Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Notes From Underground Results...Part I

I deeply thank everyone who entered our contest. If you read my final plea a few weeks ago, you'll know how emotionally attached I was (and am) to this experiment. I'm very grateful to everyone for supporting our attempts at nurturing writing in the best way we know how.

Yesterday, Scott, Michelle and I talked about our selection process and how hard it was to choose the 25 writers below. Today, I want to celebrate our selections. In one way or another, everyone here excited us with their writing and ideas.

Hey, you're in! No matter what kind of writing you turn into us on December 15th, we're going to showcase it in our second anthology. You've got ten pages to create whatever text story you want, and if you so desire, you've got the three of us to bounce ideas and drafts off of. Feel free to use us during these next 3 months, but also realize that this is your chance to really find out what you can do for yourself.

Remember that this is only the beginning. The next hurdle is the actual writing of the stories, where your biggest obstacles are your own highest standards. And now, on to our selections...

Congratulations to:

Beth Overmyer
Rachel Becker
Jeannie Miernik
Bridget Chicoine
Nevine Sultan
Judy Croome
Summer Ross
Cee Martinez
R. Mac Wheeler
Simon C. Larter
C. N. Nevets
Anne Allen
Candace Ganger
Anne Gallagher
Erin L. Harty
Matt Zandstra
Lisa Shafer
B.A. McMillan
Taryn Tyler
Aerin Bender-Stone
Susannah Pabot
Brian King
Yvonne Osborne
Lavanya Krishnan
Loren Eaton

Our hearts were definitely broken for some of our friends and writers who we didn't select. We know that this doesn't say anything personal about your own talent. We hope you know that, too.

For our selected writers, please e-mail us at LiteraryLab@gmail.com to confirm that you're up for Part II of the contest. If we don't hear from you over the next few days, Scott will probably cry, Michelle will probably go on an angry rampage, and I'll probably regress to my boyhood days when I did things like hide in the dryer.

53 comments:

  1. Excited as I was I can hardly believe it. That's an amazing group of people to be part of. Congratulations to every one!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Mary, it's Arial Size 1 font. I copied and pasted it into Word so I could change the size.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Ummm, okay guys, I have NO idea what's going on here...and I'm not sure Davin meant to post it this way. We were discussing this last night and he never mentioned such a plan.

    Um, I'll go change the font size.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hmmm is it still a secret? I'll check back in a bit and see if I can see it.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Congratulations to all of us! It is extrordinary company that I share and I'm thrilled to be part of it.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Squeeee! Gosh, I *really* didn't think my sub would be chosen. Very excited to be part of such a lovely group of writers!

    And well done to everyone who entered in Part 1! That was the hard part...
    Judy

    ReplyDelete
  7. I really wish I'd entered, because this is another awesome project of the Literary Lab. Domey, Scott, Michelle--you amaze me with your creative thinking and energy.
    Congrats to all who were chosen to take part. I see a lot of familiar names!

    ReplyDelete
  8. Congrats to everyone who won- I feel privileged to be sharing this with you all.

    ReplyDelete
  9. OMG! I'm acting like a teenager! So excited. I came out of the dryer to take another peek. I really didn't think I'd get picked. Can't believe it....to be part of this. Can't....believe....it.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Hot. Freaking. Dog. I was absolutely certain my entry wouldn't make the cut. Time to brush up on postapocalyptic accounting ...

    ReplyDelete
  11. Nevets, we were tempted to hide your name somewhere else in the text, seeing as how anxious you were, but we decided to play nice.

    Judith, thanks! Given your great story last year I think our writers have a lot to live up to!

    Michelle, once again thanks for fixing stuff. Ugh. Last night was a clumsy stumble for me.

    Yvonne, Congratulations! Sorry about the early glitch.

    Anne, Congratulations!

    Judy, Congratulations! And thanks for your comforting email last night. It helped me a lot.

    Mary, thank you. Thank you SO MUCH for the support you have given me and TLL. You are my sunshine.

    Tricia, it would have been fun to read your entry. :) Thanks for stopping by.

    Summer, Congratulations!

    Loren...we kinda figured this dark stuff was just your audition piece. We hope for your actual story you write about happy, non-conflicting things. Maybe a nice story about how flowers bloom in the spring?

    ReplyDelete
  12. Okay, now that things are fixed (yay!) I just want to tell everyone how excited I was to get 59 entries! And even more excited that every entry had something good about it, even if I said no to it.

    *this is the strangest contest I have ever judged*

    Why? Because factors I've never had to apply to judging entries before applied to this contest. It was strange knowing what I was looking at was probably not going to be what would end up in the final anthology, or that it would change or be revised, etc.

    That said, I want to thank each and every one of you who entered. If we don't see entries from you in the future we'll be very sad!

    ReplyDelete
  13. Ah, the sadness. To not see my name among the chosen and know that I must go on. However, I see my good friend B. A. McMillan there and that offers some comfort. The bar must have been set high indeed.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Oh, and heartiest congrats to those selected. Y'all must be really good.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Domey,

    After bawling my eyes out for a while, once I figured out the joke, it would have been awesomely hilariously evil.

    ReplyDelete
  16. Bru: I hope some of your friends made it in! ??? All I can say is that this contest couldn't be a contest without everybody entering, so thank you!

    Nevets: I told Davin it would be childish and wickedly evil of us, so I guess he decided not to go for it. :)

    ReplyDelete
  17. Chuck: We KNOW you're a good writer! Look at what you gave us last year! As I've told others, there were some interesting factors going into the judging of this one. Hope to see more entries from you in the future!

    ReplyDelete
  18. Congratulations, folks. I'm looking forward to the anthology!

    ReplyDelete
  19. Michelle: I love the names I see up there- so happy for all the people I recognize, but to answer your question no, neither of the names I had so hoped to see on the list the most made it in (and neither of those was my name- but were names of people very close to me in real life) but I am very happy to see a couple people that I know found out about the contest because I blogged about it! So all my blogging did do some good in the end.

    That's a stellar list of people- the anthology is going to be amazing.

    Again, thanks for all your hard work on the contest, and congratulations to the talented winners...

    I'm signing off now, because as I blogged way early this morning, I have got to go offline and get better physically and that's going to take a long while.

    Hugs to all and again thanks for the chance to try out. You do wonderful things here, things nobody else does. I salute you for that spirit of innovation and experimentation. Rock on.

    ~bru

    ReplyDelete
  20. Thank you very much Domey, Michelle and Scott and congradulations to everyone who I have the honor of sharing pages with. I keep scrolling up to make sure I'm not having delusions.

    ReplyDelete
  21. Ack! I'm so freaking excited about this I may do something drastic like drop the blinds lock to doors and commit to a cave for a few months.

    This is totally an honor. Thanks! :D

    ReplyDelete
  22. You used to hide in the dryer? That's either incredibly sad or incredibly clever. Maybe both.

    I'm jazzed! Great to be part of the Lab's anthology again. Readers were very much impressed by the quality of work in the last one, and with the wonderful writers you've chosen here, this one may top it!

    ReplyDelete
  23. ...Don't know why, I was looking for JBChicoine and missed my name at first...

    Thanks Lit Lab for giving us this opportunity!

    ReplyDelete
  24. I am very excited to be a part of this. Thanks for the opportunity.

    ReplyDelete
  25. Congratulations to all who were picked! Yes, I'll admit to a moment of disappointment that my name wasn't on the list, but not really surprised.I look forward to seeing the final result. Will be an eclectic mix and fun to read.

    ReplyDelete
  26. Wow, I'm honored... unless there is a Beth Overmeyer who entered and I'm being a prat...

    Thanks, guys, and congrats to the others who made it!

    ReplyDelete
  27. Beth, Sorry, I'll fix it. I cut and pasted from another list, which seems to be causing gads of trouble.

    ReplyDelete
  28. No need to apologize. I'm used to it being misspelled (even by my aunt...)

    ReplyDelete
  29. I do apologize. I get my name spelled wrong all the time too.

    ReplyDelete
  30. Another reason I use a pen name. I think my other name gets spelled correctly about 5% of the time by people who don't know me personally and about 60% of the time by people do.

    ReplyDelete
  31. Hahaa! Wheee!

    Thanks, lady and gents, for selecting me for the anthology. 'Tis a lovely honor, to be sure. I'm thrilled to be included with some of the luminaries on the list there.

    I'm thinking I'd like to make a statement on the expansiveness of art by placing a single period in the middle of page five, and leaving the rest blank. I can do that, right?

    :D

    ReplyDelete
  32. Congratulations to all! I'm so excited to be a part of this. What a dynamic opportunity it was just to have submitted my writing, and it is so amazing to have been selected! Yippee!!!

    ReplyDelete
  33. Larter: We can't guarantee the typeface of the period we use will be what you intend, though. If you expect Times New Roman and we use Garamond, the effect will be lost. Just saying.

    ReplyDelete
  34. CONGRATS TO ALL Y'ALL WRITERS. Davin, I would have entered but I didn't think my expertise (picture books and middle grade was what you were looking for.) I think it's a wonderful contest and if you ever have one for picture book writers, I'll def enter. CONGRATS AGAIN YOU GUYS. Well done. :)

    ReplyDelete
  35. Domey,

    Flowers are fine -- as long as they're flesh-eating.

    ReplyDelete
  36. Woohoo! Not only am I extremely honored, I'm also happy to have an external writing deadline placed upon me, guaranteeing that I will write SOMETHING creative during this pregnancy. I was taking bets on whether I would have something "published" or have this baby first. Looks like they will happen about the same time. Don't I feel like a heck of a multitasker!

    ReplyDelete
  37. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  38. And based on this lineup of writers, I cannot WAIT to read the whole anthology! I will read it to my baby, especially if it includes flesh-eating flowers.

    ReplyDelete
  39. How exciting! Congratulations to every one!
    I almost didn't enter - but I am glad I did (Domey's 'you better make time and enter even if you have other work' comment was the push I needed..:)) there was one last short piece that I wrote in the very last minute, that I wouldn't have written but for the contest..so that makes me happy. Though right now, the thought of Part II scaaaress me.

    Lavanya

    ReplyDelete
  40. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  41. This is an impressive list of participants...and there were more? wowza. congrats to all.

    ReplyDelete
  42. Congratulations to all! It's an impressive collection of writing talent, and I'm looking forward to reading the anthology.

    And a special congrats to my brother for making the cut! Can't wait to read your work, man.

    And to Domey, Michelle, and Scott: Are you going to be giving out any more detail about what the submissions looked like? I'm curious to see how/to what extent multimedia was used, how many were actual excerpts/drafts of the finished works, how many read like proposals/outlines, etc. Inquiring minds (one at least) want to know.

    ReplyDelete
  43. Jabez: I'm pretty sure we could do a post about that if the other two are okay with it. :)

    ReplyDelete
  44. Jabez: I wouldn't want to actually quote an entry without the author's permission, so there's a limit to how informative that sort of discussion would be, I think.

    ReplyDelete
  45. Oh, I wasn't expecting quotes certainly. I was thinking of something more impressionistic, but still enough to give a flavor for how people tended to handle the openendedness of the submission format.

    ReplyDelete
  46. Mine was a simple letter explaining the reasons they should let me into the anthology, with a few accompanying photographs. Pretty straight-forward... -ish...

    I will be making mine available for public consumption.

    ReplyDelete
  47. I agree, I'd like to see the winning entries as well. I posted my non winning entry on my blog

    ReplyDelete
  48. My entry is now available on my website for those who are interested in seeing it.

    ReplyDelete
  49. I unfortunately cannot post mine due to its other obligations...sorry guys.

    ReplyDelete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.