Well, I never thought it would turn into such a drama when I first decided to enter the Golden Heart Contest this year. Of course, eternal optimist that I am, I completely underestimated the time it would take to get the entry ready. I made all the requisite copies of the partial manuscript and synopsis and was ready to mail it off Saturday morning when I realized something.

I’d left the manuscript name out of the header.

The Golden Heart has become known for disqualifying entrants if they stray even one whit from the stated formatting requirements, so I drove to Staples and got new copies made. Easy right? Not exactly. My formatting didn’t carry over correctly on the disk I had brought with me so the first batch of printouts were now missing the page number in the header. Another required element.

The guy at Staples was super helpful, even fixed the header for me, although I’m sure technically they aren’t supposed to alter customer files in any way. But still I spent over an hour in Staples and then another half hour at the Post Office to overnight the entry to Texas. Not my idea of fun.

At least it’s over – until the next contest anyway.