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"Write Ways To Win Writing Contests"
This is the old edition of this book. I recommend the new edition which has not only been brought up to date and expanded, but is actually cheaper in price!

Not just a practical guide, this handbook provides a witty and entertaining look at the art of winning writing contests by an author who really knows his stuff. John Reid has served as Chief Judge of the Tom Howard Short Story Contest for the past fifteen years. He also adjudicates the equally prestigious Tom Howard Poetry Contest and the Margaret Reid Prize for Traditional Verse. What John doesn't know about winning literary contests is not worth knowing. He's won plenty himself. He's... More > also published fifteen novels and is a world-renowned expert (especially in France) on old Hollywood movies.

However, this book is not designed to provide tuition in the art of writing stories, essays and poems. It is assumed that readers can already write more than competently and that what they now seek is success. And one of the paths to literary success, of course, is the ability to win major literary competitions. "Write Ways To Win Writing Contests" provides strategies to this end, based on personal experience.

If you are simply interested in doing your own thing, this book is not suitable for you. True, you do have a chance of success. It's possible your story or poem may appeal to the judge and you may end up as a winner.

However, this book is aimed at writers who want to increase their chances of success from at least one in a hundred to more than one in four or five.

Three of the main strategies for entering the winner's circle are (1) Know the contest; (2) Know the judge; and (3) Know yourself.

Knowing the contest means studying the poems, stories and essays that have won contest prizes in the past. Knowing the judge means that you should try to find out all you can about the judge's own literary works and tastes.

Knowing yourself, on the other hand, is difficult. It means that you should not put all your trust on one entry but send in as many as possible. We are often, all of us, the worst judges of the merits of our own work. Time and again, I won prizes for work I did not think highly of. For instance, a poem I tossed off in less than an hour won a major prize, whereas work that I had struggled to polish and that had given me great personal satisfaction, was ignored. Perhaps the winning poem had a simplicity, a directness that appealed to the judge? Perhaps she thought my other entries too contrived? < Less