Christian Writer's Guild

Well, I wanted to talk a bit about the Christian Writer's Guild tonight. If you are seriously considering writing Christian content, this is an excellent resource. There are online courses you can take and an annual conference you can attend- admittedly I've done neither of these things (yet). But tonight I wanted to talk to you about two specific features of the site: The critiquing service, and the Operation First Novel contest.

First, you should know that the site is run by Jerry B Jenkins- a prominent Christian author known best as having written the Left Behind series. That right there is already impressive. Second, they have ties with Tyndale, one of the largest Christian publishers around. So you know it's a fantastic place to be.

Ok, the critiquing service. I think this is an excellent idea! For as little as $40 you can have a few pages of your manuscript read and critiqued by their writing professionals. Click the direct link to their critiquing page so you can get all the prices and information. I'm going to be sending in a sample of my work and I'll let you know how it goes!

And now the really exciting thing- the Operation First Novel contest! This is open to members of the guild ($149 per year) who have never been published before. The winner gets their book published by Tyndale (yay!) and a $20,000 advance (wowza!). Click the link for all the deets.

Can you imagine?? Now, I don't want to presume I'd have a chance at winning, but if I don't enter the contest I may always wonder. I've himmed and hawed over this for weeks! My current plan is- submit to agents until the contest submission deadline; if I don't get picked up, enter the contest. That gives me until October 1st to test the waters with my query, get critiques, and make improvements to my manuscript.

I guess I shouldn't have let you all in on this- I might be giving myself more competition! So if you have a really good Christian Fiction story- forget you ever read this post!

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