Another "Rejection"

Sort of. I entered a writing contest in the contemporary series category, and I did not make the finals. They sent back the two judges score sheets, and out of a possible 210 points, one judge gave me a 176, and the other gave me a 156. I think the reason the second one was so much lower is because they seemed to count off points because my formatting had some spaces in it or something. That really honestly sucks, because I use open office which is free instead of paying hundreds of dollars for Microsoft Word, and apparently something got lost in translation. Booooo.

The most encouraging thing about it is that the things they mostly mention not liking about the plot or the way I arranged the story have already been fixed. Along with the help of my critique group, I already revised the first couple of chapters of that novel, and I think it's much better now than back when I submitted it to the contest. It's encouraging to see that the things the judges didn't necessarily like are the things I changed already. Maybe if I enter a different contest with my new version of the story, I would do much better.

It would be really nice to get a contract or a contest win at some point, but I"m going to do my best not to let this get me down. The more I write, the better I get, so I'll just keep getting better until I get published.