Joy of the Pen is the Topsham Public Library’s annual writing competition, and is open to Maine residents, both amateur and professional writers alike, and it’s currently open for submissions!


Rules of Entry:

• Residents of Maine only
  
• Unpublished work only (work that has been self-published or has appeared online, on a personal blog for example, is NOT eligible)
•  Writers are limited to one piece in each category (5 pieces total for adults and 3 pieces total for teens and kids – a collection of poetry counts as 1 piece)
• Work that does not adhere to word/page limit will not be read/considered
• Joy of the Pen is judged anonymously. Please do not put your name on the work itself, only on the application. Likewise, the judges will remain anonymous until the awards are announced.
• Topsham Public Library retains first publication rights to the work of the winners and runners-up (all other rights automatically return to the author after publication)
• Submissions in the Maine-Related Nonfiction category must be between 2,000 and 5,000 words

Preferred Manuscript Format for Fiction, Nonfiction and Maine-Related Nonfiction

• Include the word count in top right corner of page 1
• Always use 12-point, Times New Roman or similar font.
• Double-space paragraphs
• Keep text justified to the left (Word default)
• Indent new paragraphs (use tab button) rather than leave a line space
• Use 1-inch margins (standard Word margins are fine)
  
• Include a top-header with the story title and the page number in top right corner, beginning on page 2
• Use a pound sign (#) to separate any line breaks

For more information on the other categories you can write for and to submit your work, visit the Topsham Library’s website here!

We’re looking forward to seeing your work!

    1. Develop a mailing list.  Both email and snail mail. Postcards are a great and charming way to get in touch. 
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   2. Out of that mailing list, make a separate list of important people who might be able to help you. Fellow authors and publishers are good to have in your corner. 

   3. Update your website. Even if it's not something you use or visit often, it's the hub of your social media web, so keep it up to date. ​

And now that your index is finished, you have completed work on one of the least thought-about, but most essential tools to nonfiction writing. Your book won't win any awards or be driven onto the bestseller list solely because of its index, but every time one of your readers turns to your book for information and uses the index to find what they're looking for, they'll be thanking you for the effort. 

1. Determine why you want to write the book. Is it for your family or do you think this book will sell to a greater circle of friends and acquaintances? On the other hand, do you think people who are neither your relatives or friends will be interested in your story? Regardless of the answer, the same approach will be used to produce the first rough draft of your autobiography. Your answer to “why” may be used as your introduction.

2. Begin by gathering your materials. That includes photos, journals, letters to and from you, newspaper articles, clippings from magazines, baby books (if one of your parents was nice enough to do this), school writing projects, souvenirs, yearbooks, email messages, blog posts and anything else that you might have written or might have been written about you. I suggest that you have a box in which to put everything.

5. Create a schedule for writing. Write for 30-60 minutes once a day, three times a week or every weekday. Whatever you schedule—stick with it and write. Just write. Continue to write your memories, aided by your collected materials until it becomes difficult.

6. When it becomes difficult, connect with a friend, family member, or acquaintance who may be able to fill in gaps of memory or knowledge. They may have more information about other family members who are deceased, events that happened when you were too young to remember, or enhance your memories with another view. Write those events/memories. Keep notes of the names of people who gave you more info and link it to the info given. File these new writings and keep the timeline up to date with location and file names.

7. Put all your writings into one document in your timeline order. You now have your very rough draft.
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8. Before you begin polishing your rough draft, work with someone unfamiliar to your story. Print out a hard copy for your reader. The reader will read your rough manuscript (don’t have them fix the typos now—you may delete part of the story or rewrite much of this anyway). The reader’s job is to write questions in the margin. Who is this? Why was this event significant? Where were you? All the questions to which you know the answer but have forgotten to write in your closeness to the story. I suggest that you have three readers using three separate clean manuscript copies. You then take all comments and put them onto one draft. Some authors might use a clean draft on which to write all notes and questions. On the other hand, one of your reader’s drafts may have the most significant edits and questions—I would use one and add the other comments to it.

    ​I’ve been working on a manuscript for two days, just cleaning up the copy, removing multiple tabs, excessive spaces, and de-capitalizing all-caps to make this manuscript workable. As I entered the second day of editing, I found myself wondering, how could that be? The author edited, proofed, and edited the work a second time. Why did I need to go over it again?

1. Remove all double spaces after sentence-ending punctuation. A leftover practice from the days of typewriters and monospace fonts, this method of formatting has been rendered unnecessary. In fact, it’s often detrimental, with double spaces leaving ragged-looking spacing when using properly-spaced fonts. 

2. Spell out your numbers in non-technical text. All numbers under 100 should be spelled out. If you’re describing forty-eight of something, it’s forty-eight, not 48. Larger numbers get spelled out when rounded or approximations, with some exceptions. Just Write Books uses the Chicago Manual of Style for direction on numbers.

3. Remove all the -st, -th, and -nd suffixes after numbers in a sequence. As people read, they’ll naturally add these sounds as needed in the document. Although in British writing, these letters are printed, this is not written out in American English. 

4. Remove super and subscripts, except for footnote superscripts. These will be properly formatted during the typesetting process. 

5. Spell out all abbreviations and acronyms. Avoid confusing your reader with these unknowns. If you mention something the first time (with the abbreviation or acronym in parentheses), you can then use an acronym for it in subsequent uses. For the sake of clarity, don’t refer to something by its abbreviation or acronym the first time. 
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6. Don’t use jargon. When writing about an industry that uses specific terminology, it’s up to you to explain inside jargon or lingo or find other, more common terms that serve the same purpose. 

7. Remove extraneous formatting. Remove all tabs, multiple spaces and other unnecessary formatting from your document. These will be handled in the typesetting phase. ​

10. Separate your document into chapters. Come up with good spots to break up your work, and try to keep their lengths somewhat consistent. You can use simple numbers or you can name your chapters, but it’s key to have a plan to follow. ​

All in all, it’s consistency and a lack of excessive formatting that will help your publisher streamline the editing process, and help you get published sooner. Follow these steps, and you’re sure to make your life, and the life of your publisher, much easier. 

Just Write Books LLC, offers publishing consulting and coaching for writers.  JWB uses its proprietary High Point Publishing System with state-of-the-art technology mixed with old-fashioned writing, editing, publishing, and marketing skills to help writers become authors and authors reach their publishing goals. ​

    ​Now, sadly, Just Write Books will, beginning today, no longer operate as a publisher of books. While our love of Maine, its residents, and its stories have not abated, and the author’s stories have their markets, and people who want to read those stories, we have made the decision that we can find better ways for them to get their stories out into the world. 

    To that end, we’re working diligently to find new homes for all our authors, and for those of you who still wish to follow them, we will be posting information about where to find them here, so keep an eye out. Be they through other publishers or publishing houses, or making the transition to digital publishing through Amazon, our stories will still be available. 

So join us next week, and let's raise our mugs together to a new challenge and new writing adventures! 

    Across all these titles, the most common threads in Tom’s writing are his lively, accessible storytelling and his love of Maine’s outdoors. Whether he writes about its plants or its animals, be he reminiscing about his favorite encounters with gray squirrels or taking time to educate readers about how to prepare wild elderberries, Tom’s unique voice and love of our home state shine through, making any and all of his books a joy to flip through.