OK so I did it. I had never submitting anything before, ever, to anyone. But I had set my mind to it and now my WotF entry is in the mail. And it feels good.
But I was just thumbing through another copy of my submission and I found a mistake on a random page, I somehow omitted two words in the middle of a sentence. I think you can tell what I mean from the context but it's still a mistake, and will break the flow. I am sure other mistakes can be found throughout.
So, how tolerant are they for mistakes? Because I might be in hot water.
Posted by arriki (Member # 3079) on :
Three missing words kept me from making finalist.
Posted by extrinsic (Member # 8019) on :
My first submission, 30 pages, to WOTF had a glaring plot hole, three misspelled words, two patently missing words, and a slight name change (two transposed letters of a four-letter name) that only was as I intended in the first instance or wrong once in the first instance, depending on how it was looked at. Anyway, it still earned Honorable Mention.
Posted by annepin (Member # 5952) on :
Yeah, mine wasn't perfect either--a couple typos, and I got to semi. So there's some forgiveness.
Posted by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (Member # 59) on :
I remember when I could still enter the contest, I had a friend who would send something in and then find an error like that, too. She'd call the contest secretary and tell her to throw out the one she'd just sent when it came in, and she was sending a corrected copy. If I remember correctly, she ended up doing that for more than one quarter, and the contest secretary was very understanding.
I don't know if Joni would be the same, or if you can even call her, but if there is an email address for questions, you could try emailing about sending a corrected copy.
<shrug>
Posted by Crank (Member # 7354) on :
I didn't find any typos, but I apparently had a dyslexic moment, and my 3Q entry almost got sent out with a piece of evidence in complete reverse order. "Whoops" or "Duh." Take your pick.
However, I did invent a new pronoun especially for this story; all during my final proofread, I was concerned it would be interpreted as a series of typos.
S! S!...C!
Posted by Zero (Member # 3619) on :
quote:Three missing words kept me from making finalist.
How do you know this?
Posted by Zero (Member # 3619) on :
quote:I don't know if Joni would be the same, or if you can even call her, but if there is an email address for questions, you could try emailing about sending a corrected copy.
This is a good idea. Can anyone help me find an e-mail address for this? I'm having difficulty finding one. If 3 words can disqualify an entry then I want to fix the error immediately.
Posted by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (Member # 59) on :
Try contests@authorservicesinc.com and put something like "Attention Joni" in the subject line.
Posted by arriki (Member # 3079) on :
quote:Three missing words kept me from making finalist.
How do you know this?
I made semifinalist. Semis received a critique. She told me I was the last one cut out and all because they weren't sure how much could have been missing from the mss.
Posted by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (Member # 59) on :
arriki, if I remember correctly, you failed to send the last page of your manuscript, right? And the last page only had three words on it?
Posted by arriki (Member # 3079) on :
No, not at all.
The three missing words were the end of a paragraph that SHOULD have printed at the top of page 3 of the mss. The printer just skipped the whole line for no discernible reason. I checked the file. The line was there. WHY they were skipped is beyond me.
I still get steamed just thinking about it. It's not WOTF's fault. It's my printer or computer's. I even read over the mss before I sent it out and would have sworn it was complete.
Posted by Zero (Member # 3619) on :
That seems mean of them. They ought to reject it on the basis of whether your story is inferior or superior to the other candidates. Small typos ought to be understandable.
In my case the meaning is clear from the context, I accidentally omitted an "and he" from the middle of the sentence. If that's an automatic disqualifier then that's lame beyond all reason.
Posted by Zero (Member # 3619) on :
Re-reading my story I think it's good enough to stand on its own merits. My typo is toward the end and by then, I expect, they would have already decided if it's worthy of the finalist pile or not. I'm going to plug my ears now and believe my story is fine.