Apr 23 2008
“Why did you enter the Golden Heart?”
Not necessarily in order of importance:
- Peer pressure. Specifically, I was threatened with bodily harm by someone from whom such threats must be taken seriously if I didn’t enter.
- To get some mileage out my RWA membership. The primary benefit of RWA membership seems to me to be the opportunity to join your local, online, and specialty chapters. I’m not much of a joiner, so that doesn’t do me a lot of good. However, members do get a cheaper GH entry fee and I happened to have a finished manuscript, so I could and did make use of that benefit.
- To see what would happen. What does a randomly selected group of strangers think of my first 50 pages? (Apparently they didn’t unanimously hate it.) If my story finals, will that make any difference in terms of queries? (Yes, “Golden Heart finalist” has proven a magical phrase which I probably should bandy about much more widely.) Something happened I didn’t even consider: I received a good bit of e-mail from some fairly impressive people who didn’t know I existed before March 26 (and certainly don’t remember me now, so I have no delusions about my mad “networking” hookups), and it’s really, really cool to open up your inbox and see congrats from Ms.-OMG-I-love-her-books!!1!!! nestled between the pnile nhansement spam.
I didn’t expect to final, and it’s nice to have done so. That’s all. I didn’t cure cancer. I didn’t bring peace to the Middle East. (And I don’t recall ever behaving as if I had, so that good bit of the other kind of e-mail is totally uncalled for.) I don’t expect the GH to serve as the yellow brick road to certain publication, but there must be some small advantage in bringing my name and my writing to people’s attention in this fashion, so I’m glad I was bullied into entering.
Now, off to write about something completely unrelated to my GH story so all my eggs aren’t getting stale in that basket…
5/20
5/27
6/3
6/24
7/1
7/29
8/5
8/5
9/30
April 24th, 2008 at 6:53 am
The idea that you received hate mail for finaling in the GH really disturbs me. It makes me wonder if that kind of asshattery is a writerly phenomenon or a female phenomenon or female writerly phenomenon…or just an asshattery phenomenon.
Behavior like that is one of the reasons I quit RWA. People keep telling me this kind of thing is the exception and not the rule, and I’m thrilled you got emails from folks you like and respect, but (TO ME!) the whole RWA vibe gives the baby Jesus colic. (YMMV, and probably does.)
However, congratulations again on the GH, and please keep us posted on the progress of the manuscript. I’m interested.
April 24th, 2008 at 10:28 am
It’s hard to take hate mail seriously when “the GH is a joke” appears in the same run-on sentence as “I deserved to final more than you.”
Dear Douchebag, Was the contest a joke when you entered, or did it become so only after you didn’t final? So sorry to have single-handedly destroyed your only opportunity to get published. Kiss kiss, Kerry
I’m pretty sure it’s a female asshattery phenomenon, since I know females who don’t act that way and writers who don’t act that way, and even the male asshats I know (and there are a not insignificant number of those) make more effort to be less transparently ridiculous.
But hey, nutjobs jumping out of the bushes to attack is a sign you’re moving up in the world, so it’s all good, baby!
April 24th, 2008 at 1:47 pm
Good point, and an alarmingly healthy attitude overall. Cut it out - you make the rest of us look bad.
April 24th, 2008 at 4:16 pm
Oh noes, she is onto my evil plan…
Or perhaps
No, definitely