On Contests and Community

Since I'm usually the one watching our OpAwesome6 Twitter account, I get to see a lot of excitement flitting through the Twittersphere about our Mystery Agent/Editor Contests. I love the support and sense of community that comes from cheering on, and commiserating with, our fellow authors in the query trenches. Some of the writers who I went through contests with remain friends to this day, even as much as five years later.

In particular, I was thinking back to when I was submitting Crow's Rest (by query and in contests) around this time in 2013. My manuscript had been out since February, after some early interest from the WriteOnCon forums, but hadn't found a home yet.

Each contest round was a learning experience--it can be a tremendous motivation to nail down your specific voice and style, once you've read a dozen entries for your genre. Seeing them all in one place really brings home what the agent experiences in their inbox, and how your work must be fresh and different to stand out.

One of the last pitch contests I entered was The Writer's Voice, run jointly in 2013 by Brenda Drake, Cupid of Cupid’s Literary Connection, Krista Van Dolzer of Mother. Write. (Repeat.) and Monica B.W. of Love YA . The format was meant to encourage writers to establish their characters and voice right away, and grab the attention of an agent in those first 250 words. I entered Crow's Rest and crossed my fingers.

But here's the thing--I never made it past the first round in this contest, and I still learned a ton (and made those connections that I started out talking about in this post). And yes, it stung that CR didn't make the cut, but I also knew there were other opportunities out there--and I just needed to find the right match.

That right match for Crow's Rest didn't end up coming through a contest--a few weeks after TWV, I submitted the winning bid on a 70-page critique with editor Vikki Ciaffone of Spencer Hill Press in an auction. That critique turned into an offer of publication, and Crow's Rest is coming out from SHP in only a month (okay, so I glossed over a TON of steps in between)!

I likely wouldn't have even heard about the auction without my writerly connections, nor would I have taken a chance on bidding for the critique if I hadn't earned some confidence from the contest feedback.

So in honor of those connections, I caught up with some of the Alumni of The Writer's Voice 2013:

Leslie S. Rose, who I actually got to meet in person recently! She's had several short stories included in anthologies

Me on the left, Leslie on the right!

Marieke Nijkamp, who blogged about the part contests played in landing her own agent, and whose debut THIS IS WHERE IT ENDS is coming from Sourcebooks in 2016

Lucas Hargis, whose TWV entry is here, and who got two agent offers (and accepted one) by the end of that year

Christie Murillo, who also feels the contest camaraderie so strongly that she thanked a bunch of us who had been in the trenches with her in her "I Have An Agent!" announcement

Molly Pinto Madigan, whose TWV entry also had a contemporary twist on a fairy tale/legend

Pete Catalano, alias Billy Payne, whose debut novel ARTIFACTS is coming from Month9 Books in Fall 2016

Heidi Lang and Kati Bartkowski, co-authors of Mystic Cooking, who signed with Jen Azantian in February

J Larkin, who signed with Carrie Pestritto of Prospect Agency, as a result of TWV 2013

And, if you'd like to read an excerpt from Crow's Rest, Brenda Drake is hosting a reveal on her blog today! Go check it out by clicking her banner below!

Share With Us!

I'm curious! (as writers tend to be) :-) How is your current writing project coming along? Are you keeping up with goals you might have made at the first of the year?

I'm in the editing stages of book 3, waiting on the first round of beta readers, working on the back cover blurb and cover art...semi-distracted by the spring cleaning bug.  

How 'bout you? Anything exciting going on in your world? Share with us!

Democracy of Storytelling

A lot of things said on Twitter are inscrutable or inane, but sometimes it feels as if someone is talking right to you, whether they are @messaging you or not.

Like this:

It's a matter of philosophy. I don't see YA as a kingdom w/ reigning kings & queens. I see it as multi-cultural republic, room for everybody
— Patrick Ness (@Patrick_Ness) April 23, 2014

Earlier tweet was because I keep bumping into folks who think they are YA royalty or who refer to others as. Nah, Democracy of Storytellers.
— Patrick Ness (@Patrick_Ness) April 23, 2014

It often feels that publishing is a tiered system. At the top are the kings and queens -- the bestsellers, award winners, and A-listed. The tiers below are multiply layered and hard to define -- lead title,  published or unpublished, published by big 5, published by major press, hardcover, paperback or ebook, carried in bookstores, self-published, agented, unagented, genre or literary, adult or children's. 

As a writer, I often feel slighted, whether a bookstore or library won't carry my book or a reviewer won't look at it -- sometimes something as simple as a writer I admire won't follow me back on twitter. I know I'm not a king or queen.

So it's nice to be reminded that no one is. This is a democracy of storytellers.

We all have stories to write and share. We represent ourselves when we write, and when we publish or choose not to. One writer, one vote.

We represent ourselves when we read -- one reader, one vote every time we pick up a book.

Sure, democracies have power shifts, tiers, and factions of their own. The comparison doesn't hold up to heavy scrutiny.

This may be a multicultural republic, but representation on the shelves, lists, and award rosters doesn't match the citizens who are writing and reading. Everyone can write, but not everyone has not have equal platform to be heard. There may room for everyone, but most of that room is on the bottom.
But at the moment when I write a story and when a reader reads it, the relationship between us is the same. One story, one reader, one vote with every book.

About Kell Andrews:  Kell Andrews writes picture books and middle grade novels. Deadwood, her middle-grade contemporary fantasy about a cursed tree, comes out from Spencer Hill Middle Grade in June 2014.