Aphelion

Just as a followup to the disscussion of my Writers of the Future story that made it to the Semifinals for the 3rd Quarter, '04 which for them ended June 30th...<br><br>After two months of waiting since I was notified of my standing, I have finally received my critque from WOTF Coordinating Judge K.D. Wentworth. It was a single, typed sheet, but it was all to the point. Officially, I made it to 10th place out of (I think) 2,500. The top 8 were finalists (3 in the money & published).<br><br>The story was about the crew of an electomagnetic sailboat as they attempted to stop an unknown ship from stealing their intended cargo, an asteroid.<br><br>So other writers can see what they're looking for, she listed two reasons why it didn't go on: <br><br>First, I made a mistake & just plain missed a character identifier when I rewrote the story. Originally, it was a 3rd person narrative, and then I changed it to a rotating, first-person viewpoint, in chunks of testimony. I missed one "Jack said" instead of "I said." <br><br>Second, as I gave the forcibly extracted testimonies, I began each of them with a time index and the surname of the speaker. In the first part from each character I gave their full name in the text, but Ms. Wentworth felt that it was too difficult to identify them when she first started reading.<br><br>For example, I had:<br>[Segment 010433.1-SURNAME] and the text would follow.<br>She wanted more like:<br>[Segment 010433.1-(TITLE) FIRSTNAME SURNAME]<br><br><br>And that's how close it is from Honorable Mention certificate to published and in the money, or within reach of it. (By the way, they only have those certificates printed twice a year, so you may have to wait quite a while for them, like I am doing.)<br><br>I should note that according to online sources, only the Finalists (only the top 8 ) will be reviewed by judges like Yoji Kondo, Jerry Pournelle, Robert Silverberg, K.D. Wentworth, and others (& they're not the same each quarter). Until the final cut, the coordinating judge seems to make the call (K.D. Wentworth, in this case). The stories are judged "blind", without names on any pages.<br><br>Notifications, at least to me, were by email from "Judy" the Contest Administrator.<br><br>Nate

Congratulations - your errors were *very* minor - I am sure your story is a fine piece of writing and a salable one, too - can you anthologize it now? Have the rights reverted to you yet?

<br>The rights were never in jeopdardy, as far as I know. Only the top 3 are published, only the top 8 are seen by more than the coordinating judge, and it doesn't cost anything.<br><br>I was waiting for the critque since this all was discussed here in September, so that I could change whatever was wrong and send it out to the 2 or 3 left who haven't passed on it at some stage in it's development. It's over 10,000 words, and I would really like to break into print... so there's not many places left... <br><br>But I thought I should share the experience in case anyone else wanted to try. I have already entered another for the following quarter, and I'm waiting to hear on that one, hopefully by the end of the month.<br><br>Nate