*Gasp* Hooray!

[matril]

Well, I've been lurking for a while at this blog, wondering if I might work up the courage to participate in one of the Secret Agent contests. It's a really excellent idea: an anonymous agent volunteers to critique 50 entries, consisting of the first 250 words of the participants' novels. The main question: is the agent hooked enough to want to keep reading? At the end of the contest the agent chooses the winners and runners-up, and the prizes usually involve a request for full manuscripts, partials, or queries. Other participants are encouraged to critique as well, of course, so there's the added bonus of a kind of writer's group. This contest is pretty darn popular, as you might imagine, so this time the administrator decided to choose the participants by lottery rather than by whoever sent the first 50 entries. (With the latter method she had to close submissions about a minute after opening them!) I thought I might stand a slightly better chance of getting chosen randomly than by attempting to squeeze my entry into that tiny minute window, and the current Secret Agent is accepting fantasy among other genres, so I figured, why not? I'm taking a break from querying right now anyway. I cast my lot and crossed my fingers.

And I'm one of the fifty! Hooray! And, eep! Now I'm going to have dozens of people reading my tender little first 250 words, and possibly/probably cutting me deeply with their critiques, not to mention that the Secret Agent is usually pretty blunt in saying, "No, not hooked, sorry." And what if the Agent is one of the five who already rejected me? Eep! My first 250 words aren't awful, but they're probably not the greatest part of my novel. Eep! All right, I need to just settle back and be glad my number got picked. Deep breath.

Comments

[sonetka.livejournal.com]

Hooray! Time enough to worry about all those things tomorrow - right now I'm just happy that you won the preliminary lottery! It's a step in the right direction, anyway. (Besides, didn't only one of those agents ask for the first page of the MS? If it's one of the other four, perhaps the scales will fall from their eyes as they read the actual story :)).

[matril.livejournal.com]

Well, from the name on the response emails, I can assume that some of the agents never saw my query at all, since it was rejected by their assistants. Perhaps I can cling to that hope as well... ;)

[rebebba.livejournal.com]

Congratulations! I think you have a very good first 250 words, so while I'm not going to say "Oh, well of course you're going to win, no doubt about it!" (because that would be stupid) I think it is fair to say you have a good fightin' chance.

[matril.livejournal.com]

Really? The troll in my head says that it's a 250-word yawnfest. "You're pregnant, Taira." "Waah!" And so on, so on, ad nauseum....

Yay!

[melitusj.livejournal.com]

No matter what happens you win, this sounds like a great opportunity!