Birds & Blooms Backyard Blunder Contest

Birds & Blooms was the first magazine to pay me for my work ten years ago, and now they have a contest that sounds like fun:

"Do you have a funny birding or gardening story to share from your backyard? We want to hear it! Send us your best "backyard blunder," and the winning story will receive $500.

To enter, email your true story (no more than 400 words) to contests(at)birdsandblooms.com. Please put "backyard blunder contest" in the subject line."

Complete rules are here, and $500 will buy a lot of flowers or bird seed! Good luck if you enter!

Resources for Writers

Poets & Writers Magazine is celebrating forty years, and their website has grown into a valuable resource. Along with making some of their articles available online, they have a database for job listings, literary markets, and grants and awards.

This last one, the grants and awards (including contests), is what I find so helpful. You can filter by entry fee, genre, and deadline.

The Absolute Write forum is a phenomenal resource; I lurked for years and finally signed on last year. I've made some wonderful contacts, gotten helpful critiques (and hopefully reciprocated in a useful way), and heard about books that I otherwise might have entirely missed.

In the Young Adult forum, they've started a blogroll, and they do a Teaser Tuesday, with members posting a link to a short excerpt from their work. I will be participating for the first time tomorrow.