Have you entered a contest lately?
I recently entered three wonderful romance writer contests. I’m sooo happy. I also need a Butter Scotch martini, okay maybe three of them — after I mailed the enteries.
I know it’s worth it, but entering contests is a lot of work and it gets expensive. Because I didn’t want to use my own printer ink, I went to Office max to get 9 copies of 25 pages printed. I accidently printed all 25 pages for one contest who only wants 15.
Then I went to Starbucks to put my blood, sweat and tears (okay it was just my manuscript) into their packages. Whew, I think my head will explode.
First I had to lay everything out. Each contest has different rules, so I scratched my head and adjusted my glasses and tried to not make any mistakes - now who wanted the synopsis? By the way, if you make a mistake you’re disqualified.
One contest wanted only the first 25 pages and the other wanted only the first 15 pages. One wanted a synopsis and cover letter and one didn’t. Each different but the same. It’s easy to make a mistake. I paid for one of the contests via pay pal and the other I wrote a check. Damn, which envelope did I put that check?
Sweating now, chai tea gone, I took my precious, hard work to the Mail Box, etc place. OMG!!!! Now you have to understand I don’t do anything manually. I send out everything and pay my bills via online. I always beg and borrow a stamp from Cassie Ryan on those rare occasions I need one. Believe it or not, I don’t even know how much stamps are these days.
I asked the girl (yes girl, not woman) how much it would be to mail the two packages out with stamps, not metered. She came back and told me it would be $7.00 and $5.00. Okay, how many stamps will I need? The sales girl got out her handy, dandy calculator and told me 17 stamps for the $7.00 package and 15 stamps for the $5.00 package. She had to do this a couple of times, which should have been my first clue.
I put 17 stamps on one enevelope and then put another 17 stamps on the self addressed stamped envelope. Same with the other package. Soooooo, last night at the critique group meeting, my laughing their asses off , BSM girls kindly pointed out that there are $1.00 stamps and $3.80 stamps. Again, OMG!!!!!
Now make that 4 BS martini’s I need. So lesson learn, ask questions before you send off your contest entries!!!!
Isabella…tired and sloshed…lol
