Erica Vesch ~ Three Time Genesis Finalist

First of all, thank you to the crew here at Seekerville for letting me guest blog. I enjoy reading all the Seekerville posts.

Contests. They can be so addictive. For someone with contest fever, it takes quite a bit of self-discipline to limit the contests one enters. I had a bout of contest fever four years ago, when I was a green-as-grass fiction writer. I entered every contest I could find (good thing it was only three at the time.)

I made several mistakes right out of the box.

I entered three contests simultaneously. Instead of entering one contest with my raw, first-draftish pages and waiting for the feedback before submitting it elsewhere, I chose the shotgun approach. Not surprisingly, the scores all reflected the same suggestions and results.
I entered a manuscript that was not ready. I’d never let anyone with any knowledge of the craft see my work. Why should I? It was amazing, staggeringly-beautiful prose. It needed no one else’s input. I didn’t enter for the judge’s comments, I entered to win. (Sigh.)
I was too proud, too thin-skinned. When I got my contest results, I was humiliated and sure the judges got things all wrong. How could they call my baby ugly? Obviously they were unqualified, uncaring, and…the list went on. I had to kick a few cabinets.
I didn’t take the judges’ advice right away. I held back my own progress as a writer by ignoring the advice I’d paid for by entering the contest.
I took my contest results to my face-to-face crit group where I let them liberally apply the balm of sympathy, believing them when they told me my ms was beautiful and the judges were simpletons.

Licking my wounds, I went on a contest hiatus for two years. When I finally got my head on straight, and started reading books on craft, and joined a stellar on-line critique group, I realized how foolish I had been in those early days.

During this hiatus, I worked hard, wrote four more novels, went to a conference, and learned everything I could. Finally, the sting of those early critiques wore off, and I was in better shape for entering contests.

At the urging of my critique partners, I entered the 2007 Genesis Contest. I was so nervous! It was hard to keep my mind off the contest and get on with the next work. But I must’ve managed it, because when the call came that I was a finalist, I was caught completely off guard. I blathered like an idiot…Uh, really? Cool…um, thanks! Yikes.

I went to the ACFW Conference last year, and in my registration packet, I got a pale blue ribbon that said “Finalist” on it in gold letters. I wore that like a badge of honor. Then, the first night at dinner, a man at my table asked what the ribbon meant. I told him I was a finalist in the Genesis Contest. When the man found out it was a contest for unpublished authors, he shrugged and turned away like it was no great accomplishment. (This was his first conference.) Sigh…he busted my bubble for a moment. Then I realized he didn’t know how hard it was to enter a contest, to put your work out there for someone else to judge, and how difficult it is to final in a contest like the Genesis.

When the banquet rolled around, I was keyed up. For some reason, it had escaped me that the winners had to go up on stage and make a little acceptance speech. My mind began to race. What if I won and had to say something? The only thing that entered my mind to say was “God is good, all the time.” Yes, that would work.

And then it happened. I didn’t place. In fact, I was the only one in my category that didn’t place due to a tie. Deflated once again. But as I sat down I realized that my little ‘acceptance speech’ was just that. I accepted that God is good, all the time.

This year I am a two-time finalist. I’m planning on being at the conference, and I have my ‘acceptance speech’ all ready, whether I win or not.

Erica Vetsch lives with her husband and two children in Rochester, Minnesota. She is a home-school teacher, bookkeeper, and fan of western movies. She belongs to the American Christian Fiction Writers, the Writer’s View, the Christian Fiction Blog Alliance, and the Minnesota Historical Society. Erica is a three-time Genesis Contest Finalist. She has recently completed her seventh novel. She holds a Bachelor’s degree from Calvary Bible College and has been a librarian and high school history teacher.

Visit her blog at: www.onthewritepath.blogspot.com/