Rambling Mind

I don't really don't have a topic tonight. Guess I just want to do something other than work on EPICon or read the first five pages of contest entries.

It's surprising how much you can tell about a book with just five pages. Out of the entries I've judged so far, two have great hooks. I mean "don't want this to end" hooks. Two others are bland. But one thing about judging a contest like this is it makes you rethink your own first few pages of your WIP. Do I have a good hook? Will I capture the reader? Or will an agent/editor read them and think, what a hack?

Do you ever sit back and wonder how you can be so confident in life, but so insecure in the pages of the novel you put so much of yourself into? I stress over every word, sentence, paragraph, and chapter. Then when I type in The End, I stress over The End. Is it a good ending? Should I have gone further into this part or that part? Did I miss a comma? Should that comma even be there?

I entered my novel, Fugue Macabre: Ghost Dance in a contest. That little voice in the back of my mind keeps asking, "Who do you think you are? That book isn't good enough to win any contest, much less that one!"

Some days I want to walk away. Say to hell with it. I'm not a Faulkner or Hemingway. Then other days I think, "Hey, they had to start somewhere, too. I'm sure even Faulkner and Hemingway had rejection letters filed away. Lord knows I do. Not quite enough to paper the bathroom walls yet.

Okay, rejection letters...I've received those useless form rejections. They tell me nothing of why the work was rejected. Just...sorry, Charlie Girl. But I've received a few personal rejections, the ones that say close but no prize. Those are becoming flimsy from my reading them so many times, trying to read between the lines. I've not mastered that talent yet. But I'm working on it.

Okay. I'm finished. Go back to your regular scheduled reading. ;)