ceive your contest entry back. You are so excited! You look at your total score: 20/100. How is that possible? You want to throttle a couple of the judges. Here is a few of their comments:

* Have you ever read a book in your life!!

* Your characters are TSTL (too stupid to live).

* Is there a lower score than 0 for Manuscript Mechanics? I’d give it to you if I could.

I mean, you only have three published books, a Master’s degree in English, and a job editing making $90.00 per hour. You sit in front of your computer screen, blinking at your returned critique, your eyes still frozen on those four little letters TSTL.

Suddenly you take a deep breath, push back your chair, and head for that box of Rocky Road (how appropriate) ice cream to comfort that bruised ego. Then it hits you. Just who judged this entry anyway? You return to your computer and find it was an unpublished/trained critiquer. You give a huge sigh of relief. Whew! Who cares what they think. But then you realize that this critiquer is still a reader. Oh, no. Your shoulders sag.

Who Make the Best Judges?

I’m sure we all agree it is not the grudge judge—another author with a vendetta against contest judges. STAB! STAB! STAB! It is also not the author who knows nothing about writing and wants to gain all their experience by reading someone else’s work. (All comments left blank.) Maybe you’re saying to yourself you would like every judge to be either an editor or a multi-published author. That may not be the right answer either. Surprised?

Many published authors and editors lead very busy lives. They don’t have the time to provide a lot of critique. It’s hard to get exactly what a critiquer is telling you with a 3/5 score unless they leave a comment because only then can you learn.

The best judges tend to be those who take the time to point out their reasoning for their scoring with kind explanations (notice I said kind). They also point out positive strengths about your work.

Why Judge a Contest?

You can learn a great deal about writing from reading. (I’m sure you’ve heard that one before.) A good place to do it is reading contest entries. We all know how important those first few pages are, and boy is it easy to spot someone else’s mistakes. The more you are willing to help others see their mistakes, the easier it will become to spot them in your own writing.

What Makes a Good Judge?

Of course it is someone who will put a little time and thought into it, but here are more specifics:

* Critique doesn’t mean to criticize. The definition of critique is, “an instance or the process of formal criticism”. But come on. Do we really do that to each other when we are face-to-face in our critique groups discussing our own work? What I think any writer is looking for is good honest help—constructive criticism.

* In one of my entries a judge was so critical of my characters that she said the heroine was an air-head and the hero was a moron. I had given the heroine the character flaw of being spoiled by a rich, over-protective father and the hero an unknown diagnosis of ADD which both characters overcome by the end of the book. It is also a light-hearted comedy. Did the judge take into account that I said my hero was an expert in his field? Hmmmm. Did the judge take into account that the heroine was escaping a controlling father, starting a new business, and had bought a run-down home that needs restoring? Not sure.

* There again, you as the writer need to determine whether to take a judge’s comments with a grain of salt or decide whether you haven’t done your job telling your story.

The Dos and Don’ts of Judging

1. What’s in a point? A numbering system is a great way of scoring, but what does it really tell us? Sure the contest coordinator has assigned general comments to each number like a score of 5 means, “READY FOR SUBMISSION” and 1 means, “CHUCK THAT SUCKER IN THE GARBAGE”. Something like that.

Don’t plan on judging if you can’t back up that number with a reason for it. It needs to be valid writing criteria—something specific. If you can’t identify to the writer what is wrong, how are they going to learn from it? And if you can’t identify what is wrong, how are you going to learn?

2. Don’t get a bighead. You are on a roll, marking up that manuscript left and right. You want to help this writer become the next best-selling author. The fact is, you still haven’t considered you may not know everything there is about writing yourself. Think humility. Sure you want to point out what you know but try not to come off like Mr./Ms. Perfection. Remember to make your comments, but realize they are your suggestions to the writer–not the Ten Commandments.

3. Have a heart. A writer can learn from what they’re doing right, not just what they’re doing wrong. It never hurts to point out what a writer is doing well. It can only make them better, and it makes you both feel good.

You are not going to be happy with every judge who scrutinizes your work. Being unhappy with their critique doesn’t mean you can’t learn from them. If you receive two low scores and one high on dialogue, don’t be so conceited that you assume the high score is accurate. It’s not hard to figure out that your dialogue needs work. Sifting out important information is what we do as writers. If the judge criticizes your characters, you need to figure out why they felt that way.

After years of writing romantic suspense with serious subjects of murder, abuse, etc., I decided to write a much more light-hearted, humorous book where the villain wouldn’t go so far as to kill and the characters are a little less serious about the situation. Because it still has a protagonist and the heroine’s life is in danger, I submitted my entry under romantic suspense. The judge criticized my villian as weak and my hero and heroine as being dim-witted.

Should I throw the book away? On the contrary. Instead I analyzed the bigger picture of what was being said. I realized I was targeting the wrong genre.

Now you can head to the freezer for that box of ice cream but this time to celebrate. You’ve learned that even the raunchiest critique can benefit you if you look for the positive in it. On the other hand, if it is really malicious and you just can’t figure out anything positive the judge could have been trying to tell you, then print it off, rip it to shreds, stomp on it, and then set it on fire. That should help.

Writing is a quickly learned skill for those who have a strong desire. Within a year or two, most writing students are ready to charge into the future fully prepared.

But what writing course to choose becomes the question. Take it from one who has tried all the shortcuts and found there were none – you will save yourself time and grief if you will begin at the beginning. Writing courses are an investment, and you are worth the time and money it takes to reach your goal.

The writing course you should choose depends not on what talents you have, not on what experience you have, not on what education you have, but mostly on what knowledgeable level of writing foundation you have. More than likely, you will already have some foundation, but it will have holes in it. That is to say, you will know some things, and not others. In such a case, determine your lowest point, or “hole”, if you will, and begin there.

For example, if you have problems with punctuation, you should start with a Basic Review class. There you will learn how and when to use the proper punctuation, and some of the most common basics. This is an excellent place for older students to begin, as they often need such a brush-up course.

If you are good with English and you have the punctuation skills down pat, you may want to begin in Mechanics of Writing. There you will learn basic sentence structures, foundational writing rules and common mistakes to avoid. This is another good brush-up course.

If you’re up for the challenge of deeper writing rules and more in-depth assignments, it sounds like you’re ready for Creative Writing 101. This is a great class for those who are interested in cross-writing (that is, writing for more than one genre instead of finding one niche and staying in it). Creative Writing will teach you foundational rules of writing, how to write a snappy first paragraph, and will take you into deeper steps with more writing practice. This is an intermediate class.

Non-Fiction writing is for students in the intermediate class. It will teach you how to write for magazines and newspapers. It’s a very good step for intermediates because non-fiction writing pays better than anything else.

Do you like to write stories? Then Short Story writing is the class for you. However, it is also an intermediate class. You should know the rules of English, have good sentence structure, and practice the basic rules of writing before you attempt this course.

If you like to write children’s stories, you would love Writing for Children, but there again, it is an intermediate class. Writing for children is not easier than writing for teens or adults. It can, in fact, be harder, so be sure you have a good foundation before attempting this class. Be prepared with proper English, and the basic rules of writing.

If you are into fantasy writing, you will love Fantasy World. Have you wondered how to invent those far away places you see in your mind? This is the class for you. It is an intermediate class, so be sure you get your foundational courses first. Science-Fiction writing is coming soon. Possibly in the next term.

If you are an advanced student, Wordsmithing is the class for you. There you will learn writing skills that no other class teaches. This is the class that will explain how other authors can string words together in an artistic style. It will teach you to recognize things like assonance, consonance, asyndeton, and many more little known techniques so that you can apply it to your own writing. This is the final stop on how to jazz your writing and edit it with snappy styles and techniques. Wordsmithing is a unique class in that it can be at the beginning of your career, or the end. For me, it was the technique that put me over the top.

If you wonder if you need a certain class to advance to a higher level of learning, the chances are, you DO. Your subconscious is telling you your foundation isn’t complete. Don’t challenge yourself with more advanced classes. You need all the rules of writing in order to succeed. Skipping ahead usually means having to return to a lower class at a later time to pick up what you missed.

When you have your foundation and pass through the various stages in order, the advanced classes will blend and mesh all your learning experiences into one vision. I can’t reiterate this strongly enough – get your foundation first. Start at the bottom and learn every single rule. You’ll save yourself grief in the future.


- Deborah Owen

I’m a Self Actualization Life Coach, so I’ve worked diligently learning how to motivate people to take the next step in their personal growth. Even so, I had struggled for years trying to write my own book or articles. That was until I found some incredible resources that resolved my difficulties.

My Struggle

My story started when I was in high school. I got the bug to write then, at the time I was writing poetry and I had an English teacher who inspired me; believe it or not he told me I should quit school and become a poet. That was 1969. One lost teenager with a heart full of dreams and lofty visions and one liberal English teacher. Just trying to find fulfillment, meaning and achieve their own self actualization.

I struggled for my whole adult life trying to find some way to provide for my family and at the same time find a way to express myself and self actualize by realizing my dream to write. I read books, took courses and started many writing projects, completing very few. In my case it wasn’t just not understanding how to mechanically get the writing done, but I had resistances. Serious resistance to success etc., that I needed to address.

Mechanics Solved

The final steps to overcome my obstacles to expressing myself fully and being able to FLOW with my writing came over a year ago when I discovered an incredible program. This program has a very unique system to move you rapidly through the creative process and organizing aspects of a writing task allowing you to focus on the actual “putting words on a page”. Which is also made super simple with their techniques.

Once I moved past the “excuse” of not knowing how, I was faced with my resistance alone. There were no more excuses, only me and my avoidance’s, procrastination and negative feelings etc.

How Resistance Works

Our minds are tricky beyond what we can even perceive. Sometimes we get a glimpse, most of the time not. Resistance can show up in lots of ways. Say you’ve got an idea to write an article, you think “OK cool, I’m gonna work on that when I get home”. Then you get home and you see the floor needs sweeping, and oh yea, the dishes need to be washed. Pretty soon, it’s time for bed. You’ve just been duped by resistance, avoidance, distraction whatever you want to name it.

Just looking at the surface of this, you might think “Oh that’s just procrastination!” But, what is procrastination? An avoidance mechanism that your mind is producing. As I said, tricky. Resistance can even show up as a negative feeling like worry or anxiety. It can manifest as a physical symptom like a stomach ache or a headache. It goes on and on.

The Answer to Resistance

Thanks to cutting edge human change science, you can uncover these hindrances to success and creativity, get to the roots of them and foster healing. Integrative Clearing Work is a powerful technique. When you learn it, you will have a tool you can use for the rest of your life to set yourself free from inner blocks to creativity and energy and positive mental attitude and emotions. This is “petal to the metal” liberation that is difficult to imagine. You must experience it to understand.


- Thomas Digges