Yesterday I popped into the english department’s 4th floor grad-student-only computer lab, slightly winded (as usual), in a hurry (as usual). One of my colleagues turned from her monitor, crisp and awake.
“You heard about this Amazon first novel contest?” she asked. I hadn’t. “Due November 5,” she said.
“There’s not enough cocaine in the world to get me to finish my novel in 5 weeks,” I said.
“$25,000,” she said. “And a contract with Penguin.”
“Oh,” I said. “Maybe there is.”
While $25,000 may not be a windfall, it sure does sound like a decent-sized check for a first time novelist, particularly to grad student writers of literary fiction. Not that literary fiction will take the prize in this contest — maybe Penguin will find memoir or chicklittiness a better risk — but it is nice to think so.
The trouble I see with the contest is that it’s first-come, first-entered — they’ll consider only the first 5,000 submissions. Which means that anyone who’s got a crappy old novel sitting around electronically has a better shot than a budding writer who’s got something they’re working on that they might be able to get into shape by November 5. There had to be at least 5,000 would-be novelist devotees of Miss Snark; too many were writing about mythic vampyr queens.
This doesn’t bother me — somebody’s got to read the entries. (I would have tried to recruit Miss Snark out of retirement, myself).
