The Exchange: Round 1

So round one of the tournament is underway. I have my entry written, which is good. Unfortunately, I just realized that if I win in the first round, I'm more than likely going to be facing a fabulous writer in round two. And if he doesn't win, I should probably just pack my bags because anybody better than him is probably better than me. I'd say we're probably on about the same level, but it seems that the judges are familiar with him and his characters, and every little bit helps. I am going to have to really step up my game if I want to continue past round 2!

Edit

I got a paragraph in Prophet's Bequest (book 2) edited by Alicia over at edittorrent, so I'm posting the link here so I can keep track of it. I'm really pleased, because even though my prose obviously needs a lot of debugging, there was some good encouragement in there too. Thanks, Alicia!

http://edittorrent.blogspot.com/2009/06/gwen-editing.html

Rejection

I got my first rejection today--form rejection. I sent out two queries yesterday, so at least I got speedy turnaround. I'm a little disappointed, but not crushed. I guess that proves my 10th grade writing teacher wrong, huh? I hope I find somebody, but if the agent isn't excited about my work, they're not the best person to represent it, so the search will continue. I need to go back through my Writer's Market book and find some more agents to query.

The Exchange

I entered in a writing contest a few weeks ago. The premise is that death hasn't met his quota so he is collecting souls and decides to hold a tournament. Teams of 1-3 can enter to rescue one soul, and only one team wins. All the losers remain in Hell, thus increasing the number of souls in hell. I entered Jaana, James, and a new character named Maarc, competing for the soul of Jaana and James' daughter Audreia. We had to write up profiles for the characters on the team, and then write an audition piece that met certain guidelines. About 130 people auditioned and 64 made it. I was one of them! I know it's not a huge deal, but it is cool that I competed against some people and was selected. The contest works like a tournament, where everybody is paired up and given a prompt, and the best result moves to the next round until the end. My friends Fiona (LadyRiverLark) and Sharayah (Xelona) are also in the tournament.

If you want to look at the profiles and auditions (mine is under evilnel, close to the top), check it out here.

Writing, again.

Classes are finished, all the finals are graded, grades are in (although I am still getting students e-mailing me asking if they can turn in late assignments--really, kids, do your work when it's due!), and life is generally as it should be. Because I'm a grad student on a stipend, and because I'm living at home for the summer in a minuscule town in BFE and nobody is hiring (and I'm going to be gone for 2 weeks in Africa), I am unemployed. So all these things combining, that means lots of time for writing. I was in Ohio for a week and didn't write, but finally managed to unstick my brain and not only write a couple thousand words this week, but my plot is quickly moving again. I'd been somewhat stuck, not really sure if I wanted my characters to do this or that, but I'm going again. It feels so good to write. I realized that when I don't write for a few days I get really chatty and annoy my family and friends.

So the game plan for the summer is to finish the trilogy up, edit book two and three, and query like crazy. My query is written, and a couple reliable sources (avid reader and retired editor friend) have told me it's good, so I need to gird my loins and start sending it out. But I'm nervous. A writing teacher I had once told me he thought I was a great writer but didn't have the balls to handle the rejection. After getting rejected from a dozen graduate schools, or better yet not receiving a rejection at all ("You are not worth the paper used to send a rejection."), I think I can handle it, but I'm still not looking forward to it. Ah well, I need to just suck it up and do it.