LaurelWanrow.com

… there is no better inspiration for a writer than a contest page limit to force one to look at what you thought was a perfectly good synopsis, and ruthlessly cut it. Add to that limit the contest’s drop-dead deadline, and you are set!

Can you tell I entered another contest? Waited until the last day, because I knew I had a great synopsis I’d used this fall to enter the On The Far Side. Passages placed second in that contest. I’ve just been through a series of critiques with the first third of the manuscript through the fantasy chapter critique group and knew the pages were polished to be even better than before.

So I sat down, in the morning mind you, on the last day to enter the Washington Romance Writers Chapter contest, The Marlene. This is one of my local chapters, so I’d been hearing

Just as I’m sure everyone else is doing, today I’m evaluating where I am in my writing career. And where I’d like to be.  We have so many opportunities these days and so many things to distract us. Insert internet for both of those. I’ve taken some great classes and joined a very helpful crit group, but I’m spending too much time reading rather than writing. I’m still in the sorting and prioritizing phase with my resolutions, but (nod to Oprah) this I know :

Order Debra Dixon’s Goal, Motivation and Conflict

Read the craft books I own

Review the remaining lessons of Warrior-Writer class

Select another continuing ed class

Refine list of agents to query

Participate in crit group

Take website class and polish website, esp home page.

And in actual writing …

Wildflowers and Winged Boys – Rewrite beginning to submit requested partial by mid-Jan. Apply new edit ideas from crit group

Passages – Finish the edits