"The Writer's Voice" Submission Guidelines

THIS IS NOT A CALL FOR ENTRIES! I'M JUST GIVING YOU A HEADS-UP. THE CONTEST OPENS TOMORROW, MAY 3.

“The Writer’s Voice” is a multi-blog, multi-agent contest hosted by Cupid of Cupid’s Literary Connection, Brenda Drake of Brenda Drake Writes, Monica B.W. of Love YA, and me. We’re basing it on NBC’s singing reality show The Voice, so the four of us will serve as coaches and select projects for our teams based on their queries and first pages.

Here’s the timeline:

May 3	Everyone submits their entries
May 3-10	We select our team members from “The Writer’s Voice” Blogfest
May 10-17	We coach our team members, helping them polish their entries
May 17	We post our team members’ entries on our blogs
May 21	Agents vote for their favorites

Since submissions will open tomorrow, here are a few more details as to how that will work:

The Genres

To enter “The Writer’s Voice,” your manuscript must meet two conditions: First, it must be COMPLETE, POLISHED, AND READY TO QUERY, and second, it must be in one of the following genres:

Adult Fantasy
Adult Science Fiction
Adult Romance
YA fiction (all subgenres)
MG fiction (all subgenres)

Submission Windows

We’ll accept entries in two time slots. The first submission window will open at 9:00 a.m. EDT on Thursday, May 3, and will close once we receive 75 entries. The second submission window will open at 9:00 p.m. EDT on the same day and will close once we receive another 75 entries.

The Widget

We’ll accept submissions via one of Mister Linky’s Magical Widgets, which we’ll post on all four of our blogs on May 3. The widget will appear on our blogs at the same time and will sync with the other copies that appear on the other three blogs. So if Bobbie Sue goes to Cupid’s blog and signs up for the number five slot over there, she’ll show up in the number five slot on Brenda’s, Monica’s, and Krista’s blogs, too. In other words, it doesn’t matter which blog you use to sign up; the widget that appears on one of them is the same widget that appears on all of them.

Please note that WE’RE ONLY ACCEPTING 75 ENTRIES IN THE FIRST SUBMISSION WINDOW even though we’re programming the widget to accept 150 entries total, so if more than 75 people sign up tomorrow morning, WE WILL DELETE THE ADDITIONAL ENTRIES and ask those people to try again in the second submission window.

Posting Your Entry and Sending It to Us

Securing a slot in the widget is your confirmation that you’re in the contest. Once you’ve secured that slot (or in other words, once you’ve signed up for the blogfest), you’ll post THE PLOT SUMMARY FROM YOUR QUERY and THE FIRST 250 WORDS of your manuscript on your blog. Then you’ll send your query, first 250 words, and A LINK TO YOUR BLOG POST in the body of an e-mail to TheWritersVoiceContest(at)gmail(dot)com, with your blogfest number, title, and genre in the subject line.

In summary, you must follow these three steps to enter:

1. Sign up for the blogfest/secure a slot in the widget during one of the submission windows listed above.
2. Post the plot summary from your query and the first 250 words of your manuscript on your blog.
3. Send your plot summary, first 250 words, and a link to your blog post to TheWritersVoiceContest(at)gmail(dot)com, with your blogfest number, title, and genre in the subject line.

If you make it into the blogfest, please post your entry and send it to our e-mail address as quickly as possible. We just want to have plenty of time to review all the entries. Also, the e-mail address will send you an automated response to let you know we received your entry, so keep an eye out for that.

We think that about covers it. If you have any questions about the rest of the process, please refer to our last post about the contest. And if you have any last-minute questions about tomorrow’s submissions, feel free to ask them in the comments below.