The RNA ROCKS!!

I reached another milestone recently. After eight years I being a member of the Romantic Novelists Association’s (RNA) New Writers Scheme (NWS) I have managed to get my manuscript put forward for a ‘second read’.

I supposed I should explain for non-RNA types what exactly this all means. Every year 250 unpublished writers can join the NWS and it means that they can submitted a manuscript anytime between January and August which will be read by an anonymous reader. The reader is a published author who has a background in whatever genre you are writing in. They read your manuscript and then write a report on it, telling you what works and what doesn’t. Which completely rocks whichever way you look at it. Even if the report leaves you weeping in your beer. I still remember my first one… I cried all night but hugged the thought that although everything else sucked I could write a good kiss.

But if you get more than the kisses right, if the reader likes your manuscript. I mean LIKES it and thinks it is ready they send it back to the organiser recommending it for a ‘second read’. This means yet another anonymous reader gets your manuscript. They read it and if they LIKE it too, the RNA will approach agents or publishers on your behalf. It is like having an RNA kitemark added to your writing.

Mind you even just having it under consideration is amazing. I mean someone somewhere who I haven’t bribed with wine (well I could have at an RNA event but it wasn’t done deliberately) actually thinks my work is almost there.

Eight years. And a life time of dreaming.

Come back on Sunday to hear from Susanna