Joni told me that people from the contest would be emailing me quickly, and she wasn’t kidding.

• One person contacted me with a contract to read and sign.
• One person contacted me to get a bio.
• One person contacted me wanting photos of me (at least 5″ x 5″ and 300 dpi).
• And David Farland contacted me with edits to my story.

Taking each in order:

The contract was pretty simple. Near as I could tell there weren’t any weird clauses. Maybe contracts generally need their own post for more depth of discussion, but for now I’ll say that nothing stood out to my (untrained) eye. All that needed fixing was updating my address. Otherwise it was print two copies, sign both, and mail ’em off to the address they specified.

The bio was a little harder. It’s not like I’d practiced this kind of thing. So, in any case, I gave it a shot. After a quick back and forth with the contest rep, that was finalized.

The picture was harder because I don’t have a lot of pictures of myself. I have even fewer that are the quality they wanted. Basically, it would have been wedding pictures or bust. So, I contacted our wedding photographer (if you’re in/around southeastern Wisconsin, I cannot recommend them enough), and snap-snap, click-click, that problem was solved.

I can only speak for myself, but the edits were an interesting experience. I’d never had a trained professional look at my prose and say: “Do this. Do that. It will be better if you do.” And every suggestion that David Farland made was a great one. Turns out I don’t do dialogue tags super great. He didn’t cut big chunks, or ask me to add much more than a little detail in one place.

I know some people are apprehensive about editor input. Speaking only from this one experience, it was a positive for both my craft and the story.