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By Karol Ruth Silverstein, SCBWI-L.A. Contest Coordinator
As your humble SCBWI-L.A. Contest Coordinator, I can tell you that entering Writers Day contests is not only fun and exciting — it can also be helpful in getting your manuscripts polished and noticed. I love deadlines and have always used Writers Day contest deadlines to force myself to work on my various projects. As a result, my work has placed a few times and won twice: a picture book in 2011 (LA region) and a YA novel in 2010 (Central-Costal CA region). My winning picture book attracted my agent, Jen Linnan, who subsequently sold my winning YA. (Look for my YA debut Cursed from Charlesbridge Teen on June 25, 2019!)
Still not convinced? Here’s a little more evidence of the value of entering Writers Day contests from one of last year’s honorees, Colleen Paeff:
“There’s nothing like winning a writing contest to confirm that you’re heading in the right direction. When I won my first Writers Day contest in 2014, I’d been dabbling in writing picture books for a decade. The award was exactly what I needed to convince myself it was time to get serious. If I gave it my all, I thought, I just might end up a published author. Two years, more manuscripts, lots of workshops, a couple conferences, tons of reading, and several revisions later, the same story caught the interest of an agent who eventually took me on as a client. Continue reading
#KT250 is a Kite Tales quarterly community contest, but unfortunately this quarter we did not have enough entries to complete the contest. So instead, we’re offering you some tips as you prepare your work for any kind of contest submission and re-posting all our winning entries from this year! We’re so grateful for all who participated and made our first contest year so special. We can’t wait to see what you do next year!
It’s time once again to polish up those manuscripts and submit to the 
ANDREA CUSTER: I workshopped it with my critique group as I was writing the first draft. They are an amazing group, quite astute, and so I had the benefit of their comments early on and had already revised the first half of the manuscript based on their feedback. Submitting it for consideration for SAG was actually a bit of an impulse! I saw the reminder on 
Long-time SCBWI member 
Kite Tales 