Disappointment

So, my day was completely wasted.

On my lunch break, I was cruising the blogs and came across this entry on Miss Snark's blog. I read the linked article, and in the article mention was made of a fan fiction writing contest sponsored by Avon. Hmmm... So I googled it and found the official website. (It's here, if anyone is interested.)

I'm not normally the fanfic type. (Though in middle and early high school I did dream of writing a Star Trek novel. Original series. No kidding.) But this contest was more than just fanfic, and it could get you pub credits or even editorial attention. And, the premise was a Regency setting. Now, Scottish historicals are my hands-down favorite, but when I'm not reading them I'm reading Regencies. So I dragged up all my mental references to the haute ton and Almack's and waltzing and Napoleon. And then I checked the submission deadline: today at 4 pm EST.

That left me 3 hours to write a coherent chapter (1500 words; 8500 characters) based on their setup and submit it. I was caught up on work at the moment and thought 'what the heck?' At 3:55 I was finishing my final word/character count and ready to submit. My chapter was uploaded at 3:57 pm. Then I hit the snag - they wanted you to do a little "profile" for your chapter so people who were voting could skim through and read the ones that looked interesting. They wanted a chapter title, headline, 250-character summary, and 500-character excerpt. I rushed through, and went to hit the final submit at 3:59 pm. It cleared my fields. So in a mad rush I typed/pasted it all again, hit submit and...it was 4:01 pm.

One. Freaking. Minute. Late.

So I did not get to enter the writing contest, I was now behind on my day job duties, I will get home late from work, and I am even further behind on getting promised critiques back to people. All in all, a wonderful day.

Oh, well. Pick myself back up and go on. Just another late night doing crits. And the contest is ongoing. I'll see how I feel about it when it's time to work on the next chapter. At least then I'll have enough time.