Category Archives: WVW Contest Frequently Asked Questions

WV Writers Contest F.A.Q. #9

Continuing the series of Frequently Asked Questions about the West Virginia Writers, Inc., Annual Writing Competitions. To see all of the questions, please click HERE.

QUESTION: Your contest rules state that entries should be stapled or paperclipped. With the screenplay category, which accepts up to a 30-page sample. Are writers able to submit a script that's conventionally bound, using metal brads to fasten three-hole-punched pages at top and bottom? Please let me know if the readers have a preference.

ANSWER: The binding you write of would be just fine. The WVW contest rules used to be real picky about the binding on stage plays and screenplays, but larger manuscripts definitely need a bit more to them than a staple or a paperclip. (In 2013, we received a full length screenplay sandwiched between two 8.5" x 11" planks of plywood and that clued us in to what might have caused binding problems in the past. These days, brads or a slim clear document holder are happily accepted.

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WV Writers Contest F.A.Q. #46

Continuing the series of Frequently Asked Questions about the West Virginia Writers, Inc., Annual Writing Competitions. To see all of the questions, please click HERE.

QUESTION: Is there an address where one can send the submission fees? Don’t have a credit card or use of Pay-pal, but would like to enter several of the contests. How do I pay the fees?

ANSWER: If you enter the contest by mail, you can send a check for submission fees. Just download the contest entry form you need from our CONTEST PAGE (either the Adult Contest Form or New Mountain Voices Student Contest form) and follow the instructions. The address to send submissions to is on each form. Find them at... http://wvwriters.org/home/annual-writing-contest/

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WV Writers Contest F.A.Q. #45

Continuing the series of Frequently Asked Questions about the West Virginia Writers, Inc., Annual Writing Competitions. To see all of the questions, please click HERE.

QUESTION: I have about a dozen poems in a group, written over the past 40 years. Must I send $15 for each or will the $15 fee cover them all?

ANSWER: While we have offered a chapbook or collection category for poetry in the past, we are not in 2022. For this year, we have a poetry category which covers short poetry and long poetry, which we have previously separated.

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WV Writers Contest F.A.Q.#44

Continuing the series of Frequently Asked Questions about the West Virginia Writers, Inc., Annual Writing Competitions. To see all of the questions, please click HERE.

QUESTION: My fellow writers in my writers group suggested I submit my screenplay. Do you have a category for the 2022 contest?

ANSWER: Indeed we do! We take screenplays every other year in a round robin fashion with stage plays and and 2022 is the year for the screenplay category, named in memory of Joe McCabe, a beloved playwright from Martinsburg.

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WV Writers Contest F.A.Q. #43

Continuing the series of Frequently Asked Questions about the West Virginia Writers, Inc., Annual Writing Competitions. To see all of the questions, please click HERE.

QUESTION: For the poetry entries, does one poem equal one entry?

ANSWER: For our Poetry and Emerging Writers Poetry categories, this is correct. One poem per entry fee.

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WV Writers Contest F.A.Q.#42

Continuing the series of Frequently Asked Questions about the West Virginia Writers, Inc., Annual Writing Competitions. To see all the questions, please click HERE.

QUESTION: I would like to submit to the contest, but I have taken an online class from the judge of the category I want to submit to. I've made lots of changes to the manuscript, but I'm afraid they still might recognize my work. Should I still submit?

ANSWER: This is a tough one, but in this case we would recommend you do not submit if there is any possible chance a judge might be familiar with your work already. The WV Writers contest is judged blindly, so that the judges are never provided the names of the authors whose work has been submitted to them. The only possible way for them to know who has written a piece is if they recognize it as something they have read before. We pick judges from out of state to help minimize the chances of this happening, but with prevalence of online writing workshops, the chances can increase. For this reason, we give our judges strict instructions that if they recognize a piece of writing and realize the identity of its author, they are to disqualify that work from consideration.

If you think there is even a possibility that one of our judges might recognize your work, we ask that you save that work for submission next year when a different judge will be assigned to that category.

This has happened in the past and it created one of the rare situations in which we had to disqualify the entry.

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WV Writers Contest F.A.Q. #41

Continuing the series of Frequently Asked Questions about the West Virginia Writers, Inc., Annual Writing Competitions. To see all of the questions, please click HERE.

QUESTION: Will the judges pick a subset of the best Book-Length entries and then request the full manuscripts to complete the judging or do they make their decision solely on the submitted excerpts?

ANSWER: The judge will base their decisions solely on the excerpts and synopses.

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WV Writers Contest F.A.Q. #40

Continuing the series of Frequently Asked Questions about the West Virginia Writers, Inc., Annual Writing Competitions. To see all of the questions, please click HERE.

QUESTION: For the New Mountain Voices contest, would it be okay if the entry was a little over the 2,000 word limit? Like, say about 300 words or so over the limit? Or is it a strict limit?

ANSWER: No, I'm afraid not. The contest has a strict word limit. We don't count the title, the contest category and word count in the corner of the front page, nor the "the end," but everything in between is strict to the number.

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WV Writers Contest F.A.Q.#39

Continuing the series of Frequently Asked Questions about the West Virginia Writers, Inc., Annual Writing Competitions. To see all of the questions, please click HERE.

QUESTION: If I submit a work to the contest (whether I win or not) will I be assigning/surrendering any aspect of my rights under copyright?

ANSWER: You retain full copyright of your work and the copy of the work you submit to the contest will be destroyed after judging. WV Writers has no ability to do anything with submitted work without permission of the author. Typically, every few years we do approach past winners to ask them if they will allow us to use their winning entries in one of our contest winner anthologies, but the winners control all aspects of use, including the right to say, "No, thank you." We have tossed around the idea of doing an online journal featuring winning entries, but this is likely a year off at earliest.

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WV Writers Contest F.A.Q. #38

Continuing the series of Frequently Asked Questions about the West Virginia Writers, Inc., Annual Writing Competitions. To see all of the questions, please click HERE.

QUESTION: I didn't seem to get the impression that you necessarily publish the winners of your contest. If I win a prize does my work still count as unpublished? In other words, if I win will I only be able to try to sell it to a magazine as a reprint?

ANSWER: We do not automatically publish the work of the winners of our contest. We have published winners in the past in anthology collections, but only with the written permission of the author. We do not retain copies of the winning entries--the judges destroy them one month after the winners are announced.

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