A Horror Story, Cont’d

June 30th, 2004 · No Comments
by Booksquare

We don’t enter many writing contests (having retired from the field due to extreme laziness — all those deadlines and postage and whatnot), but we often wonder about the wide variety of options we see as we scan our magazines and email. Of course we want to believe they are legit and worthwhile. Given that we rarely hear screams of anguish from our peers, the majority probably are. But it’s the bad apples that make us leery of the contest circuit. Maud Newton discusses the Zoo Press contest, its (non) outcome, and related ethics (i.e., if you take someone’s money, they deserve something more than the opportunity to spend more money). She evens offers a suggestion (in the form of a letter template) for dealing with contests that don’t live up to their end of the bargain. If Maud reads this, we’d like to assure her that we thought her use of the word “crank” was meant as a compliment.

File Under: Square Pegs