As I wait for the release day of my novel (I was told by my publisher that a person was out of the office and not able to access email due to bad hotel Internet connections, which delayed my receiving the release date past the promised two to three weeks), I decided to make good use of the time.
I found a writing contest for high school teachers. It is called the Norman Mailer Writing Award for High School Teachers, which is hosted by The National Council of Teachers of English.
Mailer was a famous author who, according to a Wikipedia.org article, won the Pulitzer Prize twice and was a journalist who helped established the idea of new journalism, which “was a style of 1960s and 1970s news writing and journalism which used literary techniques deemed unconventional at the time,” according to Wikipedia.
The contest said the work must be fiction, and it could be no longer than 20 pages long. I could have entered an excerpt from the novel, but I chose to try to write something original to enter.
I came up with a 10-page piece. I’m pretty happy with it. It is titled “Show Mercy,” and it is about a man dealing with his wife dying from cancer.
If my story is selected, I could win the following, according to the NCTE site: “$10,000 cash prize along with travel and lodging to attend the Norman Mailer Center’s Annual Gala on November 8, 2011, in New York City, where the Mailer Prize and the Norman Mailer High School and College Writing Awards are also presented. The winner will also receive a fellowship to the prestigious Norman Mailer Writers Colony during the summer of 2012.”
I’m pretty nervous and excited. This is the first professional writing contest I’ve ever entered. I hope I do well.
If you all are interested, I could post the story here on The Voice, but I need to know you all want to read it. If you do, please leave a comment saying so. If enough people show interest, I will post it.
Please Post it!!!
Yes please do!!
Would love to read your story!