The Emily Contest Results

My Emily Contest results came in earlier this month. For those unfamiliar with the Emily Contest, each submitted story, really the first 7k words of the story, is read and critiqued by three different book industry professionals.

I did not make the finals round, but I received useful suggestions, comments and criticisms. What have I learned from the scores and comments?

• I scored well enough from all the judges to be confident in my ability to craft stories that people would enjoy reading, besides my husband and best friend. (BTW, thanks Al and Jen for being my story guinea pigs!)
• I  still have a ways to go to get the mechanics of story writing under my belt. Which really isn't a surprise given that I've only written two and a half stories, taken only two writing courses, and almost finished reading a creative writing book.
• That these two stories, under the writing surgical knife and with some tweaks, could be stories that agents would be willing to represent.

With the judges' comments, I have a good idea of what I should do in order to make each story stronger and to improve my writing craft. I already knew I would busy in 2011, but now I have some concrete direction.

So, I send a hearty thank you to all the Emily Contest Judges. Good luck to all those that did make the final round. And here's to me getting busy.