And the results are in...
After weeks of dramatic bellyaching on the topic, I finally got the judges' score sheets from the writing contest that I entered. It turns out that there were over two hundred submissions, and in the first round each was read by two members of the Chick Lit Writers of the World. (The second round readers were editors at various girlie publishers, including Harlequin, and prominent agents in the field. Not that it makes a difference to those of us eliminated in round one, but interesting to note nonetheless.)
It's funny, because no matter what happens I tell myself that it's the next step up the ladder that will dispel all the doubts. That when a grownup who has never heard of Hanson reads my fiction and likes it, then I'll know that I might actually be good. Or that when a professional writer who has never heard of Hanson and who has never met me reads my fiction and likes it, then I can finally just relax. Because it's assured. Judges Z1 and Y1 weren't humoring me, they don't know me and like me and want me to be happy. They just read the first two chapters of Lived's new incarnation, and then they said largely nice things about it.
In my hanficy experience, people either love my writing or they hate it. They read my work again and again, or they never even make it through the first sentence. It turns out that the judges also fell neatly into these two camps, one full of giddy praise like "This story is incredibly powerful and well done," and the other full of low scores and "your characters come across as a little stereotypical."
The thing that really killed me, though, was my synopsis. What a ridiculous, stupid thing to ask of a person: It can't be longer than five pages, and yet it has to explain every single thing that happens in your entire book: each character, each motivation, each event. If the equivalent were to be asked of a musician, they'd have about twenty seconds to fully express every emotional and technical high point of the album they'd like to record. But I guess that synopsis writing is a skill I'm just going to have to develop if I ever want to get anywhere. It would probably have helped if I'd an entire manuscript to draw from; instead, I was pulling the second half of the book almost entirely out of thin air at 11:45 the night before the whole mess was due. I couldn't even really use what had gone before--old Lived and new Lived may have the same genes, but it turns out that they're going to be expressed quite differently.
Overall, I'm a happy girl. This contest was the first time my fiction stood up on its own two feet, and it didn't even fall. Not hard, anyway.
It's funny, because no matter what happens I tell myself that it's the next step up the ladder that will dispel all the doubts. That when a grownup who has never heard of Hanson reads my fiction and likes it, then I'll know that I might actually be good. Or that when a professional writer who has never heard of Hanson and who has never met me reads my fiction and likes it, then I can finally just relax. Because it's assured. Judges Z1 and Y1 weren't humoring me, they don't know me and like me and want me to be happy. They just read the first two chapters of Lived's new incarnation, and then they said largely nice things about it.
In my hanficy experience, people either love my writing or they hate it. They read my work again and again, or they never even make it through the first sentence. It turns out that the judges also fell neatly into these two camps, one full of giddy praise like "This story is incredibly powerful and well done," and the other full of low scores and "your characters come across as a little stereotypical."
The thing that really killed me, though, was my synopsis. What a ridiculous, stupid thing to ask of a person: It can't be longer than five pages, and yet it has to explain every single thing that happens in your entire book: each character, each motivation, each event. If the equivalent were to be asked of a musician, they'd have about twenty seconds to fully express every emotional and technical high point of the album they'd like to record. But I guess that synopsis writing is a skill I'm just going to have to develop if I ever want to get anywhere. It would probably have helped if I'd an entire manuscript to draw from; instead, I was pulling the second half of the book almost entirely out of thin air at 11:45 the night before the whole mess was due. I couldn't even really use what had gone before--old Lived and new Lived may have the same genes, but it turns out that they're going to be expressed quite differently.
Overall, I'm a happy girl. This contest was the first time my fiction stood up on its own two feet, and it didn't even fall. Not hard, anyway.