The Writing Olympics
The Summer Olympics got me thinking. In a way, writing has its own Olympic events. That’s right, there are different skills a writer endures that are at such a high level of difficulty, toying with them is certainly not for the faint of heart. Yet, while the Olympics choose its participants, writing indiscriminately offers obstacles for its writers. Before you long jump back into the game, prepare yourself for what lies ahead:
Writing Marathon: This is not a sprint. Your goal is not to rush through this event at breakneck speeds but rather take it at your own pace. Strengthen your endurance and stamina so you’re prepared for the long haul.
Plot Judo: Characters, settings, twists, and other elements need to work cohesively but they don’t always want to. Wrestling your story together takes finesse.
Editing Hurdles: On your first editing pass, you’ll have to clear the hurdles in your writing and make the story flow smoother. You might stumble, but no one’s first round is perfect.
Synchronized Co-Writing: When writing a book with another person, its best to meld your styles and mirror each others best skills to be successful.
Weightlifting Betas: At some point we all need to know if the story holds its weight. Let a beta give it a lift. Returning the favor, you’ll have to hold up a manuscript and determine its strengths and weaknesses.
CP Relays: Give yourself a strong start and pass off your work to critique partners so they can build you up for the next round.
Query Targets: Whether you’re taking a shot at agents, or simply trying your best at a blurb, the rounds expended on making a winning pitch rarely hit the bull’s-eye. But when they do, its sweet success.
Dream-Doubles: Whether you’re holed up inside over a keyboard or scribbling in a notebook on the beach, make sure you’ve got the best doubles partner (aka- agent) in your corner. Together you can attack the submission round with elegance and ferocity.
Emotional Gymnastics: The journey of writer will throw you through so many surprises and set-backs, you’re sure to experience a triple-twist of emotions.
High-Diving into the Public: At the end of your Olympic writing journey, you’ll climb the high-dive and take a leap of faith. Your hopes and dreams are riding on making a big splash with readers.
Train yourself to have a thick skin and a creative mind. Practice as often as you can. Flash fiction, short stories, new wips, whatever it takes. Bring that polished manuscript to the Olympics of writing and let it shine. This is your dream, your time. Take home the gold, writers!
Dystopian Sketch
Staring at the dried waterhole, I can feel my tongue drying out with the last hope for water. The planet’s dead. And so are most of its inhabitants. That’s what we get for using all its resources. Pure selfishness, really. Touching the clay basin, the remnants of moisture collecting on my fingertips, I can tell I’ve only missed it by a day.
The sun burns into my eyes. When I was a child, the days the sun poked out from the clouds was to be cherished at the beach, or park. Somewhere your family could gather and enjoy the warmth. Now, its rays tear away life. Shriveled plants and skeletons prove its devastating force.
“There’s got to be another puddle around here somewhere,” my sister says.
She’s still young enough for optimism. I know our best chance is to return to the cave. I can’t tell her that. I can’t dash her hopes. “Sure, let’s check over that ridge.”
Scrunching her face into a furrowed knot, she says, “Whoever said the war would help was an idiot. Where was that guy from? Greece? Guyana? It was something with a G.”
“Just worry about keeping the bag in the shade. We don’t want to spoil the food we’ve found,” I reply. “Forget about the war. It’s over. There’s nothing we can do.”
Nukes. That’s what really took us down. People literally huddled into bunkers, caves and basements. Anything to stay safe and away from the terror above. The sun took its toll, but it was the irrational delusion that war could save our planet that cut us off at the knees. The mushrooms and apples we found were a godsend. Enough to feed us for a week. Funny, when life was easy, before the bombs, we would probably have eaten through it in a day.
Our tired feet carried us over the ridge to where a pond once engulfed the entire watershed. Now, it’s reduced to a puddle too small for the dozens of birds crowding it to get their ankles wet. “Shoo! Get!” my sister shouts, flailing her arms as she rushes towards the water source. The birds don’t scatter. Not anymore. This is there lifeline as well.
She resorts to throwing rocks, but it’s useless. “Forget it. We’ll just fill our bottles. Ignore them,” I say, stepping into the mud flats that stretch out from the puddle. My heart freezes. In the middle of the flock of misfits birds was a hare. Something substantial to eat. Without any weapons, birds are impossible to catch. But a rabbit, that could be snared. I hear the breath of air suck into my sister’s lungs as she spots the critter.
It takes all that we can muster not to dive into the water after the meaty beast. Its brown eyes wide and unassuming as it laps the sustenance. “Food,” my sister muttered. Big mistake. That one little grumble catches the rabbit’s attention, turning its fury face in our direction. In an instant, the killer instinct disappears inside me. All we each want is a drink of water. Something to keep us alive until tomorrow. I sigh. “Fill the bottles. That’s it.”
Query Contests – Are You Armed And Ready?
In a month of crazy contests every week or so, I thought this was very timely! Please enjoy this wonderful guest post by Kat Ellis on query contest!
You’ve got your manuscript polished to a gleam, and maybe you’ve sent your query out to some agents. Maybe you’ve even been through a few online crit rounds to make sure your query and first couple of pages go off like rocket fuel. And then you see a link on twitter – Agent Judged Query Contest!
This is it. An agent line up that’s the stuff of dreams, all bidding on partials or fulls of the entries they like. You WILL rock this like a boss. They WILL be fighting for your manuscript, claws out and everything.
Of course, even though this happens, I’ve never known anyone enter thinking this will happen to them. Because there are tingly, squirmy nerves involved (the major downside to entering a query contest, in my experience). This probably means you will:
- stare for hours at the contest rules trying to fathom whether you may have misinterpreted them;
- sit with your finger poised to hit ‘send’ at the appointed second, even if it means waking up at4amto do so;
- chew your nails to nubs, then start looking for other things to gnaw like a rat
- manically hit ‘refresh’ either until the contest ends or your F5 key breaks.
These are unfortunate and inevitable truths. But they’re exciting too – especially when you start to see bids flying, and hopefully landing on your entry. Or your friends’ entries, if you’ve entered with some of your CPs (which makes it infinitely more fun, BTW). Just bear in mind that not all entries will get bids. Some will walk away feeling pretty dejected if they don’t get any interest from the agents. Likewise if there’s a ‘bouncer’ round and the entry doesn’t get picked to go through to be judged by the agents. *Cue sad violin music* Wait – stop that! There are SO MANY pros to these contests too!
- If you’re polished and ready to roll, entering a contest gets your work out there in sight of agents who are actively looking for new clients to sign.
- Agents who are otherwise closed to queries often take part in these contests.
- Some agents who aren’t officially part of the contest might see something they like and put in a sneaky request after the proceedings are over.
- Contests are essentially a shotgun approach to querying – hitting a big target in one shot. (This is only a ‘pro’ as long as your entry really is as polished as it needs to be. It can be pretty heartbreaking to have some well-meaning individual point out the fatal flaw in your query – in public – and have to graciously thank them and wait out the rest of the contest in quiet agony.)
- You could get a whole BUNCH of requests from a contest all at once, which is pretty much any querier’s dream.
- You can learn a heck of a lot from entering them. What works, what’s been done to death, what are the agents’ pet peeves (and how you can avoid these if you decide to query them after the contest – because you can absolutely do that.)
- You will meet lots of other writers in exactly the same position as you, who you can connect with and learn from and maybe even swap crits with. This was definitely one of the most important things I took away from the contests I entered – the amazing folks who have become my friends and who have encouraged and supported me through the query quagmire.
As far as I’m concerned, all these things far outweigh the slightly less sparkly side of contests bulleted up top. It’s just good to go into them armed – emotionally and querially (*made up word alert!*) – so you can get the absolute best experience out of them. And hopefully an agent too!
And I can’t end this without giving a shout out to Cupid’s LC and all the others who very generously organise these contests and make the connections happen – you ALL rock. Yes, like bosses.
Kat Ellis writes YA sci fi and fantasy, which has so far included: hot dragon boys, giant squid, drug abuse, robots, little people in trilby hats, winged aliens, shuttle crashes, kissiness, evil moths and malicious vomiting. You’ll usually find her up to no good on twitter, playing badminton like a ninja or watching scary films with her husband and feral cat. She is represented by Molly Ker Hawn of The Bent Agency, and PURGE is her first novel.
Here are a few links to some contest blogs (can also use .com suffix with most):
http://cupidslitconnection.blogspot.co.uk/
http://brenleedrake.blogspot.co.uk/
http://misssnarksfirstvictim.blogspot.co.uk/
http://yatopia.blogspot.co.uk/
http://ruthlaurensteven.blogspot.co.uk/
Riddle Me This
Clare M Davidson (@claremdavidson) tagged me in post about reading questions. Figured I’d answer a few, alter a few and add a few! Just for fun! If you were looking to know more about my reading and writing habits, here’s a great place to learn them:
1. Favorite childhood book? Robber Raccoon or the Curious Kitten. Those are picture books…but they’re awesome!
2. What are you reading right now? To be honest, my own stuff lol
3. What books do you have on request at the library? Nope. I love the library though, there’s so much possibility!
4. Bad book habit? Smelling the pages too much. Does that count? xP Don’t laugh, you know you do it too!
5. What book(s) has influenced your writing most? Harry Potter, as that is what prompted me to realize people would read stuff I wrote.
6. Have your reading habits changed since starting a blog? I’ve tried to read more so I can review more books. Speaking of, I should get on that. Any scifi/fantasy recs?
7. Least favourite book? I don’t think I have a least favorite, just many I was disappointed by.
8. Favorite book you’ve read? Wow that’s tough. I have to go with The Dress Lodger. It’s a literary/historical fiction that hit every note perfectly. Prizoner of Azkaban is a close second.
9. How often do you read out of your comfort zone? Not often. That’s why it’s called the comfort zone xP But as you can see above, it paid off.
10. What is your reading comfort zone? Speculative fiction, Scifi/Fantasy of the Young Adult persuasion.
11. Can you read on the bus? If you want me to throw up on you.
12. What is your policy on book lending? I am very hestiant about lending books. But if they are returned in good care, I’m happy.
13. Do you ever write notes in the margins of your books? I do. For class it would be important things to note, but for otherwise I do it to remind myself of something I’d like to use in my writing (Read: Not stealing, recording my own thoughts)
14. What makes you love a book? A clever concept or amazing characters. Preferably both!
15. Name a case in which hype ruined your reading experience. I think a lot of people will answer Harry Potter. Me too! The build up for the finale was too great, in my opinion. Nothing could have satsified the masses.
16. How often do you agree with critics about a book? Often lol I’m a critical reader, so our views tend to jive, but it’s a subjective business and opinions are personal.
17. What’s your favorite genre? That would be my comfort zone. Spec fics. Like Animal Farm and Narnia.
18. Favorite Poet? Emily Dickinson if I had to chose.
19. Favorite fictional character? Hermione. Strictly books 1-5. Otherwise, Holden from Catcher in the Rye lol He was an adorable little dbag.
20. Favourite fictional villain? The White Witch from Narnia! She was a bad lady!
21. Are there any books you’ve been avoiding? Twilight. Never.
22. Name a book that made you angry. Twilight. Ha!
23. A book you didn’t expect to like but did? 1984. It felt very dry to start, but it had a good message.
24. A book that you expected to like but didn’t? Jane Eyre. Cannot stomach it.
25. What do you love most about books? The worlds they create and the escapism readers get by diving into them. I love reading a book in one sitting (or trying to).
Pitch Wars Mentee 2014
Awards
