Book Placed in Writing Contest

I received official word today from the North East Ohio RWA (Romance Writers Association) that I placed THIRD in the Paranormal Division of their Cleveland Rocks Contest‏.

This is pretty amazing. I wrote the book I submitted, Wolf Cub, during the month of November in 2008 - right after the death of my younger sister. I've been working on it constantly since. I've joined one online group after another for critiques and feedback, been through two free (and one paid) editor to check over my grammar, and rewritten every chapter many times. Well, most every chapter.

The longer I work on my WIP (work in progress), the more I realize I need to go back and address in the chapters I just finished. So while Chapter 1 has been rewritten about twenty times and is often referred to as nearly perfect, I haven't touched the last two chapters since I wrote them originally - in 2008.

I've been on a break from writing since about mid-December. Not worn out or tired of writing. Just taking a step back and giving my business some attention.

And I've known I was a finalist in this competition since before Christmas. As one of three books sent to the Agent to rank, Wolf Cub was definitely going to place. To be honest, I figured we'd place third and I was alright with that. I haven't been writing long, don't get to spend a lot of time practising my writing skills, and have never taken a class on writing. It's just something I love and always have wanted to do. Once you loose a sibling around your age, or younger, your list of "someday I'm going to do that" looks much more important.

So, no. I'm not disappointed to have received 3rd place. I'm still stunned I placed at all. I will be receiving an actual winners certificate via the mail. I also received a critique from the agent who placed the top entries.

Ethan Ellenberg of the Ellenberg Literary Agency had to say about Wolf Cub:

"I’m afraid this piece didn’t work for me. The narrative moves along and the story is fairly clear but it suffers tremendously from a lack of world building. It seems like a contemporary that has had the ‘were’ people element simply tacked on. The town they are in lacks visual establishment, seems like its Anywhere, Texas. There is no sense of the paranormal, just the simple assertion that there are ‘were’ people and the wolves had their own mores, culture,etc. This is a big problem—we just don’t believe it much and we don’t care—the magic of paranormal fiction isn’t here. The two main characters could work, they have potential, but they must inhabit a world that speaks to us with magical potential."

Not great. But not as bad as it could be. I've been warned countless times not to take the feedback from contest to heart. They are, after all, only one person's opinion. Besides, I'm a creative - and mostly upbeat -- person. So when I read the above, what I came away with was . . .

"I don't like your story. The narrative moves. Story is fairly clear. Need to integrate paranormal earlier. Main characters have potential."

Not to shabby at all.

But I REFUSE to go back at this point and start rewriting the front of my WIP again. I'm going to complete the end, then I'll revisit the integration of the paranormal earlier on.