One Wrong Word

I was all prepared with what I wanted to blog today. I’d mapped it all out in my head this morning while I drove to work (which, btw, took 55 minutes because, you know, IT SNOWED HALF AN INCH and the people here in Cincinnati are terrified of White Death no matter how much it is).

I was also all prepared to let this Baker’s Dozen 2013 contest go until the first round results on November 22. I figured y’all were tired of hearing about it and—without knowing how I did—I didn’t have much else to say.

Wrong on both accounts. I blame the Authoress, though not harshly. The title of her blog today is Common Problems with Beginnings. Now, as someone who entered the beginning 250 words of my MS, I couldn’t not read what the Authoress had to say. (Not to mention the fact that I would have read it anyway.) If you want to read what she blogged, go here: http://misssnarksfirstvictim.blogspot.com/2013/11/common-problems-with-beginnings.html

For those of you who don’t want to click there, the gist of her blog is that, while reading through the slush of Baker’s Dozen 2013 entries, she and Jodi Meadows have rejected many for the same reasons.

The reasons? Well, for that The Authoress suggests you read what Jodi Meadows wrote about it. For that, go here:

http://www.publishingcrawl.com/2013/11/12/common-problems-with-beginnings/

And what Jodi Meadows is saying?

There are bad way to begin books. Or, not necessarily bad ways, but ways that you should be careful when using. She divides these into five categories:

1. Starting in the wrong place

2. Car crashes

3. Instacreep

4. No grounding

5. Unsympathetic characters

I’m not going to describe each here when Jodi Meadows has done that for you if you click the above link. The problem, though, is that for the rest of my afternoon I kept thinking about this. I even opened my MS from my email to reread my first 250 words and see if they fit in one of these categories.

So…do they?

I DON’T KNOW. I can’t tell. I really can’t tell. I’m not a good judge, I think. I’m too close to it, too attached to my words. I think it’s in the right place, it’s not a car crash or the like, there’s not creepiness per se, I’ve grounded it as best I could in the first 250 before further grounding in the subsequent words, and Hazel seems like a nice (if crazy) girl. I THINK.

I’m not going to know for sure until November 22…and even then there’s no way to tell for sure if my rejection is because of one of those five things. If I even get a rejection. See what happens? SEE? I second guess everything, then third, fourth, fifth guess it. I’m afraid that one mistake, one wrong word, will be my downfall.

Nevertheless, I hold out hope that my entry is one of the good ones. The Authoress tweeted one night—while reading through said slush—that she and Jodi Meadows both loved an entry. The chances of that being my entry? 1/300. Still, someone has to be that 1.