So far, I am still in the running in the Amazon Novel Contest. Ya Whoo!!
So I was talking in an earlier blog about what the difference was between someone who is successful and one who fails. This has now become a more important question now that I have made it past the first round of judging in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Contest.
I made it into the top 20% or in real terms…in the top 1000 out of 5000. Not bad. Still a long way off from number 1 I admit but you have to start somewhere right?
The next round drops to the top 250 or 5% overall. Now, that would be much better. If I could achieve that I would be very pleased. I could then consider myself as someone who has made it as a writer. If nothing else, it would give me something to add to my inquiry letter I will be sending to a literary agent. That would be a nice kick-start to getting my book sold to a publisher.
Unfortunately, one of my best friends didn’t make it and for that I am sorry. I read his book and I wlll say it’s really good. We had hoped we would be in NY together at the awards dinner and if we had made it there neither one of us would have given a crap who won. Sharing the moment with each other would have been more than an enough. Blast! Well there is always next year.
I love to compete if the playing field is equal but I always have a gut feeling these things are rigged, so I never get my hopes up to high. This time I feel a little more optimistic. When you work with large numbers like this contest has for entries, a signiifcant amount of people are involved. This in itself makes it harder to rig the outcome, although, if they are literary types judging the contest I might already be screwed.
Literary contests are generally a waste of time for me. I am reading a novel by an author who won the prestigious “Governor Generals Literary Prize” awarded in Canada and frankly, it is a very hard read. How someone can say so much about what they see and think during such a small parcel of time is beyond me. I cannot do it, nor would I want to. The premise of the story is fine but the pace is excruciatingly slow. I have been reading about the same day/event for over a week now.
End it please and let’s move on! It’s like listening to a your childs teacher talking about adding whole numbers, something everyone in the room already knows. Okay, we get it already! Let’s move the story along. (I’m sure when it comes to judging it didn’t hurt that the author was/is a TV personality.)
Canada is a literary country and to be published there you need to be a literary writer. I never understood how those books sell. None of the people I know read them. Heck, most of them haven’t read my stuff and it would be considered light reading by professional standards. Thank God for the United States. They enjoy publishing and reading more streamline novels, which is more in line with what I like to write. Stephen King would still be looking for a book contract if he lived in Canada.
Now that I am in the competition, I cannot wait to read what the other contestants have written. Of course I will likely feel that mine was better, but wouldn’t we all.
It’s hard to compete with someone who writes about growing up in South Africa with apartheid or being tossed in a Russian Gulag. For someone like me who works a regular job, the research to write about these topics would beyond anything I could afford. As well, they say”write about what you know.” In this case, I’ll take a pass and let them win. Neither one would be something I would want to live through just to write a novel. It seems there’s always one person who wants to write about such a depressing topic and so moves the judges that the mere mention of the topic is enough to earn the win. I’ll give them credit, they know what the judges are looking for and feed right into it.
I would think stories like this would have a short life span. What would you write about next? My stories are much more fun and cerebral. My brain doesn’t want me to tackle such intense subjects.
They tell us writers (and actors) to celebrate our successes when they happen because they may not happen often. So I took the page with my name and novel written on it from the Amazon list and posted it on my wall so every time I sit down to write I have to pass by it and remember my success.
If I would just stop all the yapping and enjoy the moment, I would realize making it to the second round is pretty cool. In a worldwide novel competition making it into the top 20%; now that’s not too shabby.
