Sunflower Blog

Manuscript Submitted!

This is the thrid year I was aware of the Writer's Digest Annual Contest, and I finally finished and submitted a short story, as well as a poem.

Having a 32 line poem to submit wasn't a problem, because I have quite an accumulation by keeping everything on line here. The problem was that they wanted a poem that hadn't been published. I had all my best poems published by poetry.com, or another vanity outfit, so technically I don't think they were fare game to submit. Since vanity publishing has such a bad rep, once you know what it is, I don't think Writer's Digest would have a problem with accepting one they published. I think I found one that hadn't been stained by vanity. I submitted "Never on a Sunday," because I don't have it in print myself. FamousPoets.com was supposed to publish it, but I never got a copy. Something to chase down--sometime.

I was two years working on the short story. It was a chapter in a working novel. The word count had a 4000 limit. My story had 3922 words. I had to keep cutting, which made the story tighter.

I can never tell how long it's going to take to edit. I printed to edit four times, using a pencit on double spaced print. It's twenty pages. I spent nine days of full time work editing, when I thought it would just take one more going over. One day before the late deadline, I left my manuscript with the post office, at 4:30 in the afternoon. I don't function at my peak unless I think it's the last minute.

But, I finally did it. The manuscript for "A Teacher's Mirage" is as tight as I could get it. I need to copy and paste the final draft back onto the Internet. I don't think the story is strong enough to be a #1 winner, but I really hope to get a top 100 certificate. Getting it finally together, to send in for consideration, feels good. Whatever happens, I did it!

And, I can do it again!!!