Welcome to Michael & David's Fiction Face-off

This is where we will keep track of our "competitive" professional fiction careers - really just a way to urge one another onward and support each other as we strive to succeed as professional commercial fiction writers.

You'll find the scoring system we're using over on the left side of the blog.
Here's the definitions of those point categories:

NOVEL POINTS:
Outline: this means you've completed a preliminary outline for a novel
Query letter: you've written a query that can be used for most submissions
Pitch: you've written a pitch for a completed novel
Synopsis: you've written a full synopsis for a completed novel
Completed: the novel is done, ready for sale, and you won't touch it again
Submitted: you've subbed the novel (either a query, chapters, or the whole ms)
Sold: a contract has been offered and signed

SHORT STORY POINTS:
Completed: the short story is done, ready to submit, and you won't touch it again
Submitted: the short story is "in the mail" - either though a snail-mail or electronic submission
Rejected: the story didn't sell to that market
Sold: a contract has been offered and signed

STREAK POINTS (starting 8/1/2009):
Weeks of 3,500 words: the number of weeks in a row in which you wrote at least 3,500 words.
Consecutive sub weeks: the number of weeks in a row in which you have submitted at least one short story to a pro market.

BONUS POINTS
If you break a personal monthly word count record, you get 5 bonus points.

We'll also post highlights of our experiences - highs, lows, successes, falures - as we move forward. This may be a place to post "good" rejection letters, or to share new markets we've found. You'll also notice links on the side to some favorite sites.

Mostly, though, we'll just use this space to report our weekly scores.

Gentlemen, start your keyboards!