Do Contests Really Help Your Career?

Contests have been good to me in the 2009/2010 season, most certainly. All told, I’ve finaled in 7, including the RWA Golden Heart®, and won three (Chicago North’s Fire and Ice, Kiss of Death’s Daphne du Maurier and Heart’s Through History’s Romance Through the Ages) the last of which introduced my writing to my now agent, Barbara Poelle with the Irene Goodman Agency.

I’ve been getting a few e-mails here and there from people who have noticed my finals/wins asking me how valuable I thought contesting was to launching a career, and if I felt that doing so well in contests was instrumental to getting an agent.

I must say yes. And no.

You already know my agent read my first three chapters in a contest, and went on to request the full, so you may be saying “Duh, of course contest finals were instrumental in launching her career.” But it’s not that simple. I had several agent offers to choose from, only 2 of which found me through a contest. Two more came through referrals from existing clients, and the other 4 through the good old query process. Had I chosen one of those agents instead, the answer would be very different.

Here’s the thing: getting an agent or editor to buy into your story ALL COMES DOWN TO THE WRITING, and not just in the first 25-50 pages (the average length of a contest entry). I’ve heard more than one editor and agent say that while contest finals are nice, they don’t pay a ton of attention to them (yes, even the Golden Heart) because many times they’ve read a polished, perfect first three chapters, but then the story falls apart, or the voice/story/plot/characters don’t carry through to the end of the book.

The most instrumental thing for your career then, is to WRITE A DARNED GOOD BOOK, through and through. No matter how well I’d done in contests, I wouldn’t have gotten a single offer if the entire book hadn’t stood out in some way.

That being said, I would still answer YES, as to whether contests have been instrumental to my career, and that is because of the feedback I’ve received. You see, before Sweet Enemy started doing well in contests, I entered another 5 (4 previous to my actual first finalist entry) that I did not final in at all. But what I did get was valuable feedback. I learned something from each and every one of those entries, even from those judges who hated my story or wrote pretty harsh or nitpicky things (most judges were absolutely lovely, btw, even when giving criticism). I learned what was working (thus building my confidence), what people were tripping over, what words I over-used, what images weren’t coming through as I intended, and so on and so on and so on. Taking that feedback and unbiased criticism helped hone my story, showed me areas I needed to better educate myself in on the craft, and then I would try again and enter another contest to see if what I’d changed worked.

Just as important in my growth as a writer has been JUDGING contests. It’s amazing how much you learn about your own writing, or about mistakes writers make, when you are seeing them in someone else’s work. Conversely, you learn when you see something done just right!

And remember, contest finals are great, they let you bypass the slush-pile of whichever editor/agent is judging, and that’s nothing to sneeze at, but that’s all it does. In the end, it’s the writing that is going to win you that editor/agent’s heart, so above all else, educate yourself and hone your craft. That’s what will launch your career.

For those of you who have entered contests, how would you answer this question? For those thinking about contesting, what do you hope to get from the experience?

Now, a shameless plug for my chapter’s contest, deadline of September 10th. And yes, we’re known for great feedback.

Why YOU should enter MARA’s Fiction From the Heartland Contest

• FEEDBACK, FEEDBACK, FEEDBACK
o You get TWO full page critiques, one from a published author.
o Our contest provides detailed feedback on your entire entry, including big picture story feedback from your synopsis
o You will receive your comments back in time to prepare to enter the RWA Golden Heart®
• Manuscripts that final are read by BOTH an EDITOR and an AGENT

o Check out 2010’s Fabulous Line-Up!

Agents
• Helen Breitwieser, Cornerstone Literary Agency
• Sara Megibow, Nelson Literary Agency
• Laura Bradford, Bradford Literary Agency
• Karen Solem, Spencerhill Associates
• Claudia Cross, Sterling Lord Literistic

Editors
• Category Romance - Susan Litman, Harlequin/Silhouette
• Contemporary Single Title - Danielle Poiesz, Pocket Books
• Historical - Tessa Woodward, Avon Books
• Romantic Suspense - Lauren Plude, Grand Central Publishing
• Paranormal - Meredith Giordan, Berkley Publishing Group
• Erotic Romance – Meghan Conrad, Ellora's Cave
• Young Adult - Natashya Wilson, Harlequin Teen
• Inspirational - Melissa Endlich, Steeple Hill

• Trained judges, who judge in the genre they write. No MARA members are allowed to enter our own contest.

• Overall winner receive $50 and a commemorative plaque

• Did we say FEEDBACK?

Here’s what some past entrants have said about our contest:

"I attribute my first sale to this contest." - Laura Abbot

"I had no idea when I entered the MARA Contest how it would change my life. Not only did I win the contemporary catagory and the best overall, but the judging editor requested the entire manuscript and I went on to become a published author! I can't recommend this contest enough." -Donna Delaney

And 2000 RITA® winner for Best First Book (The Maiden and the Unicorn), Isolde Martyn thanked MARA and the Fiction From the Heartland Contest in her acceptance speech

So be sure to polish up your entry and get it in today! Deadline Sept 10th, 2010. www.mararwa.com

I've been Poelled...

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So, I haven’t posted in an age, but in my defense, life has been a whirlwind these past few weeks. So many things to share, but I’ll have to do it in spurts because I am very quickly making some tweaks to my manuscript so that my new, fantastic, lovely, hilariously funny and uber-enthusiastic super agent, Barbara Poelle, can get it out on submission.

Next on the—

What’s that, you say?

Oh, yes! I DID say agent. And I am thrilled, Thrilled, THRILLED about her. It’s a long and wonderful story, one of those, that looking back, seems like it was meant to be, but the very short version goes something like this:

Author (that’s me) has her eye on Super Agent (that’s Barbara) for a long time. Author sees that Super Agent is judging a historical romance contest (that’s the Hearts Through History’s Romance Through the Ages Contest) and decides to enter, in hopes of getting first three chapters of manuscript in front of her.

In the meantime, Super Agent and another Awesome Agent (that’s Holly Root) donate an afternoon tea with them to “Do the Write Thing for Nashville” to support flood relief for that area after the devastating May floods. Calculating Author thinks… “Hmm…I can support Nashville AND put myself in front of Super Agent, who will have read 3 chapters of my work if I final in that contest I entered, and at best, make an impression, and at worst, be able to at least ask her why she hated my writing.” Author bids, bids, bids and wins! Of course, she also queries both Super Agent AND Awesome Agent, because Author is no dummy and Awesome Agent is…well…awesome.

Author finals in the contest, and the manuscript is off to Super Agent. Author also finals in the Golden Heart and the Daphne, which doesn’t hurt, all of which are set to announce at the RWA Convention in Orlando, FL.

RWA arrives. Author WINS historical romance contest (Yay!), Super Agent comes to awards ceremony herself to announce the winners and then FLOORS Author by offering representation publicly in front of a room full of people, declaring her willingness to “get into a monkey knife fight” to represent Author. Author’s jaw drops, but she can’t stay to play, because she has to dash upstairs, where she also wins the historical category of the Daphne (at which point, she sees Super Agent standing in the back of the room, jumping up and down with applause. Author’s heart melts a little).

The next day, still stunned Author (and friend, Gretchen Jones) have lunch with Super Agent and Awesome Agent, who both deign to wear Fez’s blinged out with “I (heart) Nashville and Heather Snow” on them, and Author doesn’t have to ask Super Agent why she hated her writing, because Super Agent LOVES her writing. Yay!

(Gretchen proceeds to take picture evidence of this Fez wearing madness, which is exhibited below)




Author receives several more tempting (and wonderful) offers of representation over the next week, and is grateful and humbled by each and every one. Author runs off to New York to meet other Lovely Agents, to make certain she makes the right decision for her career. Author is torn, because she loves each agent and thinks they are all lovely. Then Author goes home and secludes herself for three days, clearing her head, listing her pros and cons, and checking her gut and her references and comes to a decision.

On Tuesday, Author calls Super Agent. Super Agent doesn’t answer. Author then decides, what the heck…Super Agent is young, hip and addicted to her iPhone (as is Author) and decides to officially accept offer of representation by text. She texts:

“Well, I’ve been Poelled. Here’s hoping you haven’t been Snowed into thinking I’m a better writer than I am, oh agent mine, because now you’re stuck with me. Call me when you can.”

And much celebration ensued.

All hilarity aside, I am very excited to be represented by the talented, tenacious and absolutely wonderful Barbara Poelle of the Irene Goodman Agency. Here’s hoping we have many happy, successful and lucrative years together…

I’m going to DisneyWorld!!! (and I didn’t even have to win the Superbowl)

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Well, I’m off at the end of the week to the RWA ® National Conference in Orlando (which will be held next Thursday through Saturday to culminate in the Rita/Golden Heart awards on Saturday night). I’ll be traveling with my friend and fellow writer, Katy Madison, for a little pre-vacation, conference and then some Harry Potter world Sunday at Universal…woohoo!

My goals for the week:

1. DON’T get sunburned at the parks or at the pool. I’m a red-headed, pale skinned woman who is wearing a strapless dress to the Golden Heart Awards. I do NOT want freaky awful tan/burn lines on my shoulders!

2. Try to find time to relax. It’s not often I get away by myself. While I love the husband and the boy, it will be nice to have a little time for me. I’m going to do my best not to fill every moment and just have a breather or two along the way.

3. Catch up with some friends. That might be hard with 3,000 attendees and a schedule that is packed to the brim this year between the Golden Heart, Daphne, & Hearts through History contests, along with other events I’m committed to (and TOTALLY looking forward to). But I hope to get to spend time with some lovely people I don’t see that often (you know who you are, so find me if I can’t find you!)

4. Enjoy some time with my MARA and MRW friends who are also attending. It’s so lovely to have chapter-mates who will be in Orlando, too.

5. Be a good networker and make new friends. Not my strongest suit, but I will do better this year. I will! Hey, I still have at least one friend I met at my first RWA conference in 2007. (Michelle Marcos, I love you!) And I met some fabulous new friends at this year's Chicago North Spring Fling who are actually still talking to me, so there's hope for me yet :)

6. Enjoy the moment. I am thrilled and honored to be a first-time Golden Heart finalist this year, and I hope to soak in every bit that I can and bond in person with the other incredible finalists I’ve been getting to know on-line.

Heather’s Historical Hodgepodge won’t be updated for a couple of weeks. I’ll be gone next Tuesday, then I’ll be travelling to retrieve the boy from Nanny and Poppy’s house (who are so graciously spoiling…er, caring for their grandson while I am away).

See you on August 10th (unless, by some crazy fluke I actually win the Golden Heart…then I will have to post something!).

Either way, I promise pictures!
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So Far, So Good

Well, week one of querying has met with success. No rejections so far (yes, I know it’s early…many of these agents won’t even get to my query/proposal packets for several weeks yet and then I fully expect the big R’s to come rolling in), a few requests for partials and one for a full. Exciting times.

Writing time this week has been shared between playing with the boy, doctor’s visits, family photos and bidding out the exterior paint of our house (plus the requisite driving around until hubby and I found paint colors we both approve of. Bye-bye suburban beige, hello awesome darkness!).

And a new milestone has been reached in the raising of the boy. Yesterday at the gym’s childcare center, he turned around to me and instead of the crying, screaming melodrama that usually accompanies Mommy dropping him off, he simply waved “bye-bye” and ran off to play. I stood there dumbfounded, not sure what to do since I didn’t have to slink out of the door when he wasn’t looking like a thief with the crown jewels. Then, the little stinker wouldn’t sleep in his crib last night. Had to be in the big boy bed, all night long. Welcome, my little two year old man.

Oh, and beginning today at Elisabeth Naughton’s blog, a former Golden Heart ® finalist and current double RITA ® finalist for her book Stolen Fury, she will be spotlighting current Golden Heart Finalists every Tuesday and Thursday. I’m scheduled to guest blog there on June 24th, but you should definitely check out the other GH Finalists. They are a talented group of writers from whom I’ll bet you’ll be hearing a lot in the years to come.

Have a lovely week!

Sometimes Even When You Win, You Lose…

Back safely from an incredible trip to Chicago for the Chicago North’s Spring Fling writer’s conference. This was my first time at Spring Fling and I must say that it was a phenomenal regional conference. The headliners, Cherry Adair and Julia Quinn, were both gracious and quite hilarious, the workshops I attended were very well done, and there were a wide array of editors/agents present. In other words, the conference was top notch. It’s put on every two years, so I would recommend planning to go in spring 2012. It is well worth it.

I can’t say enough about the people I got to know. Lydia Dare, Amy De Trempe, Samantha Grace and Erin Kelly, you girls rock! More about them individually to come, as they are historical authors not to be missed, but until then, you can check out their blog at Lady Scribes.

I got the chance to meet three other Golden Heart ® finalists, Rochelle Staab, Cat Schield and Erica O’Rourke and I must say, they are completely lovely and I am honored to be in the same GH class with them.



Erica O'Rourke, Rochelle Staab, Cat Schield and Me.


And I also met authors Sarah M. Anderson , Pamela Cayne and Ann Curtis as well as caught up with friend and awesome Regency author, Cheryl Ann Smith and Nancy J. Parra, Joelle Charbonneau and Jenna Peterson. All in all, a great time!

So now, to address the title of this blog. I am thrilled to have won the Historical Category of the Fire and Ice contest. It’s such an honor and I am grateful that the judges thought well enough of my manuscript to send it to the final round, and that the final round judge found it worthy of winning the category. But one of the things I enter contests for is to get my work in front of a particular editor or agent in hopes that they will request the full manuscript, and in that I lost. I also learned a hard lesson about the business of writing this weekend. During my editor appointment , the editor who judged my entry told me she very much enjoyed Sweet Enemy and that I had a wonderful voice and she’d love to see anything else I have, but that they’d recently published a particular book (by an author I really like, so I couldn’t even make a voodoo doll of her because she’s just too darned nice) with a similar premise to mine and therefore she couldn’t request it. The editor had some other lovely things to say about my writing, and she was very gracious and kind.

My pubbed friends assure me that editors don’t often say the things she did just to be nice and that sometimes it all just comes down to rotten timing. Perhaps so, but I am still disappointed.

Rejection and perseverance are both part of the game, so I am moving forward in the agent hunt in hopes of finding a house that loves Sweet Enemy. And I’m buying a fun gold gilded frame for my Fire and Ice certificate and maybe taking myself out for a nice glass of wine with my winnings!

In other news, I found out that Sweet Enemy is a finalist in the Georgian/Regency/Victorian category of Hearts Through History’s Romancing the Ages contest, with the final judge being an agent I’d really like to have. So I’ll set me sights on that and keep writing.

See you next week!

Off to Chicago for some Fire and Ice...

Busy week this week in the Snow household, with each of us coming and going different directions. My husband just returned from an extended business trip, my son has been away visiting first my parents and then my hubby’s while I finish up rewrites (thank you, awesome family!) and now I am leaving to go to Chicago for four days just when his grandparents will be bringing him home. I’ll miss seeing my son by hours…

But life is exciting, too. I popped in during Lent to tell you all of the Golden Heart® final, but another fabulous thing happened while I was away. Sweet Enemy is also a finalist in Chicago North’s “Fire and Ice” contest . So I and a good friend, historical author Keri Smith, will be going to their Spring Fling Conference and awards dinner this weekend, where Julia Quinn and Cherry Adair are headlining and where I will also be pitching the manuscript to an editor I’d really love to write for. All that, and I get to meet four other Golden Heart finalists who will be in attendance, catch up with my friend and fellow author, Nancy J. Parra, as well as meet many other incredibly awesome and talented writers. If you’re interested, details can be found here.

Chicago Spring Fling

Maybe I’ll have super news to share next Tuesday…and if not, at least I’ll be holding my boy in my arms again by then.

Have an awesome week!

Houston..we have reacquisition of signal in 5…4…3…2…1

Lent is over, and I am stepping from my self-induced unnecessary internet fast blinking into the sun like a baby owl with horn-rimmed glasses.

The night before Ash Wednesday, I was glued to my iPhone right up until midnight. Remember the movie, Apollo 13? As the clock turned over, I sat my phone face down in the dark and I swear it was being in that scene where they’ve turned off everything they could to conserve power, they’re freezing in the little module, looking at the earth through the window and wondering how they’re going to survive. Then the lights go out. Okay, maybe that’s a bit dramatic, but man…it was quite surreal.

Forty days later, I realize it wasn’t so bad. Yes, I missed out on a lot of news. Luckily friends let me know when something big was going on. I know I missed wonderful things going on in my blogging friends’ lives and careers. Yet, it went by fast and I feel more at peace, less rushed. I did watch the Oscars this year, (Sandra looked so beautiful! Bad, bad Jesse James), had a lot of fun with my family and even got some writing done.

I wasn’t perfect, by any means. You’d be amazed the things I suddenly classified as “necessary” so I could look them up on the web. And I did break for March 25, or what we in the romance-writing-world call “Rita and Golden Heart Day”. More about that later, but the short version is that I was one of the lucky to get a call that day and now my manuscript has moved onto the final round, to be looked at by 3 acquiring editors!

Due to my Golden Heart ® final, I will be slower to get back around to see everyone on their blogs. I had no expectation that Sweet Enemy would do so well, and therefore had slacked a bit on the rewrites— so I am having to write like a mad woman to get it whipped into shape in case the editors come calling! But I’ll stop in and say hi as I find the time.

Leave me the high notes in the comments section…I’d love to hear what you’ve all been up to!

Golden Heart

I'm breaking my Lenten Internet Fast and making an unprecedented Thursday post to say....

I FINALED IN THE GOLDEN HEART!!!!

Sweet Enemy is a 2010 finalist in the Regency Historical category.

For those of you who may not know, the Romance Writer's of America's Golden Heart ® is the most prestigious contest out there for unpublished romance authors, with about 1200 entrants per year. Find out more at:

RWA Golden Heart Finalists 2010

I'm still in the clouds here, so I don't have much to say yet. I just wanted shout it to the blogosphere!

My congratulations to all of the other finalists, particularly my Critique Partner, Leigh Stites, writing as Elisabeth Burke, for her final, The Healer, in the Historical Category.

And I wanted to express my sincerest gratitude to my awesome critique groups, without whom, this wouldn't have been possible: Katy Madison, Keri Smith, Leigh Stites, Fran Abram, Gretchen Jones and Stacey Long.

And thanks to the supportive writers in my local chapters who read my entry and helped me polish it up...MARA and MRW...you rock!!!

I'll be back after Easter with more, but I couldn't resist stopping in! I'm sure God will forgive me :)

Heather