The romance publisher Mills & Boon is holding its annual New Voices competition, where writers-to-be from around the globe put themselves out there. The competition is straight forward, post the first chapter of a work suitable for M&B's various lines and you're entered. New this year is a Facebook page devoted to the competition where current authors are answering questions and offering advice. Liz Fielding, a longtime author of the publisher, talked about taking advantage of this on her blog.
I entered the competition last year and made it into the Final Four. It was an amazing blur of writing, rewriting, receiving feedback from an editor and a published author -- the amazing Jessica Hart -- and more rewriting. From these 10,000 words (that's the maximum length of the completed entry of two chapters and a pivotal momen), I went on to finish the book.
The finishing of the book took a bit longer than those first 10,000 words, but that's another story :-)
