WRITING CONTESTS

As a writer, struggling to get that first novel published, we are encouraged to enter writing contests. In the Romance Writer’s world there are numerous writing contests each month. Some are for the best first chapter, love scene, hook, hero, heroine, cowboy, black moment, etc. Most contests you can only submit a certain number of pages ranging from 5-50, so if you do, they better be the best pages you have ever written. Since I have been at this for more years than I care to mention, I can recall the days when entering a contest meant printing multiple copies of the manuscript and paying hefty postage fees to mail them. But times change, and today you enter a contest by electronic submission. One would think this would be a whole lot easier, but that isn’t always the case. There are always guidelines and rules as to how the document should be sent or you will be disqualified. This I found out the hard way a number of years back, shortly after entering the Romance Writers of America’s prestigious Golden Heart contest. When reading books, numbers always appear on the bottom page, so on my manuscript they were on the bottom of the page. Somehow the rule stating page numbers must be placed on the top of the page, was completely missed. So, the entry was disqualified. This was a costly mistake, as the fee to enter was $50 and non-refundable. This particular manuscript was re-entered the following year, since this contest is almost considered mandatory if you are to be considered a serious Romance Writer. Sadly though, it did not win or even final in the contest. That was enough of contest submissions for me for quite awhile. This year I decided to enter my screenplay in the Romancing the Script contest. Never in my wildest dreams, did I think it would end up being such an absolutely frustrating experience. The version of Final Draft I had was old, so about a year ago, I transferred the screenplay to a newer version and submitted it electronically to the Writers Guild of America to be copyrighted. (Screenplays must be copyrighted to be sent out.) For the Romancing the Script contest, the screenplay needed to be in PDF format. Normally, one would think this would not be a problem, but for us non-computer people, it can be a big problem. Never having created a PDF before, I was unaware you needed to purchase a special program to do this. Thank heavens for free trials! The only way to change it to a PDF was to convert it from a Word Doc, so I copy and pasted the screenplay from Final Draft into a Word Doc. Sadly, in the process, it aligned everything to the left margin. And ultimately, when it converted to a PDF, the format was totally wrong. Giving up seemed like a good idea at this point. Fortunately, there are angels out there and the coordinator of this contest totally reformatted my entry so it could be entered in the contest. Without her help, it would not be in the contest. So I beg to differ with whoever thinks computers save us time. For me it would have been far easier to print it out and mail it! The end result was achieved though, so now with a sigh of relief, I will sit back, relax and wait for THE CALL announcing my fabulous romantic suspense screenplay won the Romancing the Script contest!!