Contests and Creme Brulee

Best part about last night's dinner at Morton's? Two words. Creme brulee. Hands down.

I entered another writing contest this week. This one is the annual Tom Howard/John H. Reid contest promoted by Winning Writers, which accepts all kinds of prose entries -- fiction and non-fiction. Since I sent in a short story last year and lost, I changed gears and submitted an essay I wrote in grad school about my son Griffin. The piece was well received by my professor and the vast majority of my classmates, but you just never know. Judging is so subjective. At WHY magazine, we've run a few contests of our own: The first one, in 2007, was a short story contest. The winning entry came from Beth Sears. And this year, we ran a slogan contest, and our winner was Jennifer Murray of The Nimble Assistant. Her slogan: Make your own damn coffee. Work from home. Love that! You can check out Jennifer's winning entry (and other cool slogans) featured on merchandise in our online store.

Still, how do you judge creativity or our reaction to it on a set of criteria? My professor used to tell me that as a reader or editor you'll feel a twinge in your belly when you read that something just isn't right about a piece -- even if you can't formally put what the problem is into words. Is then the converse true as well? I get a feeling of lightness in my belly when I read something in a piece that I think is good. I guess -- if I'm pressed to explain my judging method -- I tend to tally the lightness feelings, subtract the grammatical errors and declare a winner.

I wonder if the Winning Writers judges use such a highfalutin method!