Time for the annual plunge into the fiction writing contest pool. It happens this way every year, but for some reason, I still fail to recognize the annual signs of potential disappointment. Here's how it happens: usually I have just finished a novel, or am in the final stages of editing one and now facing the daily boredom of reading, for the fourth or fifth time, something I was last excited about at least six months ago. Then it is February on Cape Cod...need I say more? Those idyllic scenes of fluffy white snow dusting the lighthouses and blowing gently across deserted beaches that you see on all the calendars are pretty much taken on a single afternoon when the one picturesque ocean snowstorm breezes through. The rest of the time the sky is this kind of steel gray and spits frozen rain, and the wind never stops blowing.
But that's when they arrive: the cheery emails from a virtually unending stream of little known literary magazines and tiny publishing companies in Nebraska, offering you fame and recognition, as well as perhaps a $100 prize, and, more importantly, a subscription to said magazine. Occasionally, you are also given the "additional opportunity" for a "professional analysis" of your work, plus a "reduced fee" to attend their "renowned annual writing conference." This, too, is in Nebraska...where you'll share a rustic cabin "bonding" with three other "talented" attendees, and participate in "yoga and meditation groups, while watching the sun rise over distant mountain ranges." (Do they even have mountain ranges in Nebraska?)
The reason you get the emails, of course, is not because somehow these literary experts have come across your obscure Amazon author page (after misspelling the name of a sports writer in the search engine), or picked up one of your novels on a recent trip to Orleans, MA, where it rained for four days and they ended up in the only bookstore kind enough to stock your work. Nope, they got your name and email from your previous futile attempts at recognition when you entered their contest last year...and the year before...and perhaps, the year before that.
But my favorite sources for continuing to humiliate myself are not so much these ego-stroking communications (which basically, as my father used to refer to electronic birthday greetings, are "when you care enough to send the very least"), but publications and websites that I purposefully subscribed to. These insidious resources not only flood your brain with articles and links convincing you, the writer, that "you, too, can make a six figure income by just following a few simple tips," but also produce an annual list of how to further convince yourself that you can't.
Nonetheless, we writers are a frighteningly optimistic bunch...either that, or we have definitively short memories...and I, like others, find myself reading through the lists of annual contests seeking and circling the perfect recipients to offer me the above mentioned fame and recognition.
After being part of this potentially financially draining process for several years now, I now see myself as somewhat of an expert in the field. Here's what I've learned: (1) watch out for the fine print. One contest I entered seemed like an excellent choice, but it wasn't until after I sent my story about two sisters growing up in a Jewish neighborhood in New York (and paid the $20 entry fee) that I happened to notice the contest was based in Tennessee, and they were looking for stories and poems that reflected the "traditional values and lifestyle of Bible Belt culture."
Next, I learned that (2) it is important to look at the contest website carefully and if possible, read the winning stories from the previous year's competition. I only learned this after sending off a story about gardening with my grandfather, and then noting that the most recent winner had written a sensitive portrayal of her love affair with a mass murderer. How I missed the illustration of the large ax dripping blood, I'm not sure.
Finally (and please note I am only hitting the top three cautionary bits of advice): (3) just because you were one of the 120 semi-finalists in a contest where the promoters promised to make an Oscar winning movie out of the winning entry, doesn't mean you should send them three stories and a novel the very next year (at $50 a pop).
I'm sure by now you think this cynical portrayal of the world of literary competitions means I have deleted all those email invitations, and tossed aside the list of potential entries culled from the pages of "professional" websites and inspirational publications. Unfortunately, having just sent my seventh novel, Reunion, to press, and sitting here looking out on steel gray skies in the midst of an extended "stay at home order," this is not the case. Yup, I think, as I sign into "Submittable" and open my PayPal account, here we go again.
Maybe I should just sign up for the writing conference in Nebraska and be done with it.
