SIGH . . .

MISSING: One Garden Gnome is in the mail, trucking it's way across the country to Delacorte Press in New York to be judged in the Delacorte Yearling contest for Middle-Grade Readers.

A few interesting stats about the contest:
--This is the 18th year for this contest, and was formerly known as the Marguerite de Angeli contest
--Award: $1500 cash prize and $7500 advance, plus bragging rights.
--since 1992 only 7 winners have been declared in those 17 years. Many years the award has gone unawarded
--Since 2000, only two books have won the award: 2004 Prizefighter en Mi Casa by e. E. Charlton-Trujillo, and in, 2007 Born to Fly by M. J. Ferrari
--Odds of my winning are virtually none

A few interesting stats about me in relation to this contest:
--I can meet a looming deadline: Granted, there was some freakage going on, but I DID IT!
--I think I finally found 'my' genre to write in
--I can write tremendous amounts of wordage in a two week period (> 30,000 words), puking it onto the page without an outline and only a loose idea where I was going with it.
--It is better to know your POV going into the story than to dick around with it during the story
--I can envision the cover of this novel: white background with Travelocity gnome statue centered on the page with Rory Leafhopper leaning against it with his arms and legs crossed. Never happened before.
--Puking out the story gave me 38K words. Second draft: 46K Third/polished draft: 47K Though tweaking will continue, I think I'm virtually finished with this story
--Idea conceived in late February 2009, some writing but mainly thinking accomplished in March and April 2009, with the majority of writing in May 2009, editing in June 2009
--If you have major POV changes it is better to rewrite it instead of trying to fix it, even if it is only a paragraph at a time.
--I still have problems writing emotion into the intense scenes, as I tend to rattle off what happens without digging deep.
--any additional edits will most likely involve deepening the emotional impact.

#1 thing I learned:

--don't say you can't do something until you really put your heart in it and try!

Write on!
--and I will be as I hammer out a synopsis and a query letter!