stick in the reader’s mind. The pictures created by the bills dropping onto parquet floors, letters wedged, porches covered in mail, are the details that make this passage memorable.

Now take this simple passage and try to make it memorable.

“The elephant stood in his pen.”

Each day, try a warm up writing exercise like that, and soon enough, the details will begin to flow from your fingertips as you tell your stories.

Emphasize Mastery Rather Than Grades

As a teacher, which do you think is more important? Having students master skills and content or having students turn in every assignment to get a good grade? This is a tough question, and it may be difficult to tease out the differences between mastering content and getting good grades.

Mastery implies that the content is so well-learned that it will stay with the student and it will not be forgotten. Certainly, when teaching reading, we want students to master reading and comprehension so they can understand written texts that they read throughout a lifetime. Being able to read the words fluently is not enough. Conversely, not being a fluent reader, but being able to comprehend text is not enough. 

Likewise in math, if a student has learned the algorithms to solve a problem, but has no understanding why or how the algorithm works, has she mastered the content? I would say not. 

If a student turns in every assignment, and performs at a basic level, she will get a good report card grade. But has she truly mastered the content? Or has she simply jumped through hoops to please the teacher? Will she forget everything she learned as soon as the unit is done? 

One way to address this problem is to emphasize mastery, and not grades. For example, in my class, most assignments are considered practice. Daily math is considered practice. I have the student do an assignment, and I allow them to work together to solve the problems. The next morning, I answer any questions they have about the work. We practice a few of the problems again. Then they turn in the assignment, and they get 5 points if it’s complete, 3 if it’s mostly done, and 0 if they don’t turn it in. I check the correctness of each paper, looking for areas that I may need to reteach, or students that may need some intervention.

This process lowers the stress level of completing homework and assignments considerably, both for the students and for me as the teacher. Close to 100% of my students turn in their homework. I rarely have a student missing an assignment. Before each test, I ask again if there are any areas they want to review. Inevitably, there will be a few questions.

As a result, my students feel comfortable asking for help, and letting me know if they need more practice in an area. When we get to the point in the year where we are required to do the standardized state testing, they are less stressed. They know that they have mastered the content to the best of their ability. For me, that’s the important thing.

The Novelette Writing Contest

Entry Fee: FREE

Deadline: January 31, 2009

Guidelines: http://writingcontest.thenovelette.com/

Fiction entries for this contest can be about any type of pet, from fish to frogs, from hamsters to horses. A past winning entry, Sweet Tart, about a parrot and its newlywed owners, is a must read. There are two prizes. One is The Reader’s Award, chosen by popular online vote, and the other The Editor’s Award, given by the editors. The winners receive a $25 gift certificate to Barnes and Noble bookstores. The website has more details and an online submission form.

AKC Fiction Writing Contest

Entry Fee: FREE

Deadline: January 31, 2009

Guidelines: http://www.akc.org/pubs/fictioncontest/

The American Kennel Club is sponsoring their 22nd annual fiction writing contest, and it’s still free to enter! The prizes are a respectable $750, $500, and $250, and the winners are published in the AKC Gazette and the AKC Family Dog. The guidelines for the topic are wide open; 2,000 words on any subject, as long as an AKC recognized dog appears in the story. How about a Beagle who sniffs out crimes, or a Shetland Sheepdog who saves children from a snowdrift? Whatever you decide, have fun with this one.

 

Call for Writers: Make Money Writing for FoodieMama

If you love to cook, love to eat, and love reading about kitchen and culinary topics, consider becoming a writer for Foodie Mama. This site is designed for busy people to share recipes, cooking tips, ideas for cooking for a family, and reviews of new kitchen equipment and gadgets.

Foodie Mama has a highest revenue payment structure. They pay writers 50% of Google Adsense revenue and 100% of Amazon affiliate link revenue. As the site grows, a writer will have the potential for substantial earnings. Right now it’s small, but as more writers join, it will become more popular.

Foodie Mama is part of a network that includes TypeAMom and DadOSphere. It is owned by Kelby Carr, a feature writer for Suite101 and an About.com guide. She was also recently named one of the top freelance women online. Tara Ziegmont, the editor in charge at Foodie Mama is also a high school science teacher and a writer. She owns the Feels Like Home blog.

I am the new editor of the Kitchen Equipment and Gadgets section, and I would love to have people write articles for my area. If you love cooking, consider writing for Foodie Mama.

Articles should be between 300 and 600 words. Submitting and uploading articles is a quick and simple process. An editor will review it for grammar and typos to make sure it looks professional before it goes live. Kelby and Tara are great to work with.