Taking the New Girl for a Spin

I recently completed a major rewrite of chapter one of my daughter’s and my debut* novel, THE LAST PRINCESS. The process actually included substantial rewrites of chapters two and four, as well.  I ended up cutting about 10 pages and 3,000 words from our manuscript.

The thing about the novel up to this point is that it had been vetted and reviewed by numerous people, in critique groups and by beta readers.  This new stuff hasn’t been read by scores of people. It’s kind of raw. I just have one intimate (and very experienced) group of writers looking at my changes. But the manuscript still seems to have that new car smell, and taking it out for a joy ride is practically irresistible.

So I have entered it into two new contests.

The first truly is a new contest; Samantha Fountain’s Pitch to Publication.  A couple of dozen freelance editors have donated their time to participate in a process that will take several lucky writers all the way from a pitch + 5 pages potentially to a signed book deal.  So I entered or brand new first 5 pages. It would be nice to get at least one step beyond the “Your entry was received” stage. Wish us luck.

The other contest is Lara Willard’s #pg70Pit.  This contest is unique, in that what you are actually entering is just the 70th page of your manuscript.  All of the changes I recently made to THE LAST PRINCESS were well before page 70, but remember, I cut 10 pages, so the new page 70 is rather removed from where it was when I first heard about this contest.  So, really, I’m entering new material here, too.  Sort of.  Close enough for a joy ride.

Win or lose, I’m hoping for some good feedback, which I can use to polish these new chapters before jumping once again into the slushy blind query pool.  Wish us luck!

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*”Debut” in the sense that it is our first novel, not in the sense that it is actually debuting anywhere.