8 hours x 60 minutes = 480 minutes
/
267 entries
=
an entry every 1.7 minutes
+
Makers Mark
=
I can still do this.
UPDATE 9:23 PM: 
My wife came through for me: homemade eggnog in a mason jar!!
Take your writing to the next level!
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Ah, to be newly wed again..
In a few years you’ll ask, “Remember when you used to make me eggnog?”
She’ll nod, “Oh…ya.”
Then she’ll go to bed.
Dude. Wow.
I just want to say that I really love it that YOUR WIFE! is there to supply you with necessary beverages. It was totally worth all those guest posts now that I know you were gone for a very good reason. Congratulations!
(She knows what you do for a living, right?)
Also the word verification is “inmated” which is somewhat appropriate and slightly scary.
Didn’t know you were married. Is this recent?
I love homemade egg nog! I love mason jars! Your wife is awesome.
Married? My hopes are dashed. Sigh . . .
Seriously, congrats! And as for the contest, well, that’s what you get for being so popular and having such a cool blog.
Verification ‘word’ schotras – sounds vaguely german
Precie, that was me who busted Nathan on his wedding. It wasn’t a rumor – he got hitched on 11/8.
His wife stood by him during the last contest so she knew what she was in for when she said, “I do.”
For those of you NOT entering the contest –
Maybe now is a good time to peruse the right-hand side of the blog, where all the links are…just found a list of Top-10 lit mags that way…another link led to a blog entry about an audio cassette recording of “Atonement.”
Or maybe somebody wants to step up to the plate and sort the contest entries by genre…too bad blogger doesn’t have a function like that…search and sort…
I posted the contest on the yahoo group for the Online Writing Workshop for Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Horror.
It appears a few have already entered, but more are on the way.
Have fun!
You’re over 600 entries in less than 24 hours. No one will think less of you if you cut it off today. You do need your beauty sleep.
I abstained this time. But I love reading the entries.
Congratulations! Nothing like starting off your marriage with a contest that chains you to the computer. Good luck. 🙂
I’ve noticed lots of entries this time have included what the time of day/night is in the first paragraph.
I don’t think that happened last time — not that there’s anything wrong with that, just an observation.
It’s okay! Makers Mark makes everything better.
Except driving.
There’s that “wife” word again! Congrats!
When I posted my entry, it was already creeping towards the 300…Maybe next time, you should break it up by genre?
I think it’s great that you do this stuff.
CUTE! I love Mason jars! Also: WIFE! 🙂
You can do it! Rah, rah, rah!!!
Thanks for the contest, and good luck with the judging!!!
And please don’t do the random number generator, despite how much easier that would be… I’d like to get rejected based on my crappy writing, not on luck. 🙂
Nathan,
Congratulations on your marriage! The eggnog looks yummy.
Hi Nathan,
Entered the contest. The way entries are stacking up now, I don’t envy the work you have ahead of you–many thanks for doing this for us.
E
haha, well, you’re clearly a masochist. Writers love to share their stuff, haha!
Makers Mark is my husband’s favorite too.
I see everyone missed my “psychic reading”
…
Anonymous said…
Congrats on your wedding, Nathan!???
(???)
Welcome back!
December 3, 2008 1:46 PM
Just in case you did too, Nathan, Congrats again.
This time around I am not entering, just reading and listening, hopefully learning. Alway ups my game.
Nathan, you just might hit that 2,000. Poor guy! I think you’ll finish up today with about 850 🙂
Opening paragraphs should only be one sentence long =) (That would make it easier for you, anyway, if everyone followed that rule…)
Nathan,
I am now officially frightened. I knew about the slush pile. I knew about the odds of rising out of the slush pile.
After reading a good percentage of the entries, I finally understand how difficult it is for an agent or an editor to pick anything. After the first couple hundred, you start seeing some patterns and similarities. After the first few hundred, I became unable to distinguish good from bad. It was like going to a pot luck dinner and being forced to taste 1000 casseroles and salads. Some of them probably were very tasty, but my taste buds are dead and I can’t tell.
I can only assume that you have a better ability to focus than I do. I hope the eggnog and Makers Mark helps as well.
Okay, call me dense, I totally missed the wife reference, Nathan!
Congratulations to you both!!! I hope you had a wonderful wedding and a fabulous honeymoon.
I’m not going to make any comments about the strain of this contest on a new marriage – if I’m not mistaken you were engaged during the last few contests – so she knew what she was in for and she’s likely a saint.
Congratulations on your marriage!
That said, thanks so much for holding this contest. Good luck reading all the entries….
🙂
QUESTION:
What is that in the top right hand corner of your picture? Are those stars? I only ask because it has been so long since I’ve seen them in real life… lol. Once upon a time, I lived in Nowheresville, KY. We had stars though 🙂
anon-
Christmas tree lights.
Anon here… yeah, I’m clearly an idiot. Oops.
You know what’s great about this – not merely the contest part – but seeing it through your eyes. I went through the list and I think it actually would not be that hard to weed them out. Being hyper-critical of my own work, I would cut me immediately to the NO CHANCE IN HECK list.
It is reveletory to realize how important it is to make those first impressions so meaningful. You can see in a lot of the offerings that there might be a compelling story there – MIGHT – but there are some where it is evident that there is ALREADY a compelling story there.
That really makes me look at my own novel – which I tend to think is absolutely freaking brilliant, but is hard to demo in a short query or first paragraph – in a different light. Perhaps if my queries continue to get slushpiled, and even if they don’t – I need to step it up and look at it with those sort of eyes.
Just for fun, after going through all those and synthesizing those lessons, I theorized how to start my next work, a novella I call FINGERED…
“He absolutely freaked. The toilet flushed before he could really get a good look at it. But Emanuel Dexter Bradley was certain – well, almost certain – that it was a human finger he had seen swirling amidst his own refuse in the bottom of the bowl. What the freaking hell? He was too hung over to think much of it at first. It was a conditioned reflex he supposed – that of looking in the bowl and taking account of what was there. It was as automated and hard wired as the automated flusher itself. Now he was replaying the last few minutes over and over in his mind. Snapped to lucidity by what he had seen – or imagined that he had seen. By what he had felt or imagined that he had felt. And it scared the living shit out of him.”
The novella that is growing from that has not half the resonance of my finished novel, but I bet a dime it would get more requests for fulls just because it hits you immediately.
That is a really valuable lesson, Nathan and I’m trying to figure out just what the heck to do with that knowledge based on what I have…
Professor Tarr-
Not sure I agree! I’m not necessarily looking to be grabbed by the throat. I appreciate good writing and subtlety.
No, I understand what you’re saying. And the opening has to fit the context and the tone of the remainder of the novel – but there are some very good examples in the paragraphs submitted that grab you from the gitgo in ways that I don’t preesntly do. My work is very subtle and crafty in my novel – but it is slowly building as such.
An approach like I used in my tongue-in-cheek novella is entirely different, but it does grab attention and is reflective of the eschatalogical mystery story therein – such as it is.
But take for example some of my personal faves from the contest – the one with the cat dying and the old lady looking Walther Matthau – that pulls me in immediately! I want to read that book! Cracks me up, has intrigue and is quirky and fun. Same thing for the one with the girl not being a goal post. Probably ultimately not my kind of story, but I recognize the craft in it and have great respect for how it was done.
Those grab you immediately in a sort of visceral way that is very good, descriptive of character and voice and something I’m trying to reconcile with my own work. Even though I start right in the middle of my novel, I feel I am currently not aggressive enough early enough to show where the fun of the book will be. Why the reader should care to continue as it were.
I think the craft has to fit the context of the story. The toilet scene is not reflective of the lyricism of my other work, But I believe there must be a way I can sharpen my earlier parts to show that there will be twists and turns and not to trust narrative voices – even if they are in your head – which is a constant theme in my novel, THE MISSIONARY AND THE BRUTE.
Does that sort of make sense? The main thing I want to say is that there are a LOT of good examples in the contest that help all of us rethink how we write – early especially.
“My wound is geography”
Four words… Elegant, cleverly evocative. Granted, Conroy had to sustain that lyricism throughout the novel, and he did, but that was immediately compelling.
In the contest, there is one piece that is a simple description of a place and it uses the phrase ashen stain in concert with blues and whites and blemishes of imagery that is very very simple and really doesn’t say too much, but draws one in with its eloquent voice. I don’t know if the novel is one I’d buy, but I’d love to hear someone read it…
There is something special there.
Ultimately, given the options of having billions of words at our disposal every day, we make near-immediate choices based on taste, subject, theme and characters we can relate to – but if we don’t get past that first paragraph, we may miss it. To have that paragraph seem to be emblematic of the work that follows is a gift and a lot of folks here have that in wonderfully diverse ways.
I’m going to be annoying here and say it (and I’m not trying to start an argument or anything), but some of the first paragraphs are awefully long, like say a few backspaces turned three paragraphs into one. Writers, you are a crafty bunch.
So Nathan, here’s a question… What if you pick someone and they don’t know which item they want as a prize? Will you help them choose the one that might benefit them the most with the stage they are at in their writing?