That's called a rejection, kid.

Ha.

Haha.

Maybe I'm going insane. Do you agree? My friends do. They're already know I'm insane, though. Aren't all writers?

I'm feeling inspired tonight.

That's probably due to last night, when I was so excited to look at the list of the round-two entrants for the contest (see earlier posts). Scrolling, scrolling, scrolling... ah! Here are the K's! I get down to where my last name should be. And--

It's the end of my time as a contestant.

Do you ever just feel like you know something? Like you just know that something is going to happen, you're so sure of it, and you can't see how it wouldn't happen?That was me last night. I was pretty much assured that I had an amazing pitch for Enslaved. So why not, I wonder? What did I do wrong to get voted out in the first round?

I have discovered two reasons. The first is that, maybe this contest just wasn't the one. By not making it to round two, it's convinced me that there are things, other publishers and paths, that I should be looking at. If God had wanted me to stay in the contest, then I would have. I think maybe this is Him giving me a shake and telling me that He's the One in control, not me.

The second reason is, I completely misunderstood how to write the pitch. I have never written a pitch before. But being a writer himself, my dad has, and so we wrote a pitch together. It was great. I was like, "Wow, this is awesome, I'll win the contest with this!" Huh. Last night after I found out, I was browsing around the Amazon website, reading some of the other contestants pitches. These were the ones who had advanced to round two. And the pitches I found completely befuddled me.

I thought we were supposed to give a brief summary of our plot, talk about our audience/market, and the development of the story, etc. Well, apparently not. Almost, if not all, the pitches I read just basically stated the entire plot and a lot of stuff that happens in the story.

If only I'd known that while we were writing the pitch...

But anyways, this is strangely freeing. The story is no longer going to sit until June. I can send it to agents, agents can send it publishers, publishers can hopefully love it.

And that's pretty awesome!