Contest Judging

Hey All,

Sorry I missed you last week, but it was a crazy day. I was running around from sun up 'til sundown with not a lot of time to relax, breathe, post, etc. in between.

This week I wanted to talk about contest judging.

I spent a lot of time in this past month judging contest entries. Many of the stories were solid, well thought-out tales that intrigued me. Hopefully some of them will be contest winners and go on to be published some day so I can find out how they get their heros and heroines to the much sought after happily every after.

Many of the stories made me smile in a bemused sort of way. And it wasn't necessarily the content that did it.

I was amused to find that the little things that needed polishing (intruders: 'felt', 'saw', 'wondered'; passive voice: those darn 'ing' words; and telling not showing) were so easy to spot in someone else's writing, and so darn impossible to keep away from in my own.

Was it that I just finished a round of edits for my editor and had those things on my mind because they were the things she told me to fix in my own writing? Or was it that it's so difficult (for me) to separate the heart of the story from the actual telling of the story in a grammatical sense? Or was it the 'well, everyone else needs to follow the rules, but I'll do things my own way'?

I couldn't tell. But it did make me laugh. Because I can go through something I've written over a dozen times and still not find all of the mistakes, but in someone else's writing, they seem to literally leap off the page.

I am wondering why that is. (LOL)

Until next time,

Happy Reading!

Debra

www.debrastjohnromance.com

coming soon from The Wild Rose Press
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