Contest Wisdom by Ann Marsh

by Marie-Claude Bourque 

WE HAVE A WINNER! BOONE BRUX CONGRATULATION!

I am thrilled to welcome Dorchester author Ann Marsh today. Since I’ve joined the Dorchester team, I keep meeting authors that have got their starts through a contest. Of course, there are all the American Title winners and finalists and the Shomi contest winner Gayle Ann Williams. And we do all cross our fingers here for Candi who is a finalist in the Dorchester Best-Celler contest.

Some authors actually were discovered by Dorchester through plain old RWA contests (which still elude me to this day), for example Angie Fox who will visit us in January and Ann Mash a debut author with paranormal romance THE HUNT who I just had the delight to meet.

I cannot wait to read about her happy ending story and learn about her wisdom on the contest route to publication.

AND PLEASE DON’T FORGET TO COMMENT FOR YOUR CHANCE TO WIN A COPY OF ANN MARSHS DEBUT PARANORMAL ROMANCE: THE HUNT

       I sold my first two books because of RWA chapter contests.  I’d just been laid off from a dream job at Pixar and was bawling my eyes out at home when I read about the San Francisco RWA’s Heart-to-Heart contest. All you had to do was send them twenty-five bucks and the first twenty pages. Easy-peasy. I could do that. Hell, I had half a manuscript under my bed, didn’t I? Just to improve my odds, however, I whipped off another entry in two days—since Pixar had graciously gifted me with all that extra time—and sent it in. Six months later, I won. With the last minute entry. And got a request for a full from Hilary Sares of Kensington.

            Surreal.

            Not supposed to happen.

            Therefore, I had NO clue what to do next.

            So I spent a desperate month writing the unwritten 70,000 words and then sent the manuscript off, fired up a little Excel macro to tell me how many days I’d been waiting to hear from Hilary Sares who was, of course, going to offer me a six-book contract and an advance large enough to live on in the Bay Area while I wrote all the rest of my NYT bestselling books. See? Easy-peasy. I could so do this.

            While I waited to hear back from Ms. Sares and the Excel macro reached double and then triple digits, I entered some more contests. Because, you know, the first one was such a fabulous investment of my dollars that I just had to do it again.

            And again.

            And again.

            The first rule of contests? Contests are addictive. Oh, and, if you’re very lucky and if your CPA agrees, you might be able to deduct the cost of your entry.

            I spent just over a year gleefully doing the contest circuit until Dorchester’s Editorial Director, Alicia Condon, judged THE HUNT (placing me second, I might add) and bought the book. Some writers focus on one manuscript, polish it up, and then enter it absolutely everywhere. Next year, those writers enter a different baby in the literary stakes, unless they’ve landed a contract and rendered themselves ineligible. The rest of us? We take the shotgun approach. We lob a manuscript at this contest and a manuscript at that one. I had four different manuscripts on the contest circuit that year and no—none of them were even remotely close to done when I started entering. Some made it to the finals. Some didn’t.

            In addition to the obvious plus of conning Dorchester into actually publishing my book, three reasons had me entering contests.

1. Feedback. Although it turns out I was too scared most of the time to look at it. I just flipped through some contest results today and discovered that Susan Squires had read my entry. And commented on it. In longhand. Too bad I was too chicken to read the feedback because I’d got fixated on the scores. The numbers don’t really matter. The comments do. Susan Squires LIKED my entry—and she had a great many valuable suggestions… that I’m going to take. Two years later, I’m going to have to Google-stalk her and send her a thank you email.
2. Validation. Writing is lonely. Hearing someone who is not blood-related to you say “I like the way you write” means something.  Ask any contest winner: there’s the contest high, the euphoria of the final. Writing means rejection and lots of them. I’ve heard other writers say it and I’ll say it, too: every rejection may be one step closer to the one “yes” you need to get your book in the bookstore… but all those “no, thank yous” still hurt. Contest finals let you know you’re doing something right. That you just might be getting closer.
3. The golden ticket. A contest final is like finding Willy Wonka’s ultimate Golden Ticket. You get to skip the slush pile. Go straight to the top of the editor’s TBR pile (OK, not really… but at least you’re not on the bottom of the pile). The day I wrote “Requested Materials” on the front of the box I was sending off to Kensington is indelibly stamped in my memory. Those letters looked like a 9.0 magnitude earthquake had just struck California. I made the kids kiss the box for good luck as well and sent the slightly sticky box on its way. Dorchester took submissions electronically, but I had the thrill of knowing I was at the top of the inbox.
4. A thick skin. I didn’t know I was learning this from contests, but I was. So not only does it count—but this was the most important lesson of all. Take what you hear about your work with a grain of salt and look for advice you can apply… and grow a very, very thick skin. Learning to accept criticism—if not graciously, then quietly and not in a blogosphere-wide rant—was the most important thing contests gave me. Not the golden ticket pass to the editor’s desk or the really lovely framed certificate or even the slightly glazed look in my CPA’s eyes as I dumped all my receipts into his lap and demanded a tax write-off. What I learned was that some readers loved my stories—and some of them didn’t. Ouch.  It turned out to be good practice for my first set of revisions from my editor. And even better practice for my first set of reviews.

My very first contest entry ever? The one that won straight out of the gate and garnered a full? It also placed in the very bottom 50% of the Central Florida Romance Writers’ 2008 Touch of Magic Contest. Two judges loved it. The third deemed it outright unpublishable and said so. Quite frankly. My scores were 98, 96—and a 47. Welcome to contests. As one judge noted in her comments: “I loved the story. Some people won’t. It’s a matter of taste.” She was right. It is. I’ve read published books that have absolutely scaled the NYT Bestseller list—and loathed them. Just not to my taste. Contests are the same way and you need to grow that tough skin. Oh, and I sold that book. Not to Hilary Sares, but to Alicia Condon at Dorchester. And I sold it because I took the advice I got from the contest judge who hated the book so much she had to give it a 47 to make her point—and from Ms. Sares—and I rewrote that book until it was darker, sexier and sharper. BOND WITH ME comes out in September 2010 from Dorchester Publishing and I really need to go send that judge a thank you note.

Dr. Seuss has a fabulous set of lines in OH, THE PLACES YOU’LL GO!.  “Wherever you go,” he exclaims, “you will top all the rest. Except when you don’t. Because, sometimes, you won’t. I’m sorry to say so but, sadly, it’s true that Bang-ups and Hang-ups can happen to you”  For better or worse, he’s right. Contests involve a great deal of lucky—being lucky enough to draw a judge who likes what you write, for example. But, even if you’re staring at a 47 inked on top of your beloved manuscript and wondering how the heck that happened, there are still benefits you can take away. You’ve got the feedback. Plus, you simply can’t win if you don’t put yourself out there—so award yourself full points for courage. And, perhaps most importantly, you’ve still got a chance to network. Write thank you notes, to both your contest coordinator and to your judges. And remember… that the next contest will have a new set of judges. THE HUNT may have placed second in the 2008 Orange Rose—but that was only after it placed 17^th out of 27 entries in the 2008 Spring into Romance contest and ignominiously failed to final.

As Dr. Seuss insists, “when things start to happen, don’t worry. Don’t stew. Just go right along. You’ll start happening too.” Dive in. Give contests a shot. Because, honestly, who knows what might be in it for you?

What an inspiring story Ann and great advice. I wish I had known all that when I started to do contest. Thank you so much for visiting and sharing with us.

Don’t forget to comment for your chance to win and you can get your own copy of THE HUNT by visiting Ann’s website or directly through Amazon.