Poets and Writers

It's been a lot of years since I picked up a writing magazine. I used to write some fiction back in the mid-1990s. It was lots of fun. The stories just came from no where and I was always surprised by the outcome. I'd write the first line, and the rest came. Then they stopped. First line and all.

Yesterday at the library sale I picked up for a quarter the Nov/Dec 2008 Poets and Writers. Do you think writing--fiction, non-fiction, biography, poetry, mystery, romance, sci-fi--is better today than the days before all the prizes and contests, degrees and workshops? Are the people on the best-seller list the best? Did they get there by entering contests? Or are contests just useful for paying off the organizers and their staff. Look at these

Fence Books awarded Elizabeth Marie Young of Berkeley the 2008 Motherwell Prize for her poety--$3,000 and publication of her book.

University of Evansville awarded David Stephenson of Detroit the 2007 Richard Wilbur Award for his poetry collection--$1,000 and publicantion of his book.

Frederick Reiken won the Fiction Open, $2,000, and his story will be published in the Winter 2009 issue of Glimmer Train Stories.

And so it goes. But look how much money these organizations bring in with their contests:

University of Evansville Wilbur Award competitors need to submit $25 per manuscript--what if 1,000 people send something? Yes, it takes some staff and handling, and someone has to read the submissions, but usually you know after the first paragraph whether it's worth it, and you've got that $25 check in hand.

Glimmer Train which is sold on newstands and certainly isn't cheap, collects $20 per entry for the opportunity to win that $2,000 prize. That journal is very well known and marketed, and I'm assuming gets thousands of hopefuls.

That Fence Books Motherwell prize will cost each entrant $25, and since it is for a first or second book of poetry by a woman, it probably gets thousands writing about baby spit up or lost loves. Here's one of mine based on the Suze Orman TV show. It's timely, got name recognition, pathos, and a snappy ending.

Girlfriend, Suze said,
while you imagined love
there's a slight chance
you missed the bounced checks,
school loans, credit cards,
child support and gambling debts,
a mortgage about to reset,
a house that hasn't flipped,
and his mother who has.

If you want to write for money, you might be better off putting ads on your blog page.

Flipping through this issue, I do see a few that have no entry fee, like National Council of Teachers of English and Nebraska Arts Council, but they are outnumbered by the for-fee contests/prizes/awards.

There's a photo on p. 18 of a party in 1963 for the founding of Filmwrights International, sort of a union. Most noticeable, given today's casual culture, is that all the men are in suits, and none of the women are identified. But the famous authors in the photo, none of whom had probably won an award to launch their careers or attended a writing workshop in Iowa or Arizona, are George Plimpton, William Styron, Ralph Ellison, Peter Mathiessen, H.L. Humes, Truman Capote, and Mario Puzo.

Call me crazy, but I think if you're good, someone is going to find out without your sending $25 to 100 contests to win $500.