About Honorable Mention

You can certainly mention you got an HM when submitting to other markets.

You can submit again in another quarter with HM. If you place 1st, 2nd, or 3rd then you can't submit again.

As long as your story is not Semi Finalist, Finalist, or 1, 2, 3 you can edit story and submit again. Although I have heard you a best off submitting fresh stories.

I found a number of people here are interested in swapping stories.

That does make more sense I am considering writing an actual new story to submit (and to take a small break from my very slow first novel writing for a bit)

Neat, then I will ask around and keep my eyes open.

Thank you for your fast answers  

@craydimensional What is considered "1,2,3." I was planning to revise a Silver Honorable Mention, but maybe it is not eligible. Thanks!

@pegeen

1-First Place, 2- Second Place, 3 - Third Place. These are considered winning competition and with these you get published in the anthology, money, and a trip for full week of writing classes, and a gala where you get your award.

You can resubmit a silver honorable mention.

The WoTF people are very friendly and occasionally hold zoom sessions and go to writing conferences where you can ask questions. I learned quite a bit at these sessions.

Posted by: @durmanog

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Hello fellows!

 

Last year, I received an Honorable Mention for a submission, and I wondered a few things:

- should I choose to publish it, am I allowed to make use of that mention?

Congrats on your HM! I'm not sure what you mean by "make use of", whether putting a banner or something on a self-published piece or including the HM in a cover letter to other markets. Either way, though, while there's no real harm in doing so, at the end of the day anything but a first, second, or third place win is a rejection in Writers of the Future. It's lovely to get feedback from such a big contest and those HMs are hugely encouraging signposts that we're on the right track! But they're still essentially rejections. (I see HMs and finalists etc mentioned in cover letters and it doesn't bother me, fwiw. But I'm just one editor.)

Posted by: @durmanog

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Hello fellows!

 

Last year, I received an Honorable Mention for a submission, and I wondered a few things:

- should I choose to publish it, am I allowed to make use of that mention?

- am I still able to submit to the Writers of the Future contest (with a different text?)

- could I try to change it somehow, knowing that it's not published, try to improve it, and re-submit it to another quarter?

- in such case, am I able to find beta readers here to get an opinion about what the weak points of the story are?

 

Thank you very much!

Similar to what @rschibler said above. When I submit my one and only semi-finalist story around to other markets, I have considered mentioning in my cover letter that it was a semi-finalist in the Writers of the Future contest. But I don't, mostly because I'm afraid a slush reader might see that and say to themselves, "Right. Got it. This still wasn't good enough to actually win." Almost like I'm warning them in advance: hey, just so you know, this story was good, it just wasn't that good.

I don't want them to pre-judge my stories before they read them. I also don't want them to think I'm saying, "Hey, this story has been rejected at other places but, you know, maybe you'll want it."

Yes, these are all actual conversations I have in my head every time I submit a story to a market. LOL I self-reject every single story before I send it, but I still make myself push that SEND button anyway.

Although HM, SHM etc do jolly you along, I always look at anything other than a win as a rejection, albeit rolled in glitter, and irrelevant to anyone else.

Congrats on the HM. It is a great accomplishment and you should mention that you earned it in cover letters from WotF. 

I've mentioned that I've earned honorable mentions for other stories, even if it isn't related to the story I'm submitting. I haven't sold anything, even my SF, so maybe what I'm doing is bad form.

I have resubmitted HMs and SHM after editing them, but haven't had much luck on getting a better rating. I recall 2 being bumped up and 1 falling down the scale. Writing new tales is the best way to improve and keep your mind active.

There are a lot of helpful people in the forum and tons of free workshop advice. Take advantage of it; did I mention it is free. I have learned more in the last couple years than my entire writing career (just turned 53 - augh) from this forum and those I've met here.

Have fun and keep on writing free stories.

So I agree with the general advice to write fresh new stories as a better way to grow your skill set.

However, there have been winners who won with resubmitted stories.

My recommendation would be therefore -

(1) if you are going to re-submit a story, probably do so if you can identify something very specific that concretely may have made it fail. Not just a vague feeling, or a half hearted edit.

(2) I would guess also to be successful with this it is most helpful if your writing skills are better than when you wrote the original. The writer that you are in a years time (as long as what you've done in that year - written new stroies, workshopped, critique exchanged, read craft books etc - have been things that will further your craft) may be able to edit an old story and make it shine, but the writer you are 3 to 6 months after (ie the next couple of quarters) may not be sufficiently much better to make it rise from HM to winner.

These are just my random thoughts /p>

Unfortunately that's all it is, musings, I know nothing 😉 🤣 

@gideonpsmith I did a resubmit of a previous HM that I identified some major flaws for Q1. So, we will see if it gets a higher rating.

Alright, thank you for your different answers (and opinions), keeping that one in handy for now. I also think if I want to self publish it maybe I might change it a bit, then it won't really be the text I submitted anymore, so if I do that it would make sense not to mention the HM. We'll see, feels a bit convoluted before I even finish my first novel but might come as a complement.

New project for submission, 7500 words done and one week to attempt to finish it, beeeelieve!