Le fin (almost!)

I’m SO close to finishing my latest short story!! I’m so pleased with it—I’m currently at thirty pages, and have only about a short scene and a half left. (Which is really, really good, since I’ve got fewer than two thousands words to go before I hit the max word count. =P) I’m calling it The Stiltskin Forest, and it’s based on—you guessed it!—Rumplestiltskin. It’s verrryy twisted when compared to the original Grimm story, though. There’s a curse that turns people into trees, and a Green Man (like in Celtic/Pictish/etc. mythology) and a sister that glows in the dark. :)

(I can’t remember how much of that I’ve said before. Bear with me if I’d already told it all.)

It’s a good thing I’m so close to finishing, too, because I plan on entering it in VCFA’s (Vermont College of Fine Arts) Katherine Paterson Prize for YA and Children’s Writing, and the deadline is Wednesday. The day after tomorrow. Gulp.

It’s okay, though, because the contest judge is HOLLY BLACK. ONE OF MY FAVORITE AUTHORS. :) I wish I could participate in VCFA’s MFA summer residency program this year, because both Holly Black and Gregory Maguire (author of Wicked) are going to be the authors-in-residence.

I’m so starstruck just thinking about it, though, that it’s maybe a good thing I can’t afford to fly out to Vermont. =P HOLLY BLACK AND GREGORY MAGUIRE. Oh my gosh.

I only know about VCFA because I spent some time last summer looking at MFA programs, and they have a good YA and children’s lit program. It’s rather difficult to come by those. And so I requested some info, and now I’m on their mailing list. They’ve got Holly Black and Gregory Maguire coming out to be the authors-in-residence because the theme for this summer’s residency is FANTASY. Oh my goodness. VCFA is definitely sounding like my kind of program.

Is it really childish to just add that I really hope I win this contest? I probably won’t, but let’s just give me a moment to dream. First prize is a thousand bucks and publication. Ooohhhhh man, that sounds good.

To be honest, my biggest concern regarding my story is whether or not HB will fully consider it to be YA. There’s no cursing, violence, sex, or gore, but… well, most YA books have a teenage protagonist who’s dealing with growing-up stuff. And the miller’s daughter in Rumplestiltskin has a kid by the end of it. And yes, I loveloveLOVE coming of age stories—maybe because I’m the right age to relate?—but mine isn’t a coming of age story. It’s about struggling against the uncontrollable situations and circumstances that life throws at us. It’s about making the best of those situations, but also trying to change them for the better.

That’s important, too, and shows up in a lot of other literature. I think it’s an important lesson that demoralizes a lot of people as they go through the whole process of growing up, but even in real life, things don’t have to stay a tragic and disillusioned mess.