I was super excited to get into YA Publishing Adventures’ 1st 5 pages workshop. The idea is that five writers submit the first five pages of a YA manuscript, each of which is critiqued not just by the other participants, but by mentors that have experience in the field. Over the course of 3 weeks we revise and resubmit our pages, finishing with a pitch and the first five pages which are submitted to a literary agent.
The workshop is free and takes place once a month, but there were only five spaces available so as soon as I read about it I knew I’d have to be fast.
I prepared the application the night before, and made sure that everything was just as I’d been instructed. I read and re-read the instructions, sent the email to myself to make sure everything would be fine, and queued up the final application in my saved drafts to be sent out as soon as the submission window opened the next day.
The window usually closes in under a minute, so I set my alarm to three minutes to noon. I watched the clock obsessively until it ticked over to the hour. But I still wasn’t sure I’d get it, not until the email confirmation.
I’m most excited to see what critiques of the first five pages will tell me about the rest of my writing. I’m sure I’ll get a lot of good intel that I can apply to the whole manuscript.
Anyone can follow along with the workshop, so if you’re wondering if it’s something for you, go take a look! You might want to submit for next month!
