What up, Leute? You’ve just accessed our first contest!
Today is my birthday! Still young and with it! To honor one of my favorite days of the year, we’re holding a special manuscript editing contest.
I got to thinking: what do I always put on my birthday or Christmas wishlists? Books! As a writer and editor, I have soft spot for indie novels, and I want to learn more about what you’re currently working on. So, if you’re currently writing a novel, listen up! If you follow the rules below, a random winner will be selected to claim the ultimate prize: I will professionally edit the first 100 pages of your novel—free of charge.
How do you win? Fulfill 2+ of the rules below:
- Follow Wit & Travesty on Facebook
- Follow me on Instagram
- Follow me on Twitter
- Subscribe to Wit & Travesty (on your right!)
- Introduce yourself and your WIP in the comment section below. We’d like to get to know you and your manuscript, even if you don’t win. Please also include your preferred form of contact you prefer, whether it’s email, Twitter, or Instagram. This is your official entry to the contest, so fulfill this rule to be formally considered!
DEADLINE: June 26, 2016
This isn’t about getting free followers; we love meeting new friends with similar passions. We’re all about that good karma as we’re all trying to make it in the publishing world. In conclusion: we love books and bookish friends. <3
Here are few more items to get out of the way to make this contest more official:
- Learn a bit more about us here. I have a degree in English and editing, so you will not get garbage feedback from me!
- The winner must determine the time I receive the manuscript and establish a deadline—within reason.
- I specialize in fantasy, fiction, and sci-fi, but I do well with any genre.
- I will do my best to provide professional revisions and feedback. If the winner is not satisfied with the results, they cannot ask for more revisions. The winner can avoid heartache by being very specific on the types of edits he or she would prefer.
- I primarily work with Track Changes through Microsoft Word. The winner must specify if they prefer feedback through alternative means.
- If the winner wants the rest of the manuscript edited, the winner and I will negotiate the cost to edit the rest.
- If you send me published books and other gifts, I will naturally be very happy but it does not affect the selection process.
What are you waiting for? Celebrate with us! Share this on your social media to spread the word to your writing friends:
Happy Birthday, lady! Hope it rocks!
Thanks so much! <3
Hello! Happy Birthday!! <3 What a great way to celebrate. I saw your post via the Your Write Dream group on Facebook. I am so glad I checked out your blog, there's some really cool stuff – and your book Destiny Seeker sounds awesome. Thought I may as well enter your competition whilst I'm here 🙂
Sooo… introduce myself and my WIP? Well, my name is Lauren and I'm from sunny New Zealand! I am currently working on a YA novel which I'm serialising on Wattpad. I love the involvement readers have there, it encourages me to carry on writing (I'm a massive procrastinator). It's called "Linked" and features telepathy. This is the blurb I currently have on Wattpad:
"Consider this: your mind creates a random telepathic link to one person, who you are then connected to for the rest of your life. But you must keep it a secret, or your life is in danger.
This is what happens to Benna Denman, among many others, a couple of hundred years into our future. Trouble is, the President isn't impressed with this new evolutionary ability. It means he is losing control over people's communications – in a world without cell phones, publicly accessible internet, or a postal service, it's difficult for dissent to spread and uprising to organize.
When the government starts offering cash in exchange for these telepaths, and Benna is under suspicion by both her boyfriend and her powerful father, she knows she's in trouble. Upon discovering that her father and the cold Dr. Frenchwood plan to use her as a lab rat to develop a 'cure' for telepathy, Benna and her Link, a boy named Corin, decide to try to run."
In a nutshell, I am awful at writing blurbs and also at summing things up in a sentence! Just useless! Maybe that's something you could help with if I win 😉 Haha. My preferred form of contact is email, and I have followed Wit & Travesty on FB, Insta & Twitter AND subscribed here!
I’d say this blurb is on the way to greatness! This is such a cool idea! Thanks for entering the contest! <3
I don’t think my previous attempt to post worked, so I’ll go again here: I’m Rachel Barnard a reader and writer of young adult fiction. I’ve published three YA novels (my most recent came out this month – Donuts in an Empty Field). I have a few manuscripts up my sleeves that I’m working on: a new adult romance and a middle-grade fantasy. I would love to have my middle-grade fantasy, Flora’s Last Chance for Magic, read through for some editing. My preferred form of contact is through e-mail and I recently subscribed to this blog (and Twitter and Instagram and Facebook). I found you through Wewriwa!
More about Flora’s Last Chance for Magic:
Flora is good at art, but the other students are so far beyond her abilities due to magic, she has no hope of keeping up. Everyone gets their magic eventually and most twelve year olds in Flora’s classes already have magic. Flora’s on her last warning and if she doesn’t get hers soon she’ll get sent to reform school where she’ll never get to do art again.
Home isn’t much better for Flora since she’s lived her whole life at the group home Last Chance. As the oldest kid without magic, she’s the least likely to be adopted. Parents want to adopt younger kids or kids with a higher chance at developing strong magic.
Flora is mistreated at school by the other students and the teachers reprimand her for daydreaming in class. Flora’s best friend Velize has strong magic for a thirteen year old and is leaving Flora behind in magic and as a friend.
When new kid Sebastian invites her to join his magic enhancement and research club for kids who haven’t gotten their magic yet Flora hesitates. She doesn’t want to be grouped with other magic-less losers, the workies. Without Velize, Flora is alone and grudgingly accept Sebastian’s invitation.
Sebastian’s club works with Flora to test out a theory that magic can be triggered early in a person. But Flora takes the research project too far and gets into trouble at school and at Last Chance. If she wants to keep her new friend Sebastian and have a chance at a future with art, she will have to choose between following her heart and following the rules. Flora’s only chance for a future is to hopefully discover her magic before it’s too late.
Flora’s Last Chance for Magic is a complete middle grade fantasy at 45,000 words. Readers who enjoyed the relatable magical world of the Magician Trilogy by Jenny Nimmo or Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine are my target audience.
Thanks for entering! It’s been a while since I’ve read anything for middle schoolers. That must be a fun project for you. 🙂
Happy Birthday, Whitney! I’m a June baby too – June 10! – so yay for June birthdays! Hope you had a wonderful day and best wishes for your year! And what a FANTASTIC way to celebrate, giving away this awesome free edit! I’m in!
I’m Rachel and I write literary fiction. My current WIP is a literary fiction novel that explores ghosts, love, storytelling, and what it means to be a woman in today’s world.
Liz is tasked with cleaning out her late great aunt Jo’s house, a woman she never knew and never wanted to know. Confronted with a junk-ridden house and a town obsessed with a ghost story, she begins to dismantle Jo’s life, weird object by weird object. She unwantedly inherits a Costco-sized amount of cat litter boxes, a dinosaur head mantle named “Necky,” a cat named “Groucho” whose facial expression is accurate to his name, and a cynical love advice blog written by Jo herself. Jo doesn’t seem to be able to just die, as her house is full of weird things and weirder secrets. In order to avoid Jo’s weirdness as much as possible, Liz falls into obsession with the town’s ghost story, curious about why people care about it and if there’s any merit to it at all. As she digs through the ghosts of Jo’s past, the town’s past, and her own complicated love life, Liz learns about love, why we tell stories, and what it means to be a woman in today’s modern world.
As you can tell, I’m not much of a blurb-writer yet, as this story isn’t yet ready to go out for submissions! But I would LOVE to get a second pair of eyes on it to see what’s working and what isn’t! My preferred method of contact is email. And I’m happy to now be a subscriber of your site!
Happy Writing! ♥
-Rachel
Perfect! Thanks for entering! I personally struggle with blurbs, too. Like, what’s the most important stuff that will set my book apart? How can I encapsulate a decade’s worth of writing??