Friday, April 19, 2013

The Writer's Voice 2013!! The Details!!


“The Writer’s Voice” is a multi-blog, multi-agent contest hosted by Cupid of Cupid’s Literary Connection, Brenda Drake of Brenda Drake Writes, Krista Van Dolzer of Mother. Write. (Repeat.), and me (of Love YA, of course!). We’re basing it on NBC’s singing reality show The Voice, so the four of us will serve as coaches and select projects for our teams based on their queries and first pages.



Here’s the timeline:

May 1
May 2
Everybody enters the Rafflecopter lottery
The lottery winners sign up on the widget
May 2-10
We select our team members from “The Writer’s Voice” Blogfest
May 10-20
We coach our team members, helping them polish their entries
May 20
We post our team members’ entries on our blogs
May 23-24
Agents vote for their favorites

Submissions

To enter, your manuscript must meet two conditions: First, it must be COMPLETE, POLISHED, AND READY TO QUERY, and second, it must be in one of the following genres*:

YA fiction (all subgenres)
MG fiction (all subgenres)

To determine who gets to participate in the blogfest, we’ll hold a single-entry Rafflecopter lottery on Wednesday, May 1. Last year, we were overwhelmed by the response, and in many instances, whoever had the fastest fingers--or the fastest Internet connections--made it in. This way, everyone will get an equal chance to participate.

The lottery will remain open for 12 hours on May 1, from 9:00 a.m. EDT to 9:00 p.m. EDT, at which point the Rafflecopter will select 150 random winners. Those winners will then sign up for the blogfest on one of Mister Linky’s Magical Widgets the next day, May 2. Once you sign up on the widget, you’ll post YOUR QUERY and THE FIRST 250 WORDS of your manuscript on your blog.

In summary, you must follow these three steps to enter:

1. Enter the Rafflecopter lottery on May 1 during the submission window listed above.
2. Sign up on the widget on May 2 if you win the lottery.
3. Post your query and the first 250 words of your manuscript on your blog.

Selections

We’re building our teams via “The Writer’s Voice” Blogfest, so YOU MUST HAVE A BLOG TO PARTICIPATE IN THIS CONTEST. We don’t care if you’ve had it for five years or five minutes; we just want to be able to fight over you in public :)

We coaches will review the entries and leave a comment on your post that says something like, “I want you!” If more than one of us wants you on her team, you’ll have to pick which coach you want to work with.

Coaching

We’ll select our 8 team members (plus 1 alternate) by May 10, then spend the next week and a half helping them put a final polish on their entries. You won’t have to take all of our suggestions, of course; we just want to help you make your entry the best that it can be before the agents get a look at it.

Voting

On May 20, we’ll post our team members’ queries and first pages on our blogs so that the agents can review them. Here are the awesome agents who’ll be voting on your entries:

Sarah Davies of Greenhouse Literary Agency

Catherine Drayton of InkWell Management

The agents will vote for their favorites on May 23 and 24. Each vote will count as a partial or full request depending on how many votes the entry receives. If an entry receives 1 or 2 votes, those votes will count as partial requests. If an entry receives 3 or more votes, those votes will count as full requests.

Voting will stay open until 9:00 p.m. EDT on May 24, at which point we’ll determine which coach’s team received the most votes. That coach will win bragging rights for time immemorial, and everyone who received requests will be able to submit their materials to all the agents who voted for them. These votes represent serious interest in your project, so PLEASE DON’T ACCEPT AN OFFER OF REPRESENTATION BEFORE GIVING “THE WRITER’S VOICE” AGENTS AN OPPORTUNITY TO MAKE A COMPETING OFFER.

So get those queries and first pages polished up, then meet us back here on Wednesday, May 1, between 9:00 a.m. and 9:00 p.m. EDT. We can’t wait to read your entries! (And of course, if you have any questions, feel free to ask them in the comments below.)

*We’re very sorry not to include any adult genres this year. We have to base the genres on the agents’ interests, and this year, all the agents who said yes happen to be agents who represent primarily YA and MG projects. There is a chance that a few more agents will sign up between now and May 1, and if a significant portion of those agents consider adult projects, we’ll certainly add some adult genres. But for now, we’ll stick with this.

33 comments:

  1. What a clever idea! I'll have fun watching it unfold.

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  2. Yay! So excited. This was amazing last year. Can't wait to read the entries!!!!

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  3. Seriously! What an amazing line up of agents. I am so in.

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  4. Very exciting. Thank goodness I don't have to sing.

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  5. Monica, how long do you suggest the query be? Just paragraph about the manuscript? Or a whole query letter including relevant bio info? Just a log line?

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    1. Wendy, the query should be the pitch of a regular query--which is about 200 words long. Include the word count and the genre too. ;)

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  6. So glad you all are hosting this again because, um...I'm ready. FINALLY :)

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    1. YAYYY!! I'm so happy you finally finished!! :D

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  7. Very clever idea, Monica! I'm so IN!! Only question--where do we submit tomorrow? I keep missing that detail somehow. Thank you!

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    1. Heather, tomorrow there will be a Rafflecopter on each of the 4 blogs and you need to subscribe here (on the blogs tomorrow). Then we will randomly choose 150 entries for the contest.
      If you have any other question, shoot! :)
      Good luck, and I'm glad you liked the idea!

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  8. What about New Adult entries, can we enter if we have one of those?

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    1. Oh, sorry I didn't see this yesterday! But no, no NA this time. Unless it could be seen as YA too.

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  9. Apologies if I'm missing the obvious, but I was selected as one of the 150 and it says I have to sign up on a widget - where can I find the widget? I'm looking on both sidebars and the posts and there's nothing mentioned. Or has it not been set up yet?

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    1. Sophie, Kimberly emailed you all lottery winners with a link to the widget. Check your email--it's the link to a secret blog with the linky. Let me know if you find it. (Maybe Kimberly's email is in the spam folder?)

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    2. Hmm, strange, I don't seem to have an email from her, spam or normal folder - what would have been the email heading? I'm only presuming it was me from the Rafflecopter post - Entry #183Sophie is both the name I use on Blogger (I don't use an initial/surname) and around the number I was allocated - it was 180something anyway. So either there was another Sophie No Initial who entered almost exactly the same time as I did or I just can't find an email at all. Is there any way to back-check what Rafflecopter number I was allocated?

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    3. Okay, I'll check with Kimberly and see what is going on. I'll get back to you.

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    4. Kimberly re-sent the email to Sophie Reid. If that's you, check your inbox. (Is your last name Reid?)

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    5. No, that's not me. Obviously got unlucky then, someone else entered as just Sophie around the same time as I did. Thanks for checking it out though, wouldn't have wanted to miss out if I had been picked. Guess I'll just have to hope I get lucky next time round.

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    6. Oh, I'm sorry the copter didn't pick you! I hope next time it does!

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  10. Thanks SO much, Monica!! I'm in and I'm up. ~ just put my regular query up, which has my bio. Is this okay?

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    1. Sure! That's okay! :D Looking forward to reading! :)

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  11. I'm having the same problem. I entered as AK Madison (AK M) having won. I never got an email either with the widget link. I checked my spam. :)

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  12. Mónica, thank you so much for making this happen. I feel really dumb, because I read the rules, but couldn't figure this out: how many writers *total* will be chosen as "team members"? I couldn't tell if it's eight *total,* or eight per coach.

    Again, many thanks for all your work in throwing this party!

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    1. Hey there! That's not a silly question at all! It's 8 per coach + the alternate (which may not go live depending on whether someone in the teams has to bow out for some reason). So we will choose 32+4 in total. :)

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    2. Thank you very much!

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