Month: September 2019

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Writers of the Future contest- 3rd Qtr

I received an email last night from the folks at the Writers of the Future informing me that I was an honorable mention for the 3rd quarter. The piece I submitted for that contest was just the second short story that I had sent into the wild. Not too shabby.

Still not a winner, and still no payment that would edge me toward Professional status, but I’ll take it. The thing is, both this ranking, and the PNWA result are both milestones for me. The story that I had offered up for judging is Six-gun Apotheosis.

Now…what does getting an honorable mention with WotF mean exactly? Well, I’ll get a nice certificate, my name on their official blog, and that I was in the top 2% of all entries received.

Maybe I’m looking at this all wrong…maybe instead of saying I lost, or didn’t win, I should be thinking I almost won…LOL. Yeah, no. Still, it does mean that my writing isn’t so bad that I scarred a judge forever, horrified by what they just experienced. I’ll take that any day.

Yes, I have submitted a piece for the 4th qtr, as mentioned in a prior post and will now have to wait and see how it does. Sooner or later my luck has to pay out and I’ll actually get paid for one of these submissions, but until then I’ll just keep plugging along. I have two more shorts in the works right now, and when the time is right I’ll submit them as well.

Heh…if I accumulate enough of them I could self-publish a book of them on Amazon. Be afraid…be very afraid.

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Writers of the Future- Part Deux

So…I decided to submit another short story to a contest. This time I selected The Interview which is posted here on this blog. The entry is for the 4th Qtr of the Writers of the Future contest. For the prior quarter I sent in Six-gun Apotheosis, and am still waiting to hear back on results.

I like the fact that there are four opportunities for submission each year, rather than the single entry that the PNWA contest has. Not only are there more chances to win, but it means that I get multiple stories looked at in the same span of time.

The prize money is better, but as I said before that isn’t my primary purpose in doing these contests. Feedback is king, and the more of it I get, the better. Patience isn’t my strongest suit, and waiting on results sucks, but it is what it is. If I risk nothing then I gain nothing.

Wish me luck…

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The official critiques have arrived

I received the critiques of my two submissions to the PNWA contest in the mail today. Truthfully they were far better, and kinder, than I had expected them to be. While I may not have agreed with each and every item contained within their pages, I do value the fact that a set of eyes, not directly involved in the creation of the stories, actually read and commented on them. And in every case, they did encourage me to continue down this path.

Valuable? You bet your ass. Differing perspectives make all the difference to me. Sending a story out into the wild is a bit like showing a stranger a picture of your child. Will they try to salve my feelings by lying? Or will there be a moment of pure brutality where the stranger informs you that he/she has never seen an uglier human being? Either of these options suck, but only the latter holds any value to an author.

If all you ever hear from friends and family is that you are the second-coming of JRR Tolkien (insert famous author here), then there is no incentive to improve your craft. We require the negative feedback, nearly as much as the positive, if we are ever to improve in any meaningful way.

In general the feedback on the short story that was a finalist was nothing but positive. Oh, there were a few nits picked at, but neither critique could be considered negative in any way. Continue reading “The official critiques have arrived”

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PNWA contest update

So…I didn’t win in my category, which really shouldn’t surprise anyone, but simply being a finalist and getting to meet other potential winners was worth the trip to the conference. I spent four days attending interesting sessions that were led by professionals in the field, and quite frankly, learned a lot.

And there was a silver lining… During my pitch block an agent asked me to send her three sample chapters from book one in the trilogy. To be honest that was more exciting than winning ever could have been. Don’t get me wrong, money is always nice, but even first place wouldn’t have covered the cost of attending the conference, although the private reception with the attending editors and agents would have been nice.

For me, pitching wasn’t a terribly stressful event, although it was apparent that this wasn’t the case for many of the attendees. Oddly enough, I never stress out during interviews either, and in a sense that is exactly what a pitch session is. You have four minutes to convince an agent, or an editor, that your book idea is worth a second look. I’m fortunate in that I have a good paying day job, so whether I was able to conjure any interest would not be a life changing affair. For others, those who are pursuing writing as their sole career this would not be the case. Continue reading “PNWA contest update”

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