A Simple Contest with a Strong Message for All Writers

Jumpstart Your Writing Career
** Jumpstart Your Career by Asking "Why'" ** by Laura Backes,

Publisher of Children's Book Insider, the Newsletter for
Children's Writers

When developing a story or .....

The Blogfest 2005 Writing Contest has only been running for two weeks and already the results are overwhelming. And not because we're getting far more entries than we expected. It's because along with entries, we're also getting heartfelt messages from writers all over the world. I've run a few contests before and received quite a few entries, but I've never been personally emailed and thanked by so many writers.

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What's the difference with this contest' I think the main reason is that the idea actually came from writers. Even though the writers at our company work in publishing, they find it a little sad that there's so much focus on writing what can sell instead of writing what truly matters to you. They wanted a contest that would allow people to write whatever they wanted to write.

From that idea came Blogfest, a contest designed to encourage all writers to get the project of their dreams done. Unlike most contests, we decided not to offer publication and not to pay the prize for a completed work. Instead, we decided to offer the prizes based on how much the writing project means to the writer. This is one contest that isn't about whether or not your work can sell or about what your writing will mean to someone else. It's about what it means to you.

To enter, we asked writers to tell us about the one thing they've always wanted to write and to tell us what it would mean to them to write it. Now, after only two weeks, we have an inbox full of emails from people. Entries so far have included grandparents wanting to write their life story for their grandchildren, aspiring novelists, professional writers looking for the chance to write something for themselves and not for money, and a young woman wanting to capture and preserve her mother's family recipes.

These people have entered and then sent us an extra email just to thank us for the opportunity. They've told us how just writing about the project has made them so excited and full of joy. They have enthusiasm and feel delight just for thinking about finally writing. And we've started reading the entries and the joy is there too. As a publisher, I'm used to reading submissions and contest entries. It's often a joy but there's rarely ......

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