Janet Rubin Guest Blogger

Hello Seekers!
Writing contests. I haven't exactly had tons of experience with these, but I can tell you what my involvement in competetive writing has done for me. A couple of years ago, when I was interested in getting serious with my writing, someone recommended www.Faithwriters.com. I checked it out and started entering the Weekly Challenge. Each week, a topic is given. One can enter as a beginner, intermediate, or advanced writer. Two hundred writers enter this contest every week. For several months I entered the competition, moving from intermediate to advanced and winning first, second, or third place several times-- an accomplishment that earns you placement in the quarterly anthology. Of course, the anthology is pretty much only sold on Amazon or through Faithwriters, and is probably only purchased by friends and family of the authors, yet my experience with Faithwriters did several important things for me: it gave me confidence about my ability, it gave me publishing credits to put in my bio, it gave me practice writing for a deadline, with a word count and for a topic. In short, I grew as a writer. While there at Faithwriters, I met people, one of which introduced me to my wonderful crit group, Penwrights, which I've been a part of for two years now. It was through fellow Penwrights, like Gina Holmes and Ane Mulligan, that I learned about ACFW and the Genesis contest. With my confidence boosted by Faithwriters success, I tackled what seemed like the impossible task of writing a novel. A year later I had my novel completed and entered it in the Genesis, and to my amazement, won third place in the suspence catagory. What a journey. Will it lead to publication? Only God knows. But contests have been very helpful to me. I thought I'd share one of my second place stories with you. It's about one of my character flaws-- starting lots of things and not finishing any. My story Craft Store Crisis is at:
http://www.faithwriters.com/wc-article-level3-previous.php?id=5792

Contests help with this too; having a deadline and the hope of a prize motivates one to finish. Thanks for having me here and God bless your writing paths.

Here are my blogs:
www.janetswritingplanet.blogspot.com
and
www.noveljourney.blogspot.com
Janet