[My Leap Year is a 12-month life project (begun 11/01/07) at the end of which I intend to be writing full-time. 365 small steps = 1 giant leap.]
I woke up yesterday morning, took a bit to get in the groove, polished my two Image Shadowline Superheroine Contest entries and sent them off.
Moments later I received an automated confirmation message. The subject read “Thank you for your entry!” but the body began with this disheartening line: “However, as of 12 noon CST on Thursday, January 31 2008, Shadowline is no longer accepting submissions for their Who Wants to Create a Super Heroine Contest.” I sent my entries in at 2:03 and 2:07 PM CST. Despite the fact that such a mid-day cutoff was never mentioned in the contest’s original rules, it had apparently been posted on the editor’s message board the day before. I couldn’t very well be upset because it is their contest after all, and they can set the rules as they see fit, but needless to say I was very, very disappointed. Mostly because I knew they were both solid ideas and could have been real contenders.
But I learned a valuable lesson about deadlines. Someone once told me (or I read it or think I read it) to always turn something in 2 days before the due date. Even though it seemed like rather wise advice at the time, it seems even wiser now after missing a deadline. For this particular contest I had made an intentional decision to turn my pitches in on the 31st so I could work on them as long as possible, a decision stemming from my recent quality > quantity kick. For most of that time I only had the one idea and I wanted to make it positively sing rather than turn in several pitches early of a lower potential quality. And, to be honest, my best strokes of inspiration came in those last two days. But I wonder if those same flahses of intuition wouldn’t have visited two days earlier if I had considered the 27th and 28th my last two days to work rather than the 29th and 30th.
Alas.
The upside is that in the end I think the pitches did sing. I think they’re both very strong and already have an artist in mind for each of them. Their titles are GIFTED and BINARY, and this certainly isn’t the last you’ll hear of them.
Daniel keeps stretching and tugging at the visual style of CARRIER. Here’s the latest:
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Daniel’s rockin’ it on Carrier, Caleb. This looks absolutely fantastic!
Sorry about the deadline fiasco, but I’m glad to hear you’re considering moving forward with your superheroine ideas. If I don’t make the cut, I’m definitely pursuing one of my pitches via the traditional submission process.
Well, Elton, the advantage of it all is I now have no divided loyalties. I can root for you to go all the way!
I only knew about the deadline because I spend well too much time on the comic book forums. I did think it was weird at the time because if other writers are anything like me they’ll want to meditate on their work up until the last minute, even if that isn’t necessarily the most responsible thing.
I got in two submissions, but I wasn’t satisfied them. When I began brainstorming ideas for the contests I found myself getting very involved in them, and essentially focusing on the ten ideas I’d amounted, but then micromanaged the plot of only three. When I finally got around to writing the paragraph I found myself at a terrible dead end. I’m very week at summarizing! I didn’t know this about myself.
I put butt in chair eventually and forced out paragraphs for two of my ideas, and found that although they really captured the essence of the plot, they failed to contain any of the excitement of the story. They say, “show not tell” but in one brief paragraph I only knew how to tell. So that was an interesting revelation about my writing. And this seemed as good a place as any to mention it.
I wanted to say I’m sorry to hear about your bad luck with the competition, but I’m not. You know why? Because it sounds like you just increased the probability of your concept being published to 100%. And that’s good.
I delivered mine early that morning, only to get it back an hour later because something went wrong delivering the mail. Luckily, it worked the second time.
As for your question: If you’re like me, I don’t think you can fool yourself into getting those good last-minute ideas two days ahead. Part of the trick is to really believe in the deadline. The harder it is, the better.
That sucks!
It’s their loss though…
Thanks everyone! Max, I hope to see yours in the finals, and agree you can’t “trick” yourself per se…you have to literally believe the deadline is earlier. I imagine the more one does it the easier it becomes for the mind to process. Prem: It’s always good to learn something about yourself and your writing that you didn’t know before. Most writers seem to agree that summarizing/pitching is never nearly as fun or easy as writing the full thing in the first place. But I’ve been writing quite a few pitches lately and discovering that, like any muscle, the more you use it the stronger it gets. The best example I’ve seen of a pitch capturing not merely the events of the story but the tone and excitement of it is Warren Ellis’s original 1-page pitch for Nextwave. You can find it in the back of the Volume 1 collection or the issue of Marvel Spotlight that features Ellis. I learned a ton by re-reading that pitch several times.
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