A B N A Vets Forum Didn't make the semi finals - ..

Hey all.  I am an official ABNA casualty.  Congrats to all who made it in.  Can't wait till I have the free time to read some excerpts. 

Who else went down in the trenches with me?

I've been lost in the trenches as well. Hopefully I'll have time to read excerpts this weekend...

I'm right there with you man.

ABNA just can't appreciate our obvious anime-esque tastes.

With that said, I'm going to take a break and let people help me get my first one better. I don't feel like rewriting it, I could because I write so much better now than I did when I first wrote it but I'd rather have people critique it and help me first.

Plus now I can focus my attention on my anime version woot!

This is only the beginning for us!

My rejection arrived late this morning. So I didn't make it. Boo-hoo.

In the greater scheme of things, it isn't that important. After all, it isn't the only contest and certainly not the only place to be published.

Onward and upward.

To those who made the semifinals -- congratulations! I don't have an account with amazon.com so I can't offer to review anyone. The best I can do is try to help the rest of us who didn't make it.

 

Those of us who made it aren't beyond needing help too.  For one thing, some of us will undoubtedly get cut next round (I expect to be one of these) and will be on the query trail too.  Most everyone I know from the forum knew there were revisions they wanted to make on their entry, that there just weren't time for before the deadline. And we have other projects we'd like feedback on, too.

 

 

Me too!

I like the way you say ABNA casualty! Much better than rejects!

Add my name to the list of breakthrough novels that didn't break. Back to the old query letter grindstone I guess...

Mine didn't make it.  It was an ok second draft - I need to clarify the plot better and I haven't gotten completely into the skin of one of the two Point of View characters. will post it soon here. 

I am on the outs. And it really sucks.  Never thought I'd go all the way, but really thought I'd make the top 1,000.   I need a focus and it's hard to come up with one.  I have to decide which book is the strongest, and then really tweak it. 

 

As for contests, I don't see myself entering another one.  There is less stress in sending off to agents and publishing houses.  This will be the way for me to go.  So if I post the first chapter of three seperate novels, can you help me decide which one I should focus on?

T

Hey Jace,

I too received my letter of condolences from amazon "We regret to inform you blah, blah, blah. 

I was surprisingly not as upset about it as I thought I would be.  I just put it with my stack of other "We regret to inform you...".  I guess it was because about a week before I entered the contest my local RWA had done a critique on my first chapter and gave me so much good advice to improve it with, that I had already started the revisions a few days before entering ABNA.  As a result of those revisions, which by the way is the version that I posted here, I am much happier.  I didn't make my goal of having the revisions complete by Jan 15th so I could start sending it out again.  But that's ok.  Goals can and will always change as we grow. 

 

Didn't make it either.  I'm revising my draft now and sending it out for family critiques.  Once I get their critiques in, I'm going to start putting chapters up here for you guys to review.

I plan to review as many of the 800+ as I can and have downloaded a couple (Leah, I'll definitely review yours as well!) but haven't had a chance to really read through them and critique yet.  The folks that made it deserve all of our support.

Hello. Larissa here. I entered my first novel in the contest and got my first rejection. I'm actually pretty excited about it! It makes me feel like a "real" writer (whatever that means). I came to this site through the official ABNA forum (I was mostly a lurker there) in hopes of getting some guidance on where I went wrong/where I went right and everwhere in between.

I'm out! My first ever submission. I wasn't as upset as I thought I would be by the whole thing just utterly confused. Ah, well, there are a million publishers out there. I plan to find one I like. Preferrably one that doesn't confuse me. =P

Jezz

Adam, I do agree that our anime-esque plotlines go underappreciated.  Anime is a bigger craze in the States now than it ever has been.  There is definitely a young(ish) audience out there who would pour money into books like ours.  The japanese would for sure.  I think its going to be hard consolidating our work with what is expected of popular "literature", but if we can land a sale on a first installment, we'll have more freedom of style in the later ones.

Lorri, thanks. ABNA "Vets" made me think of "casualties".  =P

Theresa.  Posting those chapters might not be a bad idea, but make sure to get multiple opinions.  I'm sure our tastes all differ, so what one of us likes best might be the least sellable.  At least I get the impression that what you are looking for is advice on which book you should try to focus on and try to get published.

V King, I actually stopped caring about advancing in ABNA about a month before they announced the semis.  I've made so many crucial adjustments and revisions to my book I'm actually glad I didn't make the semis here.  I think I put my reputation on the line too early, and the reviews of my excerpt would have been so critical I would have lost some credibility as a writer.  I'm taking my ABNA defeat as a blessing and continuing to analyze my novel and revise, and revise, and...

Larissa, we're in the same boat on it being our first time.  After finally recieving a query rejection with actual comments, I found the agent's comments very hard to swallow, so I posted my prologue on the ABNA forum for people to critique.  I got so much helpful advice and am thoroughly pleased with my rewrite.  Use this group to your advantage.  I'm sure if you post some content, there will be people willing to read it and offer advice.

Jezzilin, ABNA was certainly chock-full of confusion.  Amen.

Everyone, I'd like to share a little detail I noticed.  Some of you know of Steven Mathers from the ABNA forums.  He's landed a publisher and was waiting to find out about his status in this contest to see if he wanted to go with the publisher or shoot for ABNA gold.  Turns out he didn't make the semi-finals either.  I like to think this is a great example that ABNA is not an accurate indication of publishability.  Those of us who are out still have a lot of hope.

Steven, hope you don't mind me using you as an example.  Good luck with the publisher!

I found myself quite happy not to have made it. I've read some of the other rejects and if they could get rejected then there is something seriously wrong with the way things were done.
I thought some of the reviewers should have kept their personal opinions to themselves and not posted them at Amazon or on their blogs.

Didn't make it either. And I've been published in Semi-pro markets. Given the standard of a lot of the rejects, particularly in the genre sections, I must say that I believe something went seriously wrong. I heard a lot of the reviewers did not even review the genre they liked. I can only imagine what a general literature reader thought good scifi or fantasy today looks like. I can only assume that's why some of the finalists in my genre are of such poor quality, while general literature is of a much higher standard. Genre writers and readers typically read outside their category. Not so sure literature readers do that enough to know good from bad. 

Thanks Jace.  I posted the prologue for the entry I submitted to ABNA, and honestly, I think I should have left it out.  I think I was booted for content, but since they don't give a reason, I'll never know.  This is one of the books that I'm trying to decide about.  I figure it would be best to post three chapters of each, so that the reader gets a stronger picture of each.  Then I can get some really good feedback and go from there.

As a reader of all kinds of fiction, I have a kind of different take on the genre thing. 

I can see where someone who reads only a genre or two might not understand a genre they don't read, but someone whose interests are more general should be likely to perceive quality, whatever the genre. I don't think genre is an excuse for problems with style and mechanics, or issues distinct to fiction, like effective use of PoV, realism of dialogue, balance of dialogue and exposition, etc., and those are the things all reviewers should be judging on. Of course they may not have been using the appropriate criteria -- as I understand it, not every reveiwer was necessarily accumstomed to reviewing fiction.

I know some really excellent entries were rejected, and I suspect they were just too good for the contest, too quirky, too sophisticated.

I think there were many decisions at this first level that were simply flukes, or toss-ups. I think that's the nature of a contest like this, especially on its first run, when all the wrinkles still need to be ironed out.

But what's happening in this competition compares pretty favorably with the fate of manuscripts in an agent or editor's slush pile.  Usually these are rejected after the first paragraph or two, by interns and assistants who might be little better qualified than Amazon reviewers.  At least in this case we were promised a reading of a rather long excerpt.

Even excellent work is rejected over and over, in contests and slush piles.  I wouldn't waste time and energy dwelling on the inadequacies of this contest's procedures. They're the common inadequacies of all of the publishing industry.

What's most important is making sure our work is the best it can be, that we're constantly improving as writers.  I wish everyone who was cut could have access to their reviews, to help figure out what might make a difference in future submissions. 

We were guinea pigs, frankly.  If there's a next time, I'm sure things will run more smoothly, with more accountability.

I think some assumed that their writing needed work by the fact of rejection. I look at it as being only one person's opinion which, while it may be considered,  should not automatically be taken as a reason to change anything or do any editing.  Several opinions is a different matter.

I always assume my writing needs work, even when people tell me it's great.