Q&A Mark IV

May 9, 2009 at 10:44 am (P/S Novel Contest, Publishing, college, new york, q&a)
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Two of the greatest experiences of my week:

1. Walking down to a quaint little used bookstore with huge picture windows. I love used bookstores; they always put me in the best mood.

2. Finishing finals. End of story.

It’s hard to believe that I’m officially done with my first year of college. It’s even harder to believe that I’ll be in New York next week. I should start packing up for move-out, but it doesn’t feel real yet. And also I’m lazy.

I’m vowing to make this a productive summer, however, so keep me to that. I want to read 50 books, write, perfect, and hopefully submit a couple of pieces of short fiction, do some volunteering, hopefully find a job, learn Thai, and, if I can manage it, get some sleep. We’ll see how that goes.

From Elizabeth:
When you talk about publishing, do you mean PUSH will publish the piece as a novel on their website, electronically? Do they ever intimate that they will publish a hard copy for sale?

When I talk about publishing, I mean the traditional hard-copy-on-the-Barnes-&-Noble-shelf kind. That’s why the question of Scholastic taking on a young writer remains up in the air. It’s a big investment of time and money, and they want to be relatively sure, like any good business and any good publishing company, that they can get a return. They also have a name and a brand to protect.

That said, they’ve certainly done it before. Hail Caeser and Magic City are both by Gold Key winners, and I know that there have been a few others.

1 Comment

Q&A Mark III

April 29, 2009 at 1:05 am (P/S Novel Contest, editing, new york, q&a, writing)
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OhmyGodfinalsIhateyou. It’s crunch time people! Which means procrastination time, which means (drumroll) Question and Answer!

From Nicola:
I was hoping you could answer a question: the guidelines say that you need to submit an outline. How detailed does my outline need to be/how detailed was yours?

What they’re looking for is a standard synopsis, like any synopsis you would submit to an agent or editor. It seems that the judges don’t assume you’ve finished your novel, which makes it a little different from a normal pitch, but they do want to know where you’re going with it. I personally had finished my novel, so it was pretty easy to outline. Include all major characters, the setting and main plot points, and, if you have it, the ending. Mine was two pages exactly, double spaced. I don’t remember whether or not it said how long they wanted it, but two pages is a conservative standard so if they don’t specify I’d say go along those lines.
Here are a couple of resources:
How to Write a Synopsis (From Nathan Bransford, Literary Agent)
Workshop: Writing the Novel Synopsis
They can take a lot of work and honing, so don’t get frustrated if you find yourself slaving over writing and rewriting at this stage.

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From T.K. Harpene
When did you find out that you were advancing on/receiving an award in the contest? What did you gain from it (awards, lessons, etc.)?

I heard back on April 30th. Since the novel side of the competition is through PUSH and is read over there, you don’t actually move from state to nationals like in other categories in the Art and Writing awards. The pieces are all read over and narrowed down, and then the gold key and silver key winners are announced. David told me that he normally puts in a call, but I happened to be at work when he called my house, so he left his number and sent me an email. We finally got a chance to talk on the phone a few days later and he went over some more of the specifics on what they’d decided on their end and how things were going to progress.

As far as what I gained, I’m sure you’ve read over the specifics of the contest as often as I did prior to submitting, because everyone deserves to be a little OCD sometime. The guidelines are pretty straightforward without being straightforward at all, which seems to be a special talent among contest developers. Basically, you get invited to the national awards ceremony in New York, which I wasn’t able to attend, unfortunately, because I was out of the country. If you do get to go, I’m pretty sure that they have workshops and general get-togethers for contest winners in all the different categories. They’ll give you a medallion and a certificate, or mail it to you if you can’t attend. Since I had a complete manuscript I went ahead and sent it to David, but I’m not sure what happens otherwise. Perhaps you send what you have so far? I couldn’t really say. You’re offered an internship in New York to work on editing the manuscript (or finishing the novel, as the case may be). It’s an offer that can’t expire, so since I couldn’t go last summer I’ll be going this year, but I could have put it off even longer if I’d needed to. I don’t know too much about the logistics of the internship, except that it’s paid, but considering cost of living in NY, and the plane ride out there, I’ll be lucky to break even. I think that they tailor what you work on with where your manuscript is at at the time of your arrival, so I’ll probably be doing heavy rewrites. The hope is to start the piece on its way to publication, but Scholastic never commits itself to actually publishing. If the board decides that it’s publishable and thinks that it will sell, then you’ll be offered a standard contract and they’ll begin that process. They do have first rights to the piece, so if you decide not to publish with Scholastic (for some insane, unknown reason) you can’t actually shop it out to anyone else.

Hope those answers were helpful! Everyone is invited to ask anything they want and aid my procrastination campaign!

5 Comments

Q&A Mark II

January 25, 2009 at 5:41 pm (P/S Novel Contest, q&a, travel)
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Let me just say that “plane” and “accident” are two words that you never want coupled when you’re picking up your boarding passes. But then I suppose that hearing them is a far sight better than experiencing them.

Waiting around in the airport for a flight into Denver, which has been pushed back due to aforesaid accident with the original plane. I’m assuming there was some mechanical glitch or something that they, thankfully, caught before we took off. This means, of course, that I’ll get into MSP late, but some things can’t be avoided.

Since we’re getting down to due date for the Scholastic novel contest, I’ll go ahead and post another Q&A.

How does PUSH handle copyrights?
This is kind of a tough question, but is of course the one that everyone wants to know. Officially, Scholastic says that they get rights to any winning piece for a two-year span. The novel contest, however, is co-sponsored by PUSH publications, who do the actual reading and contracting, which complicates things.

My understanding is that copyrights remain the full property of the author, especially in silver key situations. Winners work with the PUSH editing team as they would work with any traditionally signed author, giving authors the same rights of control over their work as they would receive in a contracted situation. At the end of the process, the PUSH team decides whether a project is commercially viable. If the consensus stands that it is, then the author is officially contracted and compensated as with any other publication.

10 Comments

Q&A

January 20, 2009 at 10:26 pm (P/S Novel Contest, q&a, travel)
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Happy Obama Day, everyone!

On the topic of change and innovation, today’s question is:

Can your submission be written in verse?
Answer: Yes! Your submission can be written in any form you wish. In fact, the 2006 Gold Key winner was a beautifully written novel in verse.

In other news, Colorado Springs is a lovely little city. I love being so close to the mountains! I haven’t seen them in so long. And it’s warmer here than it was down south in Oklahoma, but then Oklahoma has pretty schizophrenic weather, so it may be raining fire there any day now.

Short post, I know. More later.

2 Comments