I'm late posting to my blog this week. I have a good excuse! (Brag to follow, you can bail now)
I am a finalist in an honest to goodness writing contest!I entered my Query and First 25 in the North Texas Romance Writers of America GREAT EXPECTATIONS contest with the hopes of getting some good feedback. Of course I was floored when I found out it made the final cut.
I had a week to revise both the pages and the query, and getting it all critted and fixed up. THANK YOU QUERY TRACKER FORUMS and my super awesome Beta Reader, Yannik!
Oh man, queries will be the death of me, really! (Someday, I may post the farce that was my first query!)
Anyway, my final entry is all polished and ready to go.
Whatever happens in the final judging, this contest is a really good one to get useful feedback. I got 2 pages of score sheets back from each judge (every entry was assigned 3 judges) and the comments really told me where both my strong and weak points are.
If you have a query-ready manuscript but are nervous of taking that first step in sending it out in the big bad world, enter a contest! It's fun and highly motivating!
A great, complete list of writing contests can be found at Stephie Smith's site.
OMG!!! That's awesome, Roberta!!!!!! Congrats! :D
ReplyDeleteCongratulations, Roberta!
ReplyDeleteCongratulations! I hadn't thought of such a contest being a stepping stone into the query world. I'll keep it in mind! At the moment I keep finding reasons to polish my manuscript just a little further as a kind of query-procrastination method!
ReplyDeleteThanks lexcade and Juliette. Luke, contests are a great way to see if your ms is really ready! I needed so much help writing my darn query...If you are a member of the QT forums, then you may know this :) While the big blue ribbon I chose for the photo might be premature, I already feel like a winner for getting all that wonderful (professional) feedback!
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