Contest! Gratitude! Stuff!
Sep 24, 2010 
Yeah, I’m not doing much better than single words, here.
I just got back home and sat down to find my Twitter DM and Gmail inboxes flooded with congratulatory messages, and my sleepy brain (it’s past midnight here in Australia) had to really clank and whir a while before I realized what was even going on. As it turns out, my entry in the Adventures in Children’s Publishing pitch-to-query contest won!
I’m so excited that it sounds rather lame to even say “I’m excited.” I was in love with this whole contest and process before, just because of how helpful it was in terms of whipping my rather sad query into much better shape. I just want to say a big THANK YOU to the participants for being awesome, and for being brave enough to post your work for the world to see with the express purpose of being critiqued. It’s not easy. It’s not easy at ALL. I’ve met so many awesome people throughout this process. There’s a reason I love the community of YA writers. You’re an awesome group of people.
So what now? Well, tomorrow I need to go back over my first three chapters. I’ve actually been intending to do this for a while. Of the whole manuscript, the beginning needs the most work, simply because I want to reduce the amount of exposition I have in there. Trust your audience, Meg. They’ll get it even if you don’t lead them by the hand. But yeah, it also just so happens that the first three chapters are what I now need to submit to Sarah LaPolla, so now there’s double incentive!
I’m really glad I have revisions all ready to go. Lesson learned: even if you’re not expecting to win, you’d better darn well prepare for it anyway, because you’ll feel pretty dumb if you’re not ready when you do!
And because a friend just pointed out to me that I’ve never actually posted my query on my LJ, I’ll paste it below. This is about draft #4112 of this query. This is the version that I wrote specifically for this contest and for Sarah LaPolla, hence the personalization at the end.
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Dear Ms. LaPolla,
Sixteen year-old Lark Ainsley has never seen the sky. Her world ends at the edge of the vast domed Wall enclosing all that’s left of humanity. For two hundred years the city has sustained this barrier by harvesting its children’s innate magical energy when they reach adolescence. But the Wall is beginning to falter, and the city is getting desperate. When it’s Lark’s turn to be harvested, she finds herself trapped in a nightmarish web of experiments and learns that she is something out of legend itself: a Renewable, able to regenerate her own power after it’s been stripped.
If she stays in the only home she knows, she’s doomed to a life of agony as a human battery powering the city. Now, the girl who has never seen the sky must escape and fight her way across the terrible and beautiful wilderness beyond the edge of the world, with the city’s clockwork creatures close on her heels. Armed only with the revelation that somewhere to the west are others like her, hidden in the Iron Wood, Lark must learn to survive–and when she stumbles across a wild boy in the countryside, how to put her trust in others once more.
THE IRON WOOD is a YA dystopian fantasy complete at 98,000 words. I am a 2009 graduate of the Odyssey Writing Workshop, and a 2009 Writers of the Future finalist.
I have seen you mention in several interviews a desire to see strong, three-dimensional heroines, which I’ve always been passionate about bringing to my own writing. The fact that you like to work editorially with your clients is really appealing, as I’m looking for an agent with whom I can build a lasting working relationship.
Thank you for your time and consideration!
Sincerely,
Meagan Spooner
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This is so awesome! And it really is a great query, so well-deserved.
Thank you! It’s definitely a moment of validation, knowing that objectively people are intrigued by the premise. It’s very reassuring!
Congratssssssssssssssssssss!!!
Thank youuuuuuuuuuuu! Omg.
Now to sit and chew my fingernails while you read…
Congrats!! You totally deserve it, TIW sounds awesome 🙂
Thank you!
Man. I still start snickering every time I see this icon. XD *FLAIL*
Hurraaaaaaaay. So well deserved! I learned a lot just from /watching/ this contest. Every time the query got shorter, it got better. Lesson learned.
Yeah, having you there to show every iteration of this query there was really helpful. Given that after about Draft #43, my eyes just crossed whenever I saw the words “has never seen the sky,” the extra help was definitely necessary…
Ahhhhh, congrats! This is such great news! You’ll have to keep us updated. :o)
Thanks!! I’m pretty excited, although this has let to more revisions which has led to me wanting to throw my computer out the window… ah, the wonderful life cycles of being a writer. 😉
Great query and awesome sounding story!!
Thank you, I’m so glad you like it!