It Starts TODAY . . .

So, in honor of Project Runway Allstars, today is the official beginning of Project Writeway. This contest will take place over the next few weeks and it’s going to be very intense (sort of) and very emotional (probably not).

Here are the official rules and regulations:

1. To enter the contest, submit the first 150 words of a middle grade or young adult novel to throwingupwords@gmail.com by January 20th, 2011. PLEASE SUBMIT WITH THE PEN NAME YOU WANT US TO USE ON THE BLOG. We can know your real name, of course, but we will not be posting your true identity until the very end. Mysterious.
2. Only ONE entry  per person. This means your entry should your best work. The pieces you submit should be shiny.
3. We will post all the entries on Monday, January 23rd.
4. Voting will begin.
5. By the end of the week, we will announce the official contestants in Project Writeway (Fifty percent popular vote, fifty percent guest judges).
6. We will then have one challenge per week. Each week we’ll have a winner and someone will be eliminated.
7. At the end of the competition, one person will be crowned the Project Writeway Winner!
8. The winner will receive a ten-page critique from a well known New York agent and the bragging rights for years to come.
9. We will have additional prizes. If you get eliminated, we encourage you to continue to do the challenges. We will have an “at-home” winner who will also win a professional critique!  Hopefully we’ll have a place to read everyone’s writing, not just the ones in the contest.
10. We will also have prizes for other categories (funniest entry, most depressing entry, scariest entry, etc.).
11. We may or may not have a huge celebration at the end. I think we should.

So now all you have to do is polish those words, tell your friends* (if we don’t get enough entries we’ll have to postpone the whole thing), and drink a lot of Gatorade. This competition is not for the faint hearted.

Kiss kiss.

*Suggestions: tweet it, facebook it, blog it, text it, eat it, blackboard it, yell it, kiss it, write it, email it, call it, hog it, minivan it, radio it, body paint it, love it, hair it, announce it, get jiggy with it, gossip it, hold hands with it . . . .