Okay, I confess. You've dragged it out of me. After getting down on my bad self and swearing I wasn't going to write anything for FanLit that wasn't a parody because I clearly suck at it, I submitted not one, but two serious entries this week.
All right, maybe "serious" isn't quite the right word. Serious and this FanLit contest do not seem to go together. The entries that have made it to the finals have almost to a one been droll, madcap pieces positively dripping with witticism and foolery. And I don't mean that as a criticism. It's hard to write that kind of stuff, which is why I've struggled with it.
Still, I decided in an e-mail exchange with Lacey and Darcy and a separate chain with another of my critique partner's, Leigh, that it was worth my time to keep trying. Finaling in FanLit appears to be very much a crapshoot and I'm convinced that some of the very best entries were overlooked due to the vagaries of the voting system. That said, there does seem to be a general tendency for the cream to rise, and even if the finalists haven't always included my absolute favorite entries, they've all been good. It didn't hurt my decision that I came up with one pretty darned good idea on Friday night which I was able to write and submit on Saturday, leaving me with Sunday to come up with yet another pretty darned good idea to write and submit today.
I'll admit it: I want to crack the top 20. Little birds have told me that Avon editors have been paying attention to submissions that get into the top 20. I'd prefer to be a finalist (hell, let's be honest, I'd prefer to bloody well win!), but a little notice from an Avon editor--especially when I've got a manuscript in a competition that has an Avon editor as the final round judge--would not go amiss. And I think maybe I have a shot with at least one of the entries I submitted this time. It's the first time I've felt that way and I haven't been wrong yet, LOL!
There's another reason I've decided to keep playing, though. I find writing these chapters to be a useful writing exercise. Of course, it's very bad in that it's been keeping me from working on Living in Sin as much as I ought, but I think it's improving my writing in subtle ways. First, I'm learning to get more information across with fewer words. Given how much I have to cut out of my manuscript to get it to come at or under 100K words, I cannot help but view this as a good thing.
The other thing it's taught me is that I can write quickly and well simultaneously. For some reason, with these FanLit scenes, I don't agonize over every sentence, every phrase. I don't worry the thousand little details that slow me down when I'm writing my manuscript. Part of this is the inevitably freeing effect of writing something where hitting the characters' goals, motivations and conflicts are less important than providing a scene that is witty, amusing, and surprising in some way. (Julia Quinn, who submitted an entry anonymously in the last round, commented on this very fact in the forum, and I have to agree. It's great to write something without worrying about what's going to come next and whether it will "fit" with the rest of the story.)
So, I'm hoping to carry some of these lessons over into my own manuscript. If I don't crack the top 20 this week, I suppose I'll be motivated to try again in Round 5 and again in Round 6. It's ultimately just too much fun not to.
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5 comments:
Oh, yeah! I have mad respect for you entering not once but twice this round. It's so addictive, I debated long and hard about it. So long I might as well have entered, probably! But I'm kinda glad I didn't. I actually got Real Work done at work today...shhh...
I'm so glad you're sticking with it. Us. Whichever you prefer.
I entered my first straight entry this time, too. It is getting nothing above a 1 that I don't invite *heh*. Perhaps my cap was not mad enough.
But WE LOVE YOUR PARODIES, too, so win FanLit all you want, but don't deny us the holodeck, man!
That's right, Meankitty. She did promise we'd get our Holodeck! :-) Good luck with your serious entries, Jacqueline. I enjoyed both of them!
Well, you know, I really tried to write the Holodeck parody the last time around but it just wasn't coming out funny! Maybe that's because I find the TNG characters so much more well-rounded, they're harder to make fun of. There may be hope in Round 5, depending on how ridiculous things get from here on out.
As to your straight entry, meankitty, maybe it's just so good, all the low-ballers are afraid of it! (That's what I tell myself when the 0.5s and 1.5s pop up on my entries. And I always say, a page view's a page view, not a skip, since a skip is a zero you can't see, I'll take the low scores, thanks!)
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