Woke up, put on clothes, went to work. I do that a lot.

Every two years, the NJ Council on the Arts has a competition where they give out fellowships to writers. If you fail to win (generally a good chance, since they only choose about 1 in 8 applicants), they will still send you the judges' written comments if you request them, which is pretty helpful. I wonder if there's anyone who DOESN'T want the feedback...

I requested mine. They were on a screenplay. Three judges gave scores ranging from 1 to 5, 1 being the lowest, 5 being the highest. Their comments, in a nutshell:

JUDGE 1: 2.5 "The kids are fun at times and real, but there really isn't a distinction...voices are very similar"

JUDGE 2: 3.5 "Many of the childhood and adolescent incidents have been seen often in recent TV shows and movies...After a while, the momentum builds."

JUDGE 3: 4 "A little heavy-handed. Some obvious moments but an interesting time capsule...well-written."

It's all very helpful. The range of scores shows how readers diverge, but they're all valid points and I'll take them to heart.

In other news, too bad NY Press didn't go with this cover.