‘The first million words are never very good.’ says Brian Henry, editor and creative writing instructor who also publishes Quick Brown Fox, the hugely popular Canadian blog for writers.
Without doing the math, I imagine a million words would be equivalent to at least ten novels or a legion of short stories. Couldn’t hazard a guess where I might be on the continuum but the target is a long way off. Read more
Truthfully, I’m a writer most of the time, sometimes I’m an editor and occasionally I judge writing contests.
I’ve judged numerous contests, but during the past few weeks of May, I’ve had the honour of helping judge both, a short story contest and a novel contest. I’ve discovered some important things that make a winning submission and also a few things that turn judges off immediately.
Here are a few things judges check for when judging a writing contest: Read more