Alakazam!
Last weekend, my mom and I attended the Alabama Writers’ Cooperative 2023 conference in Birmingham, AL. This was their first in-person conference since 2019. They held conferences via Zoom in two of the years since then. The online conferences were just a few hours long and were not very well-attended. The in-person conference was three very busy days, with evening events on two of the nights. I counted 28 attendees on Friday morning, but I think the total grew past 40 by the time it was in full swing. Lots of nice people, and tons of interesting workshops. I’ll eventually blog about some of the goings on at the conference.
For now, though, please bear with the insufferable bragging portion of our program. I received three awards at the banquet on Saturday night. It would be unseemly to focus too much on numbers, so I’ll be brief. Three of seventeen available awards means I took home a nice, round 17.6470588235294% of the total booty. That number looks small, but when compared with 0.00 it is huge. Huh-uge. YUGE!
OK. Enough of that. I said don’t fixate on numbers.
I usually announce publications in this section of the blog. However, others own the first publication rights to the works mentioned here, so for now I can only point to evidence of my wins and say, “Hey, I won!” (I could just humbly say nothing until publication happens) [no, I can’t].
When these things are published, I will announce them individually with links to the first publication and (just between us) links to the actual text, all free and stuff. You won’t have to buy anything but know this: I am NOT coming over to autograph your computer screen if you only read my work online. Books and theater programs, I will sign for you.
The poetry prize was a surprise. Looking at the winners from past years, they are what I would call artistic and chock full of emotion and also loaded with imagery. You know, poetry. I went for humor and clever writing, and while not in limerick form, my poem had a sing-song quality that I thought would make the judges wad it up and hurl it far away. But, to paraphrase Sally Field, they liked it! They really liked it! I need to watch the trend going forward, see if there is a general movement away from deeply-felt literary stuff or if this was just a one-off.
The morning after the awards banquet, one of the contest judges for this category introduced herself to me and told me she had helped select my poem, and she really liked the idea and the wording. Whoa. I resisted asking her where she attends high school, so young did she look, but I did find out that she is studying for her MFA in literature. So, not a high-schooler, and a scholar.
Perhaps the younger generation digs light verse? Since my old newspaper letter-writing project, I have been keenly aware that when you submit something to a contest or a publication, there’s a real person—or several persons—who have to like your work if it is to see the light of day. Unless you are famous or writing on commission, write to please editors and judges first, readers second (though hopefully you can please all of them).
Of course, unless you are involved with an organization you have no idea who the frontline editors or judges are. It’s a cwapshoot.
But just imagine: old judges age off, and new judges are drawn from the ranks of youngsters who like fun rhymes and humor. Hmmmm. Is your work sing-songy or like unto that of Dr. Seuss? Bring it on!
The one-act play prize was another surprise, mainly because since high school I have hardly laid eyes on a playscript. Of course, if you’re paying attention as you watch television and movies, and if you attend the occasional play or musical, you can’t help but imagine how these things must have been written. It’s not an enormous stretch to write a short one. If I had to write a full-length play with multiple acts, all bets would be off—or you could just bet that I would not be able to pull that off on the first try. It has to be challenging to keep a story going for two hours.
I’m not downing myself, just reporting facts, so here are some: this was the first time AWC has had this category; I don’t know how many plays were entered, but I suspect it wasn’t many; the certificate doesn’t say this, but I actually tied for first. There is an outside possibility that they only received two entries, and decided to throw both of us the same sized bone.
Which bone I will clutch to my bosom and chew till the end of my days. A little positive feedback goes a looooong. way.
This contest category was sponsored by the Central Alabama Theater, just over the mountain from Birmingham, in Mountain Brook. Apparently, they sponsored it with the intention of fostering some new works by local (-ish) writers. They also judged this category, because (hold onto your hat): the winning plays will not only appear in the AWC’s contest winners book, but Central Alabama Theater will stage public readings of them! It is a delightful prospect. If the reading goes well, perhaps they will mount a full production? Never have I been so in love with the idea of One-Act Play Night at the ol’ theater, which heretofore held no attraction to me whatsoever.
In announcing the results—a tie for first, as I wrote before—the contest chair said that the judges couldn’t decide between the two winners because one had such beautiful writing, while the other was funny and clever and edgy. Whoa! I’ll cop to clever and funny, but I need to stay alert at the public reading and find out what makes it edgy. Maybe because it dares to criticize something? I honestly don’t know—I was just going for laughs.
Funny thing about the hand-off of this certificate. It was my third award of the night. For the first two, the AWC president took a photo of me receiving the award from the contest chairperson. For the one-act play, I politely demurred, figuring that people might be tired of watching me pose for photos. But a shout went up from the back of the room, demanding a photo. It was the representative from the theater, there to observe the awarding of their prize. So I had to run back up and slap on a grin for their shot. Maybe it will go into a CAT publication or website.
I later chatted with the lady from the theater, plus I got with her at the workshops the next morning and gave her my contact information. I will of course announce the staged reading of the plays well in advance, in the public square, in a stentorian voice engorged with self-regard. Count on it!
This was another pleasant surprise because Lyric Essay was also a new category. I had to do a lot of research online to figure out what a lyric essay is. I don’t have a firm definition yet because I found the examples so wildly different from each other, but some ideas took hold as I read many examples: a lyric essay is a complaint about someone or something (but usually about a man) written by a woman.
No! That’s not it! It just so happens that the first site I found that provided a cogent explanation then went on to showcase four (4) complaint-oriented lady works. But I found other types elsewhere—though the COLWs were always in the mix.
I am still somewhat mystified by the concept and so I will think about it some more, do more reading, and maybe I’ll blog about the subject someday.
But one thing I discovered was that I didn’t think all the different definitions of lyric essay, or the examples I read (except the complainy ones), were drastically different from my own natural writing style. Could that be why I had difficulty understanding why it was anything other than “good, heartfelt writing”?
I had a suitable topic that had been in my head for a good while, and that has appeared in print before. I though about simply excerpting that work, and sticking a prologue and epilogue onto the excerpt. In fact, I started my contest essay by pasting in a section of that earlier work.
I soon realized that while the idea was good, I needed to start from scratch with the writing and, of course, ditch any mention of Grammy Goode. I could not let Gertrude the pizza-hog and the narrator’s quest for a distracting recipe derail my lyricism.
You know you want to go read that whole other work now, don’t you?
I did toss in some verse, just in case it helped me pass some lyric essay checklist. Having crassly done that for personal gain, I found to my surprise that it actually helped the work.
It made it more lyrical, when I put lyrics into it. Go figure.
Also, I made it more sentimental than I normally would, I think to good effect. The sentiment was there in the original, but I did more of a build-up to it in this essay since the shorter form needed to build to an—ahem—climax. I still went for laughs, but in a more nostalgic vein, not my usual in-your-face chuckle-fest.
Oh, and to spare you reading the entire 19,000 word story I linked to (though it’s great—who wouldn’t want to read it?), the bit I excerpted was where Doctor Claudius Huffaker, Psy. D., was contemplating the items for sale at Grammy Goode’s estate sale. Just do a search on “Engelbert” in that story and you’ll be in the ballpark. But the lyric essay added a whole lot more than just contemplation of someone’s vinyl album collection.
I may sound uncharacteristically humble when expressing surprise at these wins. Let me correct that impression. I am surprised for the reasons expressed above, but I was doubly surprised because these entries were my also-rans. My favorite categories are short story, first chapter of a novel, and memoir. I had entries in all three, and I slaved over those for many hours. I had very high hopes for them, and absolutely no expectations for the works that wound up placing in other categories.
Well, those fine works in my favorite categories took home 0.00 prizes.
Pity me!
I hold my two un-awarded fiction works in such high regard that I have entered them in another contest with a late November deadline, so I can’t share them either. However, I will share my memoir in an upcoming blog post.
The contest chair later informed me that I had the record for most categories entered (7), and most total entries (also 7). I opined that there should be awards for those achievements. Since I am not normally a practitioner of 7 different categories of writing (maybe 3 on a good day), mine was clearly an effort aimed at scoring prizes and publication. Pro-tip: In no category did I compete with myself; rather, I submitted my best single effort in each of the 7 categories I attempted.
On the walk to the parking lot after the banquet, I chatted with the lady whose short story won (I can’t recall if she got first or second place). I told her sincerely that I enjoyed her story, except the part where it beat my story.
She asked, “Oh, did you enter that category too?”
I said, “Yes. And three others where I didn’t win.”
She said with a smile, to which I later added an imaginary edge, “You were up there often enough tonight.”
Sensing that my competitiveness was off-putting, I switched to asking her, “That’s true. Hey, will we see you at the workshop tomorrow morning?”
“No. Tomorrow I’m going to spend time with my family.” She hustled off ahead of us. I do hope she was just hustling to make family time happen sooner, and not to leave my grasping, ink-obsessed self behind.
I need to work on not over-analyzing things, though that trait does help my writing so maybe I won’t work on not doing it.
Boing!