Life sucks ... and then not so much

Well, yesterday seemed like a repeat of the previous day; waiting anxiously all morning for a call, email, any kind of SIGN and then by early afternoon resignation that I had not made it to the finals list of the second contest. I was down (and yeah cursing inside my head helped some), but kept telling myself I didn’t enter these things to win. I entered them to get some straightforward, unbiased feedback on my work from experienced authors. After all, apart from these judges NO-ONE has ever read what I write. I received the critique sheets for the second contest late last night via email. All I can say is WOW! The comments were incredible and really resonated and I got really good scores!!! There were inconsistencies across the 3 critiques (they’re people after all) and I think one of the judges really didn’t care for the ‘hotness’ level of the content, but the comments were incredible. They all indicated the writing was good!!!! One in particular really spoke to me and I think it’s really going to allow me to go back and fix some issues with the start of the novel. This was the one that actually contained the most about what was wrong and should be improved. The rest is actually easy to fix. I wish I could give that judge a big, fat hug but I guess the most awesome thing about these contests is the anonymity which is why the feedback is so valuable; it’s real and direct and doesn’t pull any punches but it’s delivered in a caring way (at least the ones that I saw). I am eagerly awaiting the score sheets from the first contest to compare notes and consolidate so I can create a game plan to incorporate the changes.


SO, yesterday I went from feeling like this:

TO THIS:

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
I kinda feel like it's a new era and I'm seeing things with much more clarity!