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For the uninformed among us, of which I am certainly not one, would you be so kind as to provide an explanation for your undefined term, particularly because you're starting the thread :P?
Posts: 697 | Registered: Mar 2003
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> Important enough to cease submitting to > top markets because one might become > ineligible for WotF?
No. Since there's no guarantee that you'll ever win WOTF, to put your writing career on hold trying to win it does not make sense. If you sell enough to become ineligible for WOTF, you'll have a good start on your career anyway.
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Always remember the story of Robert Heinlein. He wrote his first story for a SF writing contest. But instead of entering, he submitted it directly to a professional magazine. The rest is history.
WotF is a great contest, and will pay more than just about any anthology. Anyone who can enter it should. But as Eric pointed out, there is no guarantee of winning, and it is not the only way to start a career. In the end, it is only a first step among many paths.
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Thank you, Kathleen, that would be wonderful! I'm still only working on half a brain these days and never stopped to think that some of our newer members might not know what WotF is.
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I have a short story I should polish up and send in. Thanks for the link. Right now, I am stuck on my novel, and need a break while waiting for the response from the quesry to the publisher.
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Yes, Dave writes under both names (or rather, he did). But Dave isn't the slush reader over there anymore. Now it's KD Wentworth.
Posts: 1621 | Registered: Apr 2002
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shadowynd, I doubt Phanto was critizing you with a request for greater clarity. I know the feeling. Not only am I fairly new to the board, I'm very new to the publishing game. I've been writing for years, but have never before explored submitting my stuff for publication in the book or magazine market. All the acronyms and abbreviations are confusing to those of us unfamiliar with the industry. I had to read between the lines to figure out what POV meant, what WoTF meant, and all the rest of the jargon that is tossed around so effortlessly.
Just remember that some of have to ask questions like this simply because we are confused.
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I just submitted my first story to WotF. Actually, it is technically my first submission ever, since my first sale happened when I hadn't intentionally subbed the story to a market. Whoo. I'm nervous but excited, and am already glad it is out of the way so I can keep working on other stuff.
Posts: 818 | Registered: Aug 2004
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Polish away, Shendi! Be sure not to futz with it too much, though. And then get it out and something new started!! Posts: 1041 | Registered: Aug 2004
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I've thought about submitting to this contest myself, but man I cannot stand L. Ron Hubbard or the Church of Scamentology.
Posts: 57 | Registered: Mar 2005
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Luckily, from what I've heard, no one even mentions Scientology and though L. Ron Hubbard is of course talked about, he isn't the only focus. The famous authors who judge the finalists include people like Anne McCaffrey and Orson Scott Card, so I wouldn't worry too much about the wierdness factor. If I thought it was a big issue I wouldn't submit either.
Posts: 818 | Registered: Aug 2004
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Autumnmuse is correct. If you manage to win and go to the workshop, they will not try to convert you to Scientology. I left the workshop as ignorant about Scientology doctrine as I was going in.
As for L. Ron Hubbard, you'll read some of the advice he wrote about writing, and it seemed like very good advice to me. You'll also spend maybe an hour hearing about his life, and it was quite an interesting life even if you don't have a taste for his fiction or his religion.
But if you can't stand that in exchange for a cash prize, publication of your story in a widely read anthology, payment for your story in addition to the prize, and being flown out to Hollywood and put up in a hotel for a week while attending a workshop taught by some big names in science fiction and fantasy, it's your decision.
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Eric: My wife was worried that I'd come back from Boot Camp as a mormon. I told her that she's been dragging me to Catholic mass for twelve years and I haven't converted. I have no worries even if they DID try to brainwash the winners. Winners of that contest are not likely to be weak-willed.
Posts: 2 | Registered: Aug 2010
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I don't know that there's any correlation between the ability to write a good story and the ability to resist being brainwashed. For all I know, everyone that's ever been associated with the Writers of the Future contest is secretly a Scientologist. As long as it's a secret from them too, I don't have a problem with that Posts: 8322 | Registered: Aug 1999
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Other than Hubbard founding WOTF and Scientology, what are exactly the connections of WOTF to Scientology? Are the awards or writing seminars held at Scientology facilities?
Personally, after reading a few Hubbard novels, I decided not to read them anymore. He was just too sexually explicit for my tastes. Thus I was amazed to later learn he founded a religion.
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Last year, the writing workshop was conducted mostly at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, which is, as far as I know, not connected with the Church of Scientology. It is, however, located only a short walk from the offices of Author Services, Inc., the company that runs the contest and represents the literary, theatrical and musical works of L. Ron Hubbard. While I believe that many (maybe even most or all) on the staff of Author Services are Scientologists, there is no reference to Scientology on the company website and during the tour of the offices and library Scientology was not mentioned.
The awards ceremony was held at the Beverly Hills Hotel, which is not, as far as I know, connected to the Church of Scientology.
We did have a catered dinner one evening on the roof of the Manor Hotel, which is owned by the Church of Scientology. John Travolta stopped by and congratulated us.
As far as I can tell, the organizers of the contest and workshop are genuinely trying to fulfill the purpose of the contest: to find new authors and help them. I think they work hard to keep that separate from the Church of Scientology, so as to not impair that purpose with the controversy surrounding their religion.
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By the way, in case you didn't get that already, Scientology was an early leader among the "New Age" religions. Thus, traditional values such as chastity and such aren't actually part of the religion.
Besides, have you ever read the Bible?
On a completely unrelated topic, why don't we have a "so gross I'm puking my guts out" smilely?
My own thought is that Scientology is probably no more harmful than people worshipping crystals or butterflies or whatever. It's probably not even any more expensive, necessarily. I don't know why it's so contraversial, other than it's higher profile and the fact that it doesn't claim any forebears the way most later "New Age" religions did.
Three times from cover to cover, I would say four of five but I don't count those times as my ADD mind kept drifting off.
While the Bible is frank and unprudish, it is not always the same as explicit or gratuitous.
But that is an interesting insight of Hubbard that I didn't think of. I'm not passing a judgement, for I know next to nothing about it, just an observation, from what I saw on a segment on TV, the philosophy is that people value what they pay for, and the more a person pays, the more they benefit from thier pratices. This struck me as the opposite of "take life's waters free".
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