I’ve had a secret WIP in progress for several months, and now she’s ready to share:

Rachel Diana

 
5 June
6 lbs 9 oz

Blogging may be spotty for the next little while, but we’re all doing well. (And no, you didn’t miss anything—I was saving this as a surprise for the Internetz. Oh, and as a reminder: this is #3 for us.)

That’s right, I’m hosting a contest—and soon. Why not now? Because this is the kind of contest you have to get ready for.

I want to share our best writing lessons, no matter where that lesson came from. It could be an insight you received from revising your own work, advice from a critique partner, an enlightening conference/presentation/class, a great writing book—anything. It could be an outlook, a technique, a strategy, or (again) anything.

I’m still hammering out the details for the contest, so I’m open to suggestions, and the information below is subject to change. (This post will always be updated with the latest information on the contest.)

What do you have to do to enter?

Submit a guest blog post, 300-1000 words in length, on the best writing lesson you’ve learned. Tell us how you discovered (or accepted!) your lesson, how you changed your writing because of that lesson, and most of all, how we can apply the same lesson to our writing.

Feel free to include links and a short biography, as well as pictures (this will work best if you upload them to Flickr first—as always, be cognizant of copyrights!). More than 2-3 links to your own blog within the post is a bit much, don’t you think?

To be eligible, entries must be received by 1 June 2010 in my mailbox at contest AT jordanmccollum.com . That’s two weeks to look over your writing life and come up with a couple pages. Not hard, right?

The winner

Here’s how it’ll work: All blog posts that meet the guidelines will be posted, one per day, in the order I receive them. Each post will have two weeks to receive comments. The finalists will be the posts with the most comments (excluding comments by the author of the post). The number of finalists will depend on the number of entries.

The top commented articles will then go to a panel of judges (who, um, have yet to be determined).

The prizes!

Um…. I’m not totally sure what the prizes will be. I’m thinking a writing book would be most appropriate. I’d like to be able to give the finalists as well as the grand prize winner. So this is one area I’ll be taking suggestions on!

How to win

Write an engaging, thoughtful post. Try to encourage discussion with a prompt or question at the end of your post. (Please, do not bribe people to comment with giveaways!)

Promote your post. Email your writing friends about it. Tweet about it. Share it on Facebook. Take the URL with you to critique group.

Participate in the discussion. Although your comments won’t count toward your total, it won’t hurt you to interact with the people who do comment. In fact, it’s a great way to fuel a discussion. (But as always, be civil.)

Suggestions?

I’m still open to suggestions for fine-tuning this contest. Should I not reveal who the authors of each entry are until after their two weeks are up? What would be a good finalist/grand prize? Who should I have judge?

Photo by terren in Virginia

I have a guest post today at Jagi Lamplighter’s blog. I’m writing about using something that doesn’t even matter to increase the suspense in your story.

Suspense on a story level and tension on a scene level are both vital to creating a readable story. Tension compels readers to read a scene, while suspense keeps them hooked until the next scene. There are many things we can do to heighten and highlight the tension in our writing. One technique that has been used to great effect is to use something that doesn’t matter at all, something that the reader doesn’t care about.

Click on over to read more!

And welcome to any visitors clicking through from Jagi’s blog! To read more about tension and suspense, check out the blog series. And tomorrow, we’ll be back to our current blog series on backstory.

I know I promised a series on backstory, but something came up this weekend.

I don’t make a secret of it—I hate writing contests. And this is because I have never gotten useful (or even non-contradictory!) advice from them. That may be a reflection on the organization sponsoring the contests I’ve entered, of course, because after my first contest through another organization, I’m quickly beginning to change my mind.

This last weekend, I went to a writing conference. Despite my past experiences and with more than a little trepidation (and very low expectations), I entered the conference’s first chapter contest a month ago. I was really hoping to place, of course, but I didn’t expect to do well.

Nevertheless, every time I happened to see the Saturday lunch hour in the conference schedule (“First chapter contest winners announced”), my hearing dulled, my heart pounded and my stomach shriveled. Just thinking about that day put me through the first stages of a panic attack.

(This made planning my conference schedule very stressful .)

Finally, lunch rolled around. About halfway through, the conference coordinator got up, and the pulled up the PowerPoint that would announce the winners on the two 20′ screens in the hall. To all 450 attendees.

They received almost 200 entries. They printed over 900 critiques which would be returned to each entrant after lunch. And then they started on the winners. I almost hoped they’d start with my category, just so I could have my disappointment and work to move on. But no—first came third place, non fiction: title, author. Second place. First place.

They moved on to General Fiction. And another category. And another.

And then my category, Mystery/Suspense. Third place. Not me. Hey, maybe this wasn’t so bad.

Second place. Not me. Oh. There was no way I took first place—so I had my answer. It wasn’t me. That’s okay, I know how much these things are the luck of the draw—get one judge who doesn’t love your chapter and you’re hosed. And not everybody loves everything I’ll ever write. That’s okay.

Seriously, this felt like the longest pause of the ceremonies. Despite my best efforts at consoling myself, I could hear the contest coordinator’s voice saying the title of my story over and over again.

Stop, I told myself. Don’t torment yourself.

“First place, Mystery/Suspense: Saints and Spies.” This time it wasn’t in my head. “By Jordan McCollum.”

So that little announcement is why we’re not starting a new series today. Tomorrow for sure.

This came at a time I really needed it. Many thanks to all those who helped me prepare the chapter. Thanks for a great conference, to all those who worked so hard to put it on. I also want to congratulate so many of my friends who also placed!

I’m planning my next series (starting next Monday!), and once again, I need your help. I need your questions, musings and and topics.

What do you want to know about backstory? What it is? How to tell it from the “real” story? How to work it in? Whether you need it?

As always, guest bloggers are welcome (check out my guest blogging guidelines here, but of course, the topic will be different this time around—you know, backstory?).

What do you want to know (or write!) about backstory?

Photo credits: question—Svilen Mushkatov