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It was not my first prize and I doubt that it will be my last because words are my hobby. Used right, words have a magic power. They carry fascination, they present challenge, they can make your dreams come true. With a few words, usually no more than twenty-five, I have a chance and so have you, to win almost anything your heart desires. Big contest sponsors regularly offer such things as expensive homes, completely furnished, automobiles, house trailers, dream vacations, all sorts of household appliances and even good solid cash as prizes. It is possible to win almost anything you can think of, dream of, or hope for through contests.

There is no trick to it, no pure luck, no special kind of magic. Except the magic of words which anyone can learn to wield to win if they but have the will to win. All you need are words that paint a picture, that tell a story, words that capture the interest of the judges. Short, compact, concise statements to describe a product or tell what a product does for you.

Sounds easy, doesn't it? Well, it isn't. It is work and effort and study. Plus practice and persistence. But it is fascinating work. Work which does pay off in the end to those who stick. You will not win with the first entry you write. Perhaps not even with the first 100 entries. But you can win if you work at contesting hard enough and long enough.

Does that scare you? It shouldn't, for it is always easier to work toward a goal than to trust in luck. Contest winners never win their prizes because of sheer good luck. They make their own good luck by writing the kind of entries that are bound to win sooner or later. If they waited for luck, they could write a lifetime away on dull, uninspired entries without ever winning a prize. How much better to concentrate on writing the kind of entries that can't fail. The kind that are good enough to win prizes at least part of the time.

SOMETIMES PEOPLE walk up to me and say, "I see where you have won another prize. Gee! How can one person be so lucky?"

Others say, "Let me touch you. I'd like to see if some of that won't rub off on me." Still others insist that I am a brain, a genius, that it comes easy for me. The average person cannot expect to accomplish what I have.

None of them are right and I tell them so, using many more than twenty-five words in the telling. But I seldom convince them of what is the absolute truth. If they would only believe in themselves and work at it faithfully, they too could make a profitable hobby out of prize contests.

I am a very average person with an average high school education. No college. I do have a lot of determination and persistence where contests are concerned. If I fail in one I never think of giving up. I just start working on another. There is always tomorrow and new contests are being announced every day. Today's winners are yesterday's losers who kept trying.

"What did you write?" someone invariably asks when I win a new prize. Sometimes I tell them, sometimes I do not, for often winning entries are restricted by the sponsor.

This, however, is the exact entry, word for word, which won the Maytag automatic washer: "I use all purpose Breeze for all my washing because it gets every piece in my wash equally clean without the added persuasion of bleaching, boiling or hand scrubbing for even the dirtiest pieces."

Can you see why it won? Does it paint a word picture to you of a good product doing a good job? Do not decide until you have studied it carefully for yourself to see what makes it tick.

Think of these words, "every piece in my wash equally clean". Does that not conjure up a mental picture of the better things that do not require as much washing as say Junior's blue jeans or Dad's greasy overalls? Yet the point I want to make is this: Every Piece comes equally clean. The not so dirty things and the really dirty things. So far, so good. But let's do better than that. They all come clean, equally clean without bleaching, boiling or hand scrubbing. Even the dirtiest pieces. The words "dirtiest pieces" add emphasis, while the words "added persuasion" are a bonus, an eye flagger, words specially tailored to give the entry individuality. Picture if you will such things as bleaching, boiling or hand scrubbing as the "added persuasion" often used by homemakers to get their family's clothes clean. But with the right kind of product added persuasion is not needed. The product is a conquering hero who does the dirty work alone. Without added persuasion.

Do you see what I mean? Can you discern the qualities in this entry which caused it to win? Is it plain to you after careful analysis what made it click in the eyes of the judges? If so, there is no reason why you can't sit down and write your own winning entries. Write entries that show your product in action as a conquering hero. Use strong words, words that paint a mental picture, words that stand out. Every piece equally clean. Not a few pieces but every piece. Not some things cleaner than others but all things equally clean. No added persuasion necessary. The conqueror conquers alone without help from any other source.

NOW FOR another example of the kind of entry that wins and why. This statement won for me a $100 United States Savings Bond in a Youngstown Dishwasher contest: "I would like to win a Youngstown Dishwasher because it would free me from drudgery giving me precious hours to spend with my growing children—hours that once lost can never be recaptured."

Simple? Yes. But if you will study it carefully you will see that it does say a great deal. The words "free me from drudgery" again cast the product in the role of conquering hero. "Giving me precious hours to spend with my growing children" paints a special kind of picture. A picture of a young mother who when relieved of the old-fashioned drudgery of washing dishes the hard way now has extra time to spend with her young children. Time that is precious and all too fleeting. Time that should not be lost on drudgery for it is a period that can never be recaptured. Children grow up quickly and a mother has only a limited amount of time in which to enjoy their childhood.

Those are the things I wanted to say in that twenty-five-word statement, such is the word picture I wanted to paint. Did I succeed in conveying the idea that I wanted to get across? I believe in the opinion of the judges I must have for they awarded me a $100 U.S. Savings Bond for these few words. But read it over carefully and slowly and decide for yourself what picture it presents to you.

Some statement contests allow more than twenty-five words although the twenty-five-word ones seem to predominate. Occasionally one pops up permitting fifty words or even 100 words. In addition to statements, there are naming contests, last lines, jingles, essays and letter type contests. I have won in every type except the jingle and last line contests so will not try to give any information concerning those.

NAMING CONTESTS may call upon the contestant to select suitable, appropriate names for almost anything under the sun, but the things you are most often called upon to name are dogs, ponies and babies. You almost never name these things with the sort of name you would actually give to a dog, pony or baby of your own. The reason for this is that it isn't likely to be original enough and the chances are great that it will be duplicated. Here is one of my own winning names for a puppy in a Dash dog food contest: Petiglee. How did I arrive at such a name? Well, in thinking of the Dash dog such words as these kept running through my brain. Champ, blue blood, thoroughbred, pedigree. There I had it! Only pedigree wasn't exactly right. But what about coining a name from that. Pet suggested itself. A little dog. Glee, happy, gleeful. Just like that the name Petiglee was born and the judges made it a winner. But I would never have named a real dog Petiglee any more than a mother would, name her baby son Chappetite. But a contestant came up with the coined name Chappetite for a baby boy in a Libby baby food contest and won the top prize of $5,000. Why? Well, Chap of course instantly suggests a little boy and appetite suggests what the boy would have for the baby food in question. It is a short, clear, masculine sounding name and one not likely to be duplicated.

The same technique and the same sort of thinking was applied by the $1,000 second prize winner in the same contest. She named the baby Husketeer. In this case the contestant used the word musketeer as a spring board and made it a winner by coining a name which suggested "husky little musketeer."

With those examples you can see that the possibilities are unlimited in naming contests. Just take your dictionary and go from A to Z, playing with every word you come across. You'll be surprised at the new names you can create by squeezing words together, trick spelling, etc. New methods of creating unique and original names will come to you right out of the blue if you will turn your imagination loose and start through the dictionary. Do not turn away from any word until you have studied it from every angle and exhausted every possibility of tying it in with the object to be named or with the sponsor who is behind the naming contest.

Sometime ago I won a new Schwinn bicycle in a pony naming contest for coining the name Leapstakes for the pony. In thinking of everything connected with horses, naturally the word sweepstakes suggested itself but instinctively I knew that somehow that was not quite right. Other words and pictures raced around in my brain. A graceful, high spirited pony, racing, running, leaping. There I had it! Sweep. Leap. Leapstakes! See how easy it is when you start yourself thinking in the right channels?

NOW WE come to the letter type contests, which are really my favorites because there we are given more words in which to express ourselves. In 1948 I was awarded the Heart of Gold award of the week on a national ABC radio program called Second Honeymoon. Every day this program awarded some valuable appliance such as a range, freezer, refrigerator, etc., to a person who was nominated by letter as having a "heart of gold." The judges selected the daily winner from the best letters received and at the end of the week the best letter for the whole week won a whole jackpot of prizes.

At that time I was working as a foster mother caring for unfortunate children who were wards of the state in my home. I was twenty-six years old and in a period of four years I had been foster mother to thirteen children. My sister sent in a letter nominating me for a Heart of Gold award.

The most my sister hoped for was to win one of the daily prizes for me by her nomination. Instead I was adjudged the winner of the week and awarded the entire weekly jackpot of prizes, including a deep freezer, a refrigerator, Tappan gas range, ironer and several other valuable appliances which I sorely needed.

What took this entry out of the daily winner class and made it the jackpot winner of the week? Was it the fact that I had been foster mother to thirteen children in the last four years? No. A few picture painting words about one child, just one out of the whole thirteen, is what changed the letter from an average letter to the top winning letter of the week.

Among the children I had cared for was one little girl who would never be considered for adoption I was told by the welfare agency worker who placed her in my care, because she was retarded mentally. I soon doubted this statement and set out to prove that it was wrong. As it turned out the child was not mentally retarded and was later adopted by a lawyer and his wife. Here are the words that were used to tell about this one child. "One of the children that was brought to Mrs. Peyton, a little girl of two, was thought to be mentally retarded, not adoptable material. But Mrs. Peyton worked with this child unceasingly with love and understanding, helping it to realize its full potentialities, bringing it out of its shell which was never that of 'dull mentality' at all, but merely unhappiness, lack of understanding, previous background, training and treatment, until a few months later it bloomed out as a happy, well-adjusted, intelligent, normal child who was adopted into a good home."

After my first shock and dazed disbelief at being chosen weekly winner I tried to analyze the prize winning letter for the qualities that had made it a top winner. I realized after careful study that it was not the remarks about the twelve other children at all. They were merely twelve children in need of a home. It was the thirteenth child, the little girl thought to be mentally retarded and therefore unadoptable, that supplied the necessary drama to bring this entry to the top.

I have won a number of things for others by writing letters about them. A young mother was awarded a Lewyt Vacuum cleaner by the Walter Mason "Tell Your Neighbor" program as a result of my letter telling how she brought a homeless child into her home to bring up, in spite of the fact that she was bringing up four children of her own on a very small budget. Another letter won a bicycle for a twelve-year-old girl who had never had anything but hand-me-downs and castoffs from others all her life. I wrote still another about a country woman who ran a small store and was a neighbor to everyone who came her way, which won for her a service for eight set of Roger's silverware. My only secret for successfully writing this type of entry is to write a sincere, descriptive letter about a truly deserving person, doing my best to bring her to life by my words so that the reader can picture her as the kind of person she really is.

IN THE fall of 1953 I wrote a letter for a girl I worked with at the C&O Hospital in Huntington, West Virginia, to the Bride and Groom television program, which won for her and her fiance a wedding on Bride and Groom with all the trimmings.

When Miss Garnet Francis first announced her engagement to Harold McCaleb all her co-workers began to ask her what kind of wedding she was going to have. I didn't know Miss Francis very well as I had only been employed at the hospital for a few weeks but I asked her, "Would you like to be married on Bride and Groom?"

"Are you kidding?" she asked in a startled way and I wondered for a moment if I'd said the wrong thing. Fortunately I hadn't. What she meant was "Who wouldn't like to be married on Bride and Groom?"

I told her then that my hobby was writing and that I'd always wanted to try a letter for Bride and Groom but up until now I hadn't found any willing prospects.

"Oh, I'd never win," she said. "I'm just not lucky. Besides they pick romances that are unusual and there's nothing unusual about Mac's and mine."

"Well it won't hurt anything to try," I urged.

Finally she gave in and gave me the information about herself and Mac that I needed. She was right. There was nothing unusual about their romance. It was rather average and I knew it was going to take some pretty hard writing to make it a winner, if indeed it could be a winner at all.

I presented it something like this: For years Garnet Francis had listened to Bride and Groom on radio and later watched it on television, sitting breathlessly on the edge of her chair wondering whether someday when she too found the man of her dreams she might possibly win her other dream—the dream of becoming a bride on Bride and Groom. Now that she had found that man, she was writing the program with hope in her heart, a prayer on her lips and fingers crossed, that this dream too might come true.

She was sure she was the happiest girl in the world the night Harold gave her an engagement ring and asked her to become Mrs. Mac. Of course she had taken a lot of teasing at the hospital about being so much in love, especially when she poured buttermilk in her coffee instead of cream the day after she became engaged. But what girl wouldn't have her head in the clouds after becoming engaged to a guy like Mac? All she needed now to make the perfect love story complete was to win her dream wedding on Bride and Groom. If that could only happen, she just knew that she would feel exactly like Cinderella when she tried on the glass slipper and lo and behold found that it fit her perfectly.

No, it wasn't an unusual love story but I tried to make a winner of it by making the girl in love come to life with my words. I pictured her as being breathlessly in love, dreaming over again the dream she had had for years of someday getting married on Bride and Groom, a girl who would feel herself a modern Cinderella if she won.

Somewhat to my own surprise it did win, and soon plans for the wedding on the Bride and Groom Show were in full swing.

After their wedding at Radio City Chapel, at N.B.C. in New York they were flown to Quebec, Canada, for their honeymoon. Upon their return to Huntington the many beautiful wedding gifts that had been bestowed upon them by the Bride and Groom sponsors began to pour in, amounting to a total value of approximately $1,500.

People kept asking me, "What did they give you for writing the letter?" They gave me nothing because I wanted nothing. The thrill I felt as I watched their story unfold on Bride and Groom, knowing that words I had woven together at my kitchen table had made all this possible, was payment in full.

WHAT TOOLS will you need to start a contesting hobby? The essential things are blank paper, pencils, a dictionary and plenty of enthusiasm. A good dictionary is a must. A typewriter is an asset but is not absolutely necessary. Later after you have started to make the thing payoff you can add other reference books which will be of great help to you. Besides my Webster's Unabridged Dictionary I have only four, but those have been of inestimable value. They are Roget's "Thesaurus of Words and Phrases," "Dictionary Of Similes," by Frank J. Wilstach, "Mark My Words," by John B. Opdyke and "The Word Bank," by Sophie Basescu.

If you never win the biggest prizes contesting can still payoff in a very rewarding way. For instance, the $320 washing machine I have just won represents two months pay for me in my present job.

Besides it is a hobby which keeps you mentally alert and on your toes. A contester's life is seldom monotonous for you have the wonderful, stimulating suspense of never knowing what will come in in the next mail. Not to mention the joy and the thrilling excitement at winning.

Could you make a living by contesting? I seriously doubt it. The competition is too keen for any one of us to hope to win so many prizes that we wouldn't have to work at anything else.

As for me I am like a fisherman who always keeps hoping for that elusive bigger catch but meanwhile the little ones and medium sized ones are welcome. Right now at our home in Barboursville, West Virginia, we make our morning toast on an automatic toaster which was a recent prize, while another toaster just like it sits in a box on the kitchen shelf. Our electric fryer, mixer and iron came our way via contests, too. Not to mention the sterling silver we eat with. Out in the street one of my children is on a bicycle and the other on a pair of roller skates, both earned with twenty-five-word statements. Soon my husband will be driving up in our 1949 Chevrolet which is equipped with a couple of tires which were given to me as a prize for a ten-word statement. (Just the tires, not the car!)