I entered a writing contest recently. Nominal fee to enter, and the contest was titled “First Chapter.” All of us aspiring writers know that readers’ attention spans are down to eleven seconds now, and if you hope they’ll want to read your work, you have to grab their attention. Immediately. Preferably with the first sentence. Turns out, “It was a dark and stormy night” captures the intent, even though it’s now become a cliché and therefore unusable. Drat.

There’s a lot of pressure to capture a reader’s attention, get them invested in your protagonist so that they care what happens to (in this case) her, set the stage with just enough sensory details so the reader can “be in it,” also to be relevant and clear with your intent, have an inciting incident that is a catalyst for your protagonist to be motivated or forced to “do something” that will play out as she is changed at the end.  You need a satisfying resolution. Your work needs veracity, integration, dynamics, resonance, and the mechanics of writing, spelling, grammar, syntax, and punctuation must all be perfect.

Of course, many real writers—the ones with best sellers, prestigious prizes, and critical acclaim—break those rules all the time. But they can afford to, can’t they? For us amateurs, it’s important that we follow all the guidelines.

In my case, I dragged out a novel-length story I wrote and self-published on Amazon KDP some years ago. I’m impressed by my former self’s ability to do all that, and I fear that today I lack the skills. But, I’m a better writer now, I think, and even though I still like the story very much, I’m pretty sure it could be told better.

The contest stated the chapter had to be 3000 words. I’ve never written a chapter that long, so I compiled my first two chapters into one and sent it in. Maybe they “like” everything that’s sent to them, who knows, but I got a thumbs up. Except for some not-so-great evaluations on several of those essential conditions I listed above. But here’s the thing: you get to revise your writing based on their feedback and re-submit it for the final decision as to who wins the contest. What have I got to lose, right? So I begin to revise. Over and over again.

One of their suggestions was peer review, so I sent one of my revisions to several of my peer writers for their feedback. I’m still waiting for two of them, but I have until the end of August to return my final revision, which is a couple of weeks away. And in the meantime, I’m still tweaking. I can’t help myself. I pull it up every day and change a word here and a word there, delete a phrase, put it back in, add something and then remove it again. It’s endless. Thank god I have only until August 31^st. At least by then I’ll have to settle for whatever version I’ve cobbled together.

Along the way, I killed some of my darlings, some of the clever phrases I loved but that probably needed to go. I ended up with a lot more backstory than I had in the first one. In fact, a reader will now know that when Kate was seven her brother died or was murdered and her mother committed suicide the next year, leaving her and he dad to learn how to get through life as best they could. Which sometimes wasn’t good. I originally had no intention of telling all that this far up front, but if I wanted to “hook” the reader and make them care about my protagonist, I figured what better way than to elicit some sympathy, and maybe even a little admiration for the star of the story.

She’s prickly, my main character. Wouldn’t you be? Not terribly likeable, actually. Kind of a loner, sick of being the object of pity she has been in her tiny, tiny southern town for most of her life. But she doesn’t come off as a victim at all—probably because of the prickliness.

So why am I telling you all this? No earthly idea, except to get your sympathy, perhaps. Anyway, I persevere. And, I hope I’m not cutting the life out of my story of a damaged but strong young woman who, when all is said and done, will prevail, whether I win the contest or not.

Thanks for listening. You’re the best.