Neil Strauss

So…this weekend, the Igniter committee and I spent Saturday at a steakhouse with everyone’s favorite mobster and coffee scammer, poring over more than 200 sample chapters for the book we plan on publishing next year.

In a strange coincidence, at the table next to us, there was a group of writing - contest judges. No joke. They were judging entries for a contest at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. So they pitched in and helped.

Your entries were impressive, and made me so glad we took a chance trying you all out. In the last email, I hedged my bets by saying I couldn’t promise that anyone on this mailing list would become the co-writer of the book.  But now, I feel confident saying that I’m certain that one of you will be writing this book.

To that end, I’ve compiled the top three submissions, as graded and voted on by the committee (and guest judges). One of the writers is an electrician; another is a professional gambler; and a third is an unemployed computer engineer. I was amazed to discover how little professional writing experience the best writers actually had.

You can judge the top three entries for yourself here:

http://www.neilstrauss.com/writerhunt.pdf
(right-click to download)

And, as long as you’re reading these, why not join the judging committee? It would be great to get your vote and feedback. You may note, as we did, that some of you actually figured out who the mobster was and did original
research. That said, what we looked for when judging these was not research skills or mob knowledge, but compelling prose and the ability to SHOW rather than tell.

Let us know which of your fellow VIP list members above you feel should be writing this book. In other words, which submission do YOU enjoy reading the most.

You can vote for your favorite here:

http://cs.createsurvey.com/c/01/4201/survey/5682-4Xp4yB.html

Reading your submissions has truly been one of the most educational experiences of my writing life. Most of you really put a lot of heart and effort into what you wrote. And I’d urge you to do continue to do this with everything in your lives. Remember, the no’s don’t matter. It only takes one “yes” to launch your career, and your life, in a whole new direction.

After all, George Orwell didn’t give up when told it was “impossible to sell animal stories in the USA” by a publisher who rejected Animal Farm, Stephen King didn’t decide to stick to teaching when he was told that his types of books “do not sell” when trying to find a publisher for his first novel, and the Beatles didn’t break up when Decca Records rejected them, saying that “guitar groups are on the way out.”

So, whatever you’re doing, stick with it. As we already discussed here in one of the emails about Emergency and the economic crisis, if you follow the money, you can lose the money and then you’ll have nothing. If you follow your bliss -your passion in life - the money can come and go, but no one will be able to take away your happiness and your excitement for what you’re doing.

Great work, and looking forward to your votes and feedback on the submissions above. Some important messages about the preparation and survival of Emergency and the female attention to The Game are coming up in the next few emails.

Returning to Our Regularly Scheduled Programming,
Neil

P.S. The links again for the submissions and voting are:

http://www.neilstrauss.com/writerhunt.pdf

and

http://cs.createsurvey.com/c/01/4201/survey/5682-4Xp4yB.html

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