I got an email the other day from the Low Country RWA (South Carolina) telling me that I was a finalist in the Jasmine Contest. It’s a pretty plush contest, so I was happy to hear it. But as I checked my email and went online, I discovered that the Georgia Romance Writers were also announcing the Maggie awards. Instead of basking in the glow of the Jasmine final, I jumped every time the phone rang, and when it wasn’t ever Georgia, I felt a twinge of disappointment.

How awful is that?

But then, last night, the phone rang and it *was* Georgia. And when the woman finally convinced me that she wasn’t a prank caller, and was in fact deadly serious about my finalist status, I hit the ceiling and haven’t come down yet. Jasmine. Maggie. Jasmine. Maggie. The words are rushing through my head at the speed of light. Any excitement I failed to feel after the Jasmine notification was caught up and multiplied by news of the Maggies. My stomach is tight, my head is light, and I hope I can calm down before Nationals next week. I hope I can calm down enough to finish revisions on the manuscripts in question.

But I hate that I had that moment of doubt – that moment where I wasn’t as excited as I should have been about the Jasmine because I hadn’t finalled in the Maggies as well. I want to excise that part of me, lest it become me not being as excited about a sale because it isn’t a two book contract. Of course I’m not going to final in every contest. Since 2002, I’ve entered eleven contests, with 25 entries, and finalled seven times. That’s only a 28% success rate… hardly bolstering.

But, as Benjamin Disraeli said, there are three types of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics. So since I’m obviously not fit for writing anything at all today, and have spent most of the morning looking at my outfits for Nationals and doodling the names of two particular southern flowers on different notepads, indulge me for a moment. Let’s play around a bit, shall we, and see if I can make that sound better: eleven contests, finalled in four of them… 36% success. Slightly better. Even better to say entered eleven contests, finalled seven times, which projects the idea of a 63% success rate. Inaccurate, to be sure, but it sounds damn good.

More accurate would be the truth. With the first five contests and ten contest entries, I never finalled at all. Then I finalled thrice in one contest I’d entered five times, with a 60% success rate of my own entries. I entered two more contests in the next 10 months, with one entry each, and finalled with neither. Then, in the next three contests I entered, I finalled four times, twice in one of them, with a finals:entry ratio of 4:7 or 57%. I can also say that since my first finalist ranking, I’ve finalled in four out of the six contests I’ve entered (67%) or with seven out of fourteen entries (50%). I can also say that, in 2004, I have finalled with 4/8 (50%) of my entries, in 3/4 (75%) of the contests that I’ve entered.

I think I like that last statistic the best. Of course, you can make the argument that statistics are meaningless because someone else could be entering every fly-by-night contest out there and come up with the same results. So instead I add a cutesy little signature line at the bottom of my emails that looks like this:

________________________

2004 Maggie Finalist

2004 Jasmine Finalist

2004 Molly Semi-Finalist

2004 Molly Semi-Finalist

_________________________

Isn’t that unbearable? My boyfriend saw it and told me to remove it immediately or he’d laugh me out of the house. Sigh. It’s the little things we love, chico, the little things we need. Like the several dozen emails I’ve gotten in the past two days congratulating my success on the contest circuit. These are big contests. Big. It’s an honor to final. And I’m so so happy about it. can’t I just skip around for a few days, plaster that grin on my face, bask in the hope that though I’m not wearing a pink ribbon *this* July, I’m on the right track?

I think so…. So forgive the self-indulgence, folks…. I’m a bit giddy today.

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I think I’m expecting too much. Because I laboriously research my markets and try to craft submission that, while perhaps not at the level the editor’s want, are at least in the ballpark, people who I feel should be similarly well-informed are slinging mud against the walls, hoping against hope that something will stick. We’re all in RWA. We all get the same newsletters, have access to the same discussion boards, attend the same conferences…. are other people just flitting throughout life with blinders on?

Who are these people encouraging writers to pitch community minded Scottish intrigues to Blaze? 60k romantic suspense to Luna? I understand editor’s frustration now — why they are so quick to jump to the conclusion that you’ve sent them the wrong thing whenever you get a bit outside the box. It’s because that’s all they ever deal with!

Criminy!

Forgive the rant, but seriously, folks, do a BIT of research. Read the guidelines, fine, but then READ THE BOOKS. You can tell a lot more about your chances if you read the books in the line rather than just reading some paragraph formulated by an editorial commitee ten years ago. It’s called “category” for a reason — becuase it FITS in a category.

Okay, rant over. Back to the regularly scheduled, sweet Diana.

Yeah, right.

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Wow. What a week – and it’s not over yet. So, on Monday, I make the decision NOT to move to New York – still choking on that one – on Tuesday, Harlequin cut a few lines from their category list, including the line I’ve been editing like crazy to make another book fit (on editor’s suggestion – and on Wednesday, I spoke to my newspaper editor and threw my hat in the ring for this food job.

No wonder I haven’t gotten any writing done.

This diversion thing isn’t as hard as I thought.

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Anais Nin’s diaries were shockingly sexual and controversial and personal. The Washingtonienne’s are trashy, exploitive, manipulative and cheap. (But hey, both of these people netted themselves big publishing contracts by talking about their private lives.)

So how boring is it to have a blog about the attempts to GET said publishing contract? But hey, we all need diversions in this life. I’ve been told that I’m a little too single-minded in my pursuit, and I’d be a lot better off if I thought about something else. So here we go. My diversion.

Or, as it happens, my diversions.

Hopefully, this blog will serve two purposes, being both a depiction of and an addition to my list of diversions.

As it stands now, I am diverted by:

Chairing the Chick Lit Contest
Dealing with the move my boyfriend and I are making to New York in August
My day job as a food critic
The idea of cleaning out my childhood bedroom, which now serves as a storage place for at least four moves
Some horrific nightmares which have been plaguing me non-stop for the last week
Planning for the RWA National Conference in Dallas at the end of the month.

My boyfriend says this doesn’t count as a diversion, merely a distraction, since the conference is in fact something that relates directly to my pursuit.

Sigh. I told you this was going to be hard.

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