GAK! No Clue What to Post!

I realized about ten minutes ago that I forgot to post to this blog. I have one blog, how the heck could I forget about it? Thus, the GAK!
Okay, I've been a little busy this week, not writing my new story, but getting LC ready for the ABNA contest. I figured that as long as I was messing with it, I'd snail mail about 8 agents I haven't foisted this story on yet.
Of course, in the final hour, I decided to change the heroine's name. No one liked the acronym Puck, and over time, I got over myself and decided to change it. I changed it to Devin.
Yeah, yeah, it could still be a boy's name, but it is also Gaelic for defender. I liked it.
Now I had to do a 'find and replace' in my manuscript, synopsis and pitch. Find and replace is EVIL, pure and simple. Oh, I've had dealings with F&R and I've lost every single, freaking battle.
Oh, no, it isn't as simple as find Puck, and replace it with Devin, because it would place Devin in the middle of any word that has Puck in it--any word. So you put a space before and after and approve each and every change--oh, and don't forget to do the space thingy with the replacement word, because then you get a bunch of ,Devin . Then you have to leave out the space in front and not behind for the times when the name begins in a sentence, and go through it all again.
This isn't too bad with the synopsis and pitch, but when you have 350 pages, it becomes time consuming. After all this, you must check it once more to see if you missed anything.
So I finally subbed my entry to the ABNA and realized that I'd missed the beginning word change in the manuscript that I had downloaded.
CRAP!
Luckily, the contest allows you to fix things until the deadline. So I fixed and now I'll forget about it because I really, really doubt that I'll make the next round, but it is good practice.
How do you feel about entering contests? Do you worry about them or just forget about it and move on?
Write on!

Amazon Breakthrough Novel

I'm entering the ABNA contest once again. Last year, I didn't even make it through the first round. It isn't an easy contest to win, but if you make it to the second round then you've done something right. This year, they upped the entries to 10000 submissions.
Yeah, I don't have a shot in hell . . . But it is free!
Last year, I submitted a romance, and I still like that story, but I really don't think I'm a romance writer. This year, I'm submitting my fantasy, The Leprechaun Connection. I've queried virtually everyone with this story. Deep down I still believe in it, which is why I'm submitting it. My story's last hurrah!
Over the last week I've tweaked my pitch and my first two chapters. The pitch must be less than 300 words and the partial less than 5000 words. Now, if they don't like my pitch who really cares about the partial? But in addition to entering this contest, I'm also querying about 8-9 agents with my revised pitch/partial. I've exhausted all the agents who accept electronic queries, but i'm not done with the agents who only accept snail mail.
As I said, this is the story's last chance. I still like it, but I don't think I've done it justice in my queries. Oh, well, stuff happens. but now I have a new UF I'm writing.
And so the vicious cycle continues.
Write on!