Operation First Novel

Right now I am enrolled and am taking a writing course from the Jerry B. Jenkins Christian Writers Guild. A contest they hold annually with Tyndale Publishing House is called Operation First Novel. As a member you submit your first novel and if you win your novel is published by Tyndale and you receive an award of $20,000.

The deadline is in September.

I am so tempted to enter but I shrink at such a daunting task. Could I write a novel in 5 months? You say, "Sure. Why not?"

I reply, "Could I really write my first novel in 5 months? Can I really put out my best work in so short a time?"

I don't know. But that won't stop me from trying. Now just to start and write.

An Expostulation - A poem by C.S. Lewis

An Expostulation - by C.S. Lewis

Against too many writers of science fiction

Why did you lure us on like this,
Light-year on light-year, through the abyss,
Building (as though we cared for size!)
Empires that cover galaxies
If at the journey's end we find
The same old stuff we left behind,
Well-worn Tellurian stories of
Crooks, spies, conspirators, or love,
Whose setting might as well have been
The Bronx, Montmartre, or Bedinal Green?

Why should I leave this green-floored cell,
Roofed in blue air, in which we dwell,
Unless, outside its guarded gates,
Long, long desired the Unearthly waits
Strangeness that moves us more than fear,
Beauty that stabs with tingling spear,
Or Wonder, laying on one's heart
That finger-tip at which we start
As if some thought too swift and shy
For reason's grasp had just gone by?