Monday, April 26, 2010

Contests rock my socks off (vote for me!)

Alright, so I feel it's necessary to say that you should vote for the sentence you think is best.

BUT if you want to vote for me, do. Click here.

Now that you've voted for me, let me explain this shindig. Dystel and Goderich Literary Agency has a blog, and each of their agents writes about various things (but mostly advice about the publishing industry.

Jim McCarthy, in a post about the value of first lines, decided to do a contest:

"You’ve all surely heard that agents make decisions really fast, and if we aren’t entranced by your writing within 6.2 seconds or somesuch, we’ll just move on to the next thing. This is, for the most part, entirely true. So let’s see how quickly you can win us (and your fellow blog readers) over. Post the first line of your manuscript in the comments below by the end of the day on Thursday, 4/22. I’ll narrow it down to a select group of finalists, and then we’ll have a poll for you to judge who had the best, most intriguing first line."

I submitted my first line, not thinking much of it. There were hundreds of entries, but it turns out he liked mine enough to put it in the finalist round! The prize for the winner is consideration for a FULL MANUSCRIPT. Whew. That's a doozie!

My first line: "I wondered if the girl sitting at the front desk knew that things like me existed."

There are nine AMAZING sentences there, though, and (not to sound like a girl in a pageant BUT) I'm just really honored to be among them :)

So go vote!

Thanks!

1 comment:

  1. Hey, just a thought... what if your first sentence read: "I wondered if the front-desk girl knew that things like me existed."

    It just came to me. Feel free to hate it if you think it sucks.

    LOVE.

    ReplyDelete