PHOTO COURTESY OF DAN SMALL
E N T E R A N D W I N : H O W TO W R I T E G OO D
By Dan Small
AND WIN STUFF
If you have been selling your work regularly
in competitive markets, then you have likely
produced some pieces that would win awards
in AGLOW’s AIC contests. Not every piece
is a winner, of course, but I’m willing to bet
your best work has a good chance of winning
a f irst, second or third place at least once in
awhile. The key is to enter!
In recent craft improvement articles in
Horizons, two fellow AGLOW members (Don
Dziedzina and Bill Hilts, Jr.) have invoked
my success in AIC competition, so I thought
it only fair to share how I do it. It’s pretty
simple, really. I enter a lot of stuff. Some
categories attract dozens of entries, but others
get barely enough entries to hold a contest. If
you enter two pieces in a category that doesn’t
get many entries, you stand a pretty good
chance of winning something.
This year, there are a total of 34 categories,
including book and public relations. There
is a new Electronic Media division, with nine
categories. Surely you can f ind at least a few
pieces to enter in one or more categories.
In some years, I enter something in every
category for which I have a piece that f its.
Since I produce TV and radio shows, write for
magazines, newspapers and web and also shoot
still photos, I usually have plenty of work to
choose f