EG: Hi, I’m Edward Grinnan, Editor-in-Chief of Guideposts magazine, and I’m here to tell you about our Guideposts Writers Workshop Contest. This may be the best chance you ever had to get your story published in Guideposts.
If you’re one of the lucky winners of the Guideposts Writers Workshop, we as the editors of Guideposts will teach you everything we know and have learned about writing first-person, powerful, inspirational stories.
Here’s a couple of hints: First, find a good dramatic story. Not an essay, not a sermon; you can keep the sermons in church. We want to hear a great story. Now it could be a big event in your life, but could have been a small moment that made a big difference to you in how you developed in your faith or how your family developed or how you became more involved in your community, anything that has changed you, big and small, we want to hear about.
Like all good stories, your story needs to have a beginning and a middle and an end. It needs to have characters, it needs to have voice, it needs to have emotion, it needs to have dialogue, it needs to have description, but most of all, it needs to have a good spiritual point that our audience can take away and apply in their own lives.
How long should your story be? Well, about 1500 words or less and if you want to enter multiple stories, that’s fine too. You can send in as many entries as you want and you can submit to as many different Guideposts magazines as you want. That would include Guideposts, Angels on Earth and Mysterious Ways.
Once you’ve found your story and written it, we need a good strong cover letter to go with it. In other words, we are not just choosing a manuscript; we are choosing a person. So don’t forget–your cover letter is almost as important as your story. We really want to know who you are.
CH: Hi, I’m Colleen Hughes, Editor-in-Chief of Angels on Earth magazine. Angels on Earth presents true stories about heavenly angels and humans who play angelic roles here on earth.
We all know what an earth angel is, right? That unforgettable teacher, a helpful neighbor, the stranger who shows you a kindness and then goes on his way. But heavenly angels, they seem to defy definition. What about that wind, that puff of wind that stirs up on an otherwise completely still and calm summer afternoon? Or a strain of familiar music that comes out of nowhere? Or the bluebird that alights on the windowsill, just when you needed a sign?
These moments of enchantments, these messages of comfort and hope, they come to us in unique ways. I bet you have an angel story unlike any I’ve ever read. Send in to the contest and don’t forget your cover letter. That way, by the time you get here, it will be like seeing an old friend. Good luck.
EG: Maybe you’ve never entered a writing contest before. Maybe you’ve never even written your story before. Well, that’s fine. Don’t let that stop you. Now, many of your favorite Guideposts writers have actually come through the Guideposts Writers Workshop. That would include Sue Monk Kidd, Marion Bond West, and many, many more people you see in the magazine. So this is not just a one-week experience. It’s a lifetime experience.
People who’ve gone through the writers workshop tell us time and time again that the experience changed their lives and that they remained connected to Guideposts and our audience for many, many years to come.
So my final piece of advice to you: Start writing your story. That’s the first step of fulfilling your dream of being published in Guideposts magazine.
