Personal Narrative

2018 goals update
Books read: 21
Words on LIBRARIUM: 3000/?--5000 maximum (this is more impressive when you consider that I started this week by cutting about 200 words from the story).

It's been a hectic couple of weeks.

I've been trying for the past few months to find a different day job. Adjuncting is stressful and not particularly lucrative, and the balance between how many classes I have to teach to pay my bills and how many classes I can teach effectively...doesn't really work out in my favor. I spruced up my resume and went on the hunt for new work. I finally found it, but some of the advice that I found along the way stuck with me.

I'm in a query mindset--CANUS is so close (*so close*) to being ready to go, so I'm trying to put together a great pitch letter. I'm finding that it's really not unlike looking for a job.

 

The specific piece of advice that's sticking with me is this: your resume should tell a story. Whatever your work has been, you should be able to frame your work history as a story of what you want to achieve and how you hope to achieve it.

This is... complicated.

My work history doesn't make a lot of sense. I've gone from radio and television, to academics, to administration without much of a plan. I don't know what I want to be when I grow up. Well, I do, but there's not really a set path that leads to "financially independent author." My strategy has always sort of been "do what I have to so I can do what I want to." Helpful for keeping up with writing, but not great for presenting as a purposeful narrative to a potential employer.

You find ways, though. Tying something you witnessed in radio and TV to an academic curiosity; demonstrating the way that teaching experiences prepare you to deal with deadlines and crises in administrating. But it takes some mental acrobatics.

One of the elements in a query is the bio: just a few sentences that give the agent a sense of who you are, what you'd be like to work with, and what business you have telling this particular story.

It's that last part that trips me up--for the same reason as the "your resume should be a narrative" advice. CANUS takes place in the distant future. And in space. With alien species. How can I draw a line from that to my teaching job? How does my experience make me "uniquely qualified" to tell this particular story?

I get why it's important, obviously. You bring yourself to every story that you write. Who you are and what you've experienced shape what stories you tell and how you tell them. But those lines can be tough to draw. Especially when you're writing genre fiction.

There's nothing in my work history that ties to space travel, and I've never met an alien species. But I have studied the way that economic relationships shape power structures. I've studied the ways that access to particular technologies can change daily life and who gets the final say in a conversation over the direction of resources. I've studied relationships between colonized and colonizers. And all of that comes with me to my story, my world, and my characters.

Sometimes it's hard to see how the threads of your own story tie together--even when you spend a considerable amount of your time weaving together the stories of others. But once you see the connection, you can point it out to others. And you can go into your own work knowing why you should tell the story; what you can give that someone else can't.

First Impressions

I've been querying again lately. The whole process makes me nervous. Pitching is always an anxious process, but this project is more important to me than anything I've written so far, so the tension is higher and the rejections have a harsher sting. I'm letting this round wrap up, and if nothing comes of it, it'll be time for the next round of revision.

I've got to where I'm pretty comfortable with my query as it stands. It was the basis of the in-person pitch that got a partial request from an agent at ALAWW, and I've had it critiqued by an Writer's House agent via The Manuscript Academy (this is a great resource for authors, by the way--I really recommend checking them out). From the feedback I've had on it, it's pretty solid. And I'm proud of that. It's not easy to distill 82,000 words of novel into a compelling two-paragraph pitch.

But, of course, a good query is only part of finding representation. What I've really been thinking about recently is first pages.

Most of the agents I've got on my query list ask for sample pages. The number of pages varies. One agent asked for the first 50 pages of the manuscript. One only asks for 3. Most want the first 10 pages or the first chapter. No matter how you look at it, there's not a lot of time to make an impression.

I've poured over my first chapter dozens of times. I've moved the starting point. I've sheared description and reframed sections from the character's point of view. I've cut words that create space between the reader and the character. I've played around with starting at a different point in the story entirely to change what the reader knows at the beginning. I'm trying to find a balance between compelling reading, connection to character, and a solid establishing of the world. I've had test readers and critique partners give feedback, and I've applied it--or at least tested it to see if it would work.

The first chapter--the first page--of a book has to do so much. I know what potential the entirety of my story has. I love the narrative and the characters--I have followed them through their journeys.

But a reader doesn't. I have to earn their time. If a reader doesn't like the first page, there's no guaranteeing that they'll read the second page--let alone the second chapter.

I've been reading and listening to podcasts and researching, trying to find advice on how to craft the best first page I can. It's overwhelming. But there are a few things that are common threads in all of the information.

A first page has to introduce the main character. That seems obvious, but it can be more complicated than it sounds. You have to give a sense of who the character is and what they want, and you have to do it without relying the cliche: things like waking up in the morning or getting ready for work (there are always exceptions--some authors can make these intros work, but more often they get boring).

The first page should introduce the conflict, or at least give a sense of it. I tell my students that, by the time I read through the introduction of their papers, I should know what to expect from the rest of the work. In some ways, this same principle applies to a first page. You don't have to telegraph the ending, but there should be something of a feeling that "oh, hey, this thing is probably going to be a problem."

On top of this, the first page should give a sense of the world. What is the structure and how does it inform people's actions and reactions? What are the rules? What is the character's place in all of it?

When you consider that a single page in the standard format-- Times New Roman 12 pt., double spaced, one-inch margins--is only about 250-300 words, you get a sense of what a tall order all of this is.

I've been trying to find ways to be more precise with my language. Some of this is dropping crutch words (the word "that" is a big one for me--also "had"). Some of it is finding ways for sentences to do double duty: to reveal something about the character while simultaneously introducing the conflict or building the world. It's improved my writing overall from where it was when I wrote my first book--even from the way I was writing at the beginning of the year. I don't know that I've "cracked the code," but I certainly have more tools in the toolbox than I did before.

There's still a lot of the process that's out of my control. I have no say over what editors are interested in. I can't control agents' personal preferences. Even an excellent first page won't excite someone who's not into the story idea. But I keep working on the things that I can address, and I'll do what I have to to make my work the best I can.

Mood Boost

My plan for this week was originally to write about knowing your genre--something that is super important for a person like me who writes across different genres with specific tropes and expectations attached to them.

But at some point on Saturday, I hit a serious downswing.

The thing with depression, even depression that's typically reasonably well-managed, is that sometimes it just slams you. Nothing happens; there's no inciting incident that sets off a spiral. Sometimes you're just standing in the middle of a snack aisle at Target and all of your energy is suddenly gone and the notion that you should bury yourself under the covers and never move again seems like the best possible use of time--and even if it's not, what does it matter? It's not like what you do is important in the long run anyway.

I haven't worked on anything in almost a week. I've spent too much time sleeping. There are plenty of things that I have to do--some things that, under normal circumstances, I'd be jazzed to do--but I can't do them. Getting out of bed was Herculean. Now I have to do more?

And so your weekly blog post ends up being late because the effort of actually taking the laptop out of the bag is too much, and the ceiling's not gonna stare at itself, and you know there's not going to be a way to get out of work on Monday, so you might as well just try to save up whatever mana you can so that you can make it through work and then go back to bed. And, of course, the fact that the post is late makes you want to do it even less.

So I'm not going to talk about genre knowledge this week. Maybe, hopefully, I'll be able to next week.

Instead, I'm going to share some songs that I use as pick me ups when I feel, for lack of a better word, blue. And, for my purposes, I'm using the Drowsy Chaperone definition of blue:

"A little anxious for no particular reason. A little sad that I should feel self-conscious at this age. A little self-conscious anxiety resulting in non-specific sadness."

It's not completely accurate, but it offers a little insight.

This doesn't have much to do with writing, beyond that I sometimes use these songs to pick me up when I feel this way. And one of the songs is on the playlist I made for project 2016 (you can find part of that playlist here, if you're interested).

Thanks for hanging in there with me. See you next week.

ALAWW

Normally my Fridays are spent in my office grading papers, doing course prep, meeting with students, and doing other generic academic grunt work.

But this week I took a day off--from academic work, at least.

As I mentioned in last week's post, I signed up for the Alabama Writing Workshop. The meeting was Friday, so I rescheduled my office hours and, instead of spending the day on campus, I spent it at a hotel in Birmingham, schmoozing with other writers and meeting industry professionals.

I'm a nervous person in general. My anxiety brain never stops coming up with potential scenarios for disaster--which can be great for writing, but is considerably less great when it comes to trying to make a good first impression. I spent a pretty significant portion of the day reminding myself that the goal was to learn more and if that was all I accomplished that would be a victory. I also spent a pretty significant portion of the day reminding myself that I had to do things like breathe and blink and maybe drink some water. My hands shook when I met new people. I tripped over my words and stuttered.

It was awesome.

As someone who's spent the better part of fifteen years trying to make something of my ambitions to write professionally and to get my stories out into the world, I went in with a solid body of background knowledge. I knew about some of the resources mention (I've actually plugged some of them in different blog posts--I'll go back through and make a full list to post soon). I had done a fair bit of the recommended prep work. But even at that, hearing the professionals name check the resources I've been using was encouraging. I frequently feel--and I imagine other writers in positions similar to mine also feel--like I'm treading water. Now, though, I've got a sense that I'm at least treading the right water.

The seminars were led by agents and editors. They dealt with topic ranging from seeking out representation for work, improving writing, making use of social media, and what happens after a book deal is signed. It was a ton of information, and I took pages of notes (and, thankfully, the speakers provided outlines and resources for their talks, so I should be able to review and find what I inevitably missed). And those were just the talks.

The session that met right after lunch was, to me, one of the most informative. It wasn't so much a talk as it was a review. Attendees were told they could bring copies of their first page (sans names, of course) and the panel of agents would read through them--or parts of them--and give critiques. Essentially, the panel members would indicate when a page lost them, when they'd stop reading. My page didn't get read (and I'm actually glad it didn't since this panel was before my scheduled pitching time), but the issues that were pointed out in the pages that were read gave me some insight into how to improve mine.

It was a fantastic insight into how quickly some of these decisions can get made--how vital a strong first page is. It was also an opportunity to learn where the mileage varied for the specific agents on the panel. When they found something that didn't work, they said why. Sometimes it was an issue with the structure, but sometimes it was more subjective. And when panel members disagreed, they said so and explained why.

To me, though, valuable as all of the sessions were, the best part was meeting in-person for a one-on-one session with an agent.

The one-on-one was an addition to the conference--an extra event with an extra fee, and each instance of the fee got one sit-down with one agent. This was another instance where my background research came in handy--adjunct pay isn't great, so I only had enough funds to sit down with one agent. I reviewed the list, checked their websites and MSWL and Publisher's Marketplace (and availability--I registered last minute, so some slots were sold out). The sit-down was a ten-minute conversation, an opportunity to do a quick elevator pitch of the project and to ask and answer questions.

I spent the whole day nervous, but this is where the butterflies got out of hand. I managed--I made it through my pitch without too much word vomit. My hands (and voice) shook the whole time, but not so much that I couldn't be understood. I lost the thread of what I was saying for a second, but I got back on track, and the conversation didn't seem to suffer for it. The agent that I spoke with really did more than politeness demanded to ease my nerves (seriously, she was the nicest person I talked to through the conference--which made pitching that much more pleasant).

I didn't walk away with an offer of representation or a full manuscript request--I didn't expect to. But I did get an invitation to send a sample of Project 2016. And, after my pitch, she asked about other projects related to Project 2016 (some of the things I said in my pitch, she said, suggested that there were more stories)--which she asked for brief pitches for in my submission packet. There are never any guarantees--she liked the idea of the story, but it's still totally possible that my writing style won't be what she's looking for or that the draft flat-out isn't strong enough. But I am so glad--so glad--that I took the chance to talk to her face to face about the project.

It's the most promising lead that I've got so far, and even if it doesn't work out, I know where the strengths and weaknesses of my pitch are better now than ever before. I've got new tools to use as I keep working.

I won't be able to do many of these conferences--again, adjunct pay leaves a lot to be desired--but if I have the chance to go to another, I think I will. If you've been working on a project and are considering a conference, I hope you go. Worst case scenario, you still win--you still come out with more than you had when you went in.

Writers' Conference

This week, I took a big step in furthering my writing career.

I signed up for my first writers' conference.

I've been to conventions before, of course, places where indie authors host panels on different aspects of writing and publishing (self-publishing and small press publishing, usually) and sell their wares.

These experiences have certainly been valuable, but more often than not, the people I've met at conventions are in the same place I am. They've been writing for years. They've sold a few pieces to presses of various sizes, usually on the smaller end of the spectrum. They aren't agented, usually--in fact, I think I've only met one author with an agent at a convention. I've made some good connections at these events, and they're how I first heard of my two current publishers.

But as far as making the transition from being an indie author selling to small presses to deals with larger publishers that won't review a submission from an unagented author, conventions haven't given me what I need.

I've written in the past about my attempts to get an agent so far, where my struggles and successes have been and what I've learned from the process. I've been largely self-educating through this process. I look up articles on how to pitch, I dig through lists of agents trying to find ones who represent my genre and who sound like they might be on the same wavelength as I am. I peruse Manuscript Wish List and I keep up with the Writer's Digest blog looking for new ideas of people to query and tips on refining my pitches.

I've been doing what I can, but what I really want, what I think I need, is guidance. A chance to talk with the people on the other end--to the agents and editors I'm trying to get my work in front of. I want a chance to hear what they themselves have to say and to ask questions, maybe even to sit one-on-one and talk about my pitch, specifically.

There are meetings all over the country that offer opportunities like this--writers' conferences (conferences, not conventions--one's focused more on the craft where the other is a little more sales and entertainment oriented) and writers' workshops hosted by agents and editors that offer panels on querying and critiques and short sit-downs with agents.

But these events tend to end up where there are communities to support them--which tends to translate to larger cities or places that tend to draw a lot of tourists and conventions (and so tend to have better infrastructure for dealing with the influx of people). Which is fine.

Unless you can't afford to travel and live in places that aren't exactly hot spots for convention hosting. Most of these meetings have been out of my price range and too far out of town for me to reasonably make the trip.

So I was pretty excited when the Alabama Writers Workshop was announced. It's close enough to me that I can get to it and, because it's a slightly smaller meeting, it's price tag isn't as big. And it happened to coincide with a pay increase (also a workload increase, but that's another story).

I signed up. I paid my registration fee. I dropped the extra money to get a one-on-one with one of the agents that will be there. Now I've got a little less than a week to iron out my verbal pitch, print copies of my first page for review, do more background research on the agent I'm meeting, and figure out what specific questions I'm going to focus on finding answers to.

I'm not anticipating that I'll walk out of the convention next week with a manuscript request (though wouldn't that be awesome?). But I hope I'll at least leave with a better sense of where I am and what work I need to do to get my project out into the world at the level that I want. I don't know what exactly the experience will bring, but I'm looking forward to it.

And I imagine I'll tell you all about it next week.

The Wind Up

Right now, pitching is my life.

I'm still working on revisions for bits and pieces of what was formerly Project 2016 (I guess I'll need to give it a new name now), but I've by and large moved on to the querying process. For now, at least. Depending on how this round of submissions goes, I might end up back at the drawing board.

Queries are among the hardest things to write (the hardest thing is the synopsis, but that's a post for another day). It's hard to take 75,000 to 85,000 words and boil it down to a single eye-catching paragraph. You've got to introduce the protagonists. You've got to lay out the stakes. You've got to convince the agent/editor/publisher that your story is something special--something worth the financial risk. But you can't give away the ending. You can't reveal the twists and turns. Your Chekov's Gunsmen and their guns have to stay concealed.

The idea is that your query should read rather like the back cover copy you see on the books you find in a bookstore. Just enough information to set up a reader's expectations and to pique their interest without tilting the bean can too far.

This has been sort of a trial and error process for me. The early queries for Evin were terrible. As far as queries to agents went, I don't think I ever made it out of the slush pile. The rejections that I got were polite, but they were form letters.

By the time I sent a query to Evin's publisher, Foundations Books, I had figured out some of my missteps. I wouldn't call the final query I sent out sparkling--at least not by the standards I would use to judge myself today, nearly a year after the fact--but it was successful.

The queries for Delphinus have been considerably better. I've still gotten rejections, but they've been more helpful--more specific. Whatever I've done in the query has been enough to get people to read through the sample pages and respond directly to what they've seen there.

I'm still working on getting better at my written pitches in the only way that I know how: by pitching projects. By the time this post goes up (I'm writing in advance--part of my get-back-on-track-time-management plan), I should have heard back on the latest one. This time, I'm proposing the story I want to write to a publisher. It seems like that should be easier, since you haven't written a work that's locked you in to anything yet, but it was just as frustrating and complicated as any I've written.

And all of this is without even getting into spoken pitches--so-called elevator pitches, because they ideally take no longer to run through than a short elevator ride. Narrowing down to a paragraph or so is difficult. Trying to sum up a novel in a few sentences (I think something like 35 words is about the length people tend to shoot for) is Herculean. I don't yet have a strategy for making these better--most of my talking about my projects is me waving my arms and word-vomming at my writing group partner. It's possible that the Twitter Pitch Parties that happen every few months might be the best tool for this--maybe I'll try tooling around with that a little.

Pitching's part of the process that I'm not great at (though, honestly, there are times when I'm not particularly good at any parts of the process), but I'm hoping that through time and effort, I'll improve. The evidence seems to point that way so far. Until I  make it, I'll just consider these earlier efforts the wind up.

The "It" Factor

By the time I had figured out that Project 2016 was part of a larger project, I had already sent out a handful of queries. Most of them had gotten responses before I went back to work, but a couple were still outstanding.

I went ahead and got back to writing because, for one thing, I needed to keep myself busy and stay in the habit of working and, for another, I didn't want to hang all my hopes on this version of Project 2016 being the one that got picked up.

It's been long enough that I'd actually forgotten about all but one outstanding query (as an aside, those auto-response receipts are a godsend as far as keeping up with who has what and where). I've been working on other things, and the emails I sent back in early October are fuzzy.

So I was surprised this week when I found a response from an agent in my email.

Before anyone gets too excited, the email wasn't a manuscript request. It was a rejection. The sixth for this project so far.

I'm not generally bothered by rejections. What makes good fiction is pretty subjective, and sometimes your work just isn't someone's style. Frankly, you don't want someone who isn't one hundred percent about your work to represent it. And I'm not bothered by the number of rejections. Harry Potter was famously rejected a dozen times before it found a home. All manner of famous authors have seen rejections--Orwell, Faulkner, Stein, L'Engle, Alcott, Christie, Joyce--the list goes on. I've heard authors talk about seeing upwards of 50 rejections before finding the right match (though, I'll admit--I'm not sure I'd still be unbothered by rejections at that point).

The responses I've received from the people I've queried, thought they haven't been what I wanted, have all been kind and helpful. None of them have made me feel like I'm wasting my time with this project. In fact, from the way some of the rejections have been worded, I think I might have come pretty close to success once or twice--phrases like "excited by the query" and "interested in the premise," stuff that suggests that, if nothing else, there was something that gave the reader pause or piqued interest.

And that's great--it's really, really great. It means there's something in the story that people are into.

But it's also so frustrating that I want to pull my hair out.

In addition to these more promising statements, the emails I've gotten have mostly included some variation of "I didn't fall in love with it the way I need to to represent it."

Again, in the long run, that's a good thing for me to know. Whoever is going to champion my book needs to love it at least as much as I do. If someone can't reach that level of enthusiasm, they won't be able to fight for it. And my work not being someone's cup of tea is no big thing--there are plenty of books that are great that I'm just not that into. It happens.

None of this experience is abnormal. But it has left me asking questions.

What's the "it" factor? What makes someone fall in love with a book? What might my book be missing?

Obviously, there's not a hard-and-fast answer to any of those questions. What makes a person fall in love with a book is going to depend on the reader. The "it" factor can be anything from a particularly compelling character to a detailed and expansive world with thorough lore, to a timely conflict or the introduction of a fascinating piece of technology. My book may not be missing anything--or it may be missing a lot.

The process is a roller coaster. People have joked that being an artist is simultaneously feeling absolute narcissism and crippling self-doubt. That doesn't seem far off the mark. This question of what makes people fall in love with a book (which is really me asking "why aren't people falling in love with my book?" if I'm being honest) has got me on a bit of a downswing. But it's temporary. It always is. And at least I know that there is something worth keeping in this project.

I've still got two queries out. I have no idea what to expect from them, but I do have a plan for what I need to do next, which is about the best I can ask for.

I'll be taking next week off from the blog for the holiday. The blog will be back January 1 with a 2016 recap and, if there's news, updates.

Happy holidays, folks. Thanks for reading.

Querying

Project 2016 is at the part of the process that I may hate more than anything else.

Querying.

I think I've explained before that, with this project, I'm trying to get wider distribution--I want, for example, to be able to pick up my book at a big box bookstore rather than just being able to order it online. Meeting this goal means that I'll have to get my manuscript picked up by a larger publishing house--one of the "big five" publishing houses, maybe.

The thing with bigger publishing houses is that everyone wants to get picked up by them. Dreams of the seven-figure book deal start with signing a contract at a HarperCollins or a Macmillan. Given the option, almost everyone who writes would send their manuscripts to them.

So they don't give people that option.

There are two types of submission that an author can make to a publisher or agent: solicited and unsolicited. The second is pretty much what all unagented authors are sending out (with the exception of, like, if you talk to an agent at a conference and the agent asks them to send a query or something like PitMad, where an agent makes a request for a particular project). An unsolicited submission is essentially a cold call. Hey, here's my work--you interested? Smaller publishing houses accept unsolicited submissions from unagented authors. But the big five don't. If you're sending a submission to one of the big five, it's either because they asked you to or because you have an agent that's convinced them to take a look.

And so, since an agent is more or less required for me to take the next step up, I'm trying to find one with Project 2016. For the sake of full disclosure, I should say that this isn't my first time trying to make this happen. I tried to find an agent with Evin for a while, but, for various reasons, I didn't have success. I'll get to that in a minute.

Finding an agent is in part about matchmaking. Project 2016 is YA speculative fiction, so the genre of the book has to guide my search. I've made use of Manuscript Wishlist and Writer's Digest (in addition to generic Google searches) to try to find agents that are looking for work like mine. I find the name, I look at the agent/agency page to try to determine if I think I will want to work with them, and, if I think I want to query them, I add them to my list. My list right now has 15 agents on it. I might go back and add more later, but I think this is good to start with.

I organized my list according to which agents I was most excited about. I don't want to send out all 15 queries at once (what if one of the agents has feedback that might help with my next query?), so I set a loose order for sending out queries.

Queries are hard. Your query is meant to sell your story in a paragraph or two. It's not a summary--not exactly--but a short pitch. It's got to introduce your protagonist(s) and set up the stakes. For me, this is always pretty complicated. How do I pick the most important part of the manuscript when, to me, it's all important? Which characters absolutely have to be in the query? Of all of the conflicts that are in the manuscript, which is the conflict? It usually takes me a couple of drafts to get a query down--and I'm usually unhappy with it no matter how long I work on it.

I started with three agents. I tailored the opening paragraph of my query for each agent--making note of what the agent has said s/he is looking for and what I think my manuscript has to offer. Then, I follow up with my two-ish paragraphs about the manuscript and a paragraph about my publication history.

Depending on the agent, I add sample pages (usually they ask for the first 5-10 pages) and a synopsis (and oh my God, writing a synopsis is an ordeal worthy of its own post).

And then off it goes. The query packet is sent to the agent, and I wait for a response.

This is the point where I start checking my email every five minutes.

I call this phase of the process the land of a million rejections. When I was querying with Evin, I got discouraged pretty early. I sent out maybe five queries total and got five rejections.

It's worth noting that this isn't uncommon. Rejections--several rejections--are part of the deal. Sometimes the work isn't ready, and if that's the case, you need to find out. Even if the work is great, the agent might not feel like they're the work's best advocate. But rejection always stings.

Two weeks ago, I sent out my first three queries. And within three days, I had already gotten back my first rejection. It was very polite, and I don't think it was a form letter (which is encouraging, even though it's still not the outcome that I wanted), but I can't deny that I felt pretty bad about it.

Last time, this might have been enough to derail me. This time, though, I've got my list of agents. I got a rejection, so I sent out another query (and got another rejection--this one was a form letter, I'm pretty sure). The let down of a rejection sucks, but having an action that I can take in response--sending another query--helps keep me from getting too bogged down.

I've still got three queries out--two of them from the first batch I sent. I have eleven agents left on the list as it is. I'll probably add more as I do more research.

The querying roller coaster is rough and certainly isn't my favorite part of the process, but this time, I'm not going to give up--or at least, I won't give up so soon. And who knows? Maybe I'll find someone who is as excited about Project 2016 as I am. 

PitMad

Project 2016 has been through four readers and roughly three drafts, and I am about ready to call the revisions done. The current draft is back with my writing group partner for one more once over, but the opening pages are about a polished as they are gonna get, so it's time to start the submissions process.

I'll spend the next few weeks discussing how I've handled this process in the past and what I'm doing/how things are progressing with Project 2016. Most of what I'm going to do with Project 2016 is going to follow a more traditional approach--querying agents and sending submissions to publishers directly.

But this week, I tried something I hadn't tried before, and I thought it'd be worth looking at.

This past Thursday, I participated in my first ever Twitter Pitch Party.

These events are a relatively new alternative (or supplement, really--seems like most of the folks who participate also go the slush pile route) to the traditional querying process. The idea is that you tweet a short pitch for your manuscript with the appropriate hashtag. If an agent or editor favorites your pitch tweet, it's an invitation to send them a submission. This means that your submission gets moved to the top of the pile. It doesn't guarantee that you'll snag representation for your manuscript, but it lets you go into the next phase with better cards in your hand.

There are several of these events. The particular event that I took part in last week was PitMad, a quarterly event involving agents, editors, and some publishers. It's a twelve hour event--Thursday's was 8AM to 8PM EDT. You can pitch multiple projects, but you only get three tweets per project. A favorite from an agent, editor, or publisher is a request for a submission of the manuscript you pitched.

Since this was my first time doing this event, it was more learning experience than anything. I made my three pitches. Honestly, I'm not sure I did it well, but I didn't come up empty, and that's something. I wanted to show what my pitches were--to do sort of a postmortem on my PitMad work.

(Yes, you'll see my Twitter handle in these pictures; yes, you're welcome to follow me on Twitter, but that is where I talk about politics, so if that's gonna bug you, maybe stick to the blog and the Facebook page.)

Coming up with a pitch that expresses the charms of a 300-ish page manuscript in less than 140 characters is super difficult. My biggest mistake with this was not starting on my pitches earlier. I drafted three pitches a day and a half before the event. That may seem like plenty of time, but it meant that I didn't have a chance to have anyone else take a look at my pitches to see how effective they were. There wasn't as much time to rework and revise.

I don't feel like my pitches were particularly great. That said, I didn't exactly come up empty: I got one favorite on a pitch from a publisher. But more about that later.

I tweeted three pitches--one in the morning, one around lunchtime, and one just before the event ended.

My first pitch:

This one didn't get any hits. I thought the comparison was pretty strong, but it didn't leave a lot of room for details about the story itself--which I feel like you probably need in order to justify the comparison.

The hashtags, in case you were wondering, are the PitMad event tag, the age group tag (na for New Adult), and the genre tag (spf for speculative fiction).

Pitch number two:

This was the only successful pitch I had, and even then its success was limited. Without the comparison, I was able to introduce the main character's name and set up the exposition of the story, which might have been why this one got the favorite.

Pitch three:

Nothing on this one, either, but I did manage to work in some more specifics about the manuscript. I changed the age tag to Young Adult (my main character starts the story at 16 and is 18 by the end of it, so I'm in a little bit of a grey area there). I don't know if leaving the tag as it was would have made a difference, but that's something to keep in mind for next time.

All in all, maybe not a strong as it could have been, but it was definitely a learning experience.

My first big piece of advice to anyone considering participating in the next PitMad or similar event is pretty simple: be prepared. If I'd taken more time to prep my pitches, I think I would have been able to court more response.

The second big piece of advice I have is to do your research and know what you're looking for in an agent/editor/publisher. The thing with these events is that there's not a lot of vetting when it comes to who's able to favorite pitches. The draw of someone that wants to look at your manuscript is powerful, but you're not under any obligation to send a submission to someone just because they favorited your pitch.

I got one hit--from a publisher, not an agent or editor--so I did my research. I looked at the company's website, I looked at writer forums, and I looked at my list of goals.

For Project 2016, I want to go further than I did with Evin. While publishing Evin has been an excellent experience and I would happily recommend my publisher to anyone looking to put out a first book, I feel like I'm ready to take new steps. I'm not interested in digital-only publishing--ideally, I'd like to see Project 2016 on shelves in retailers and not just available for online ordering. What I really want is an agent, someone in a better position than I am to negotiate bigger deals for my work.

Bearing all these things in mind, I looked at what the publisher could offer. I've decided to pass on submitting. They seem like a fine outfit, but they don't line up with my goals.

So PitMad was sort of a mixed bag for me--I didn't come up empty, per se, but I'm not going to see any submissions from it. Still, the event was a good experience, and, depending on how things go with my querying over the next few weeks, I'll likely participate in other events like this again.

If you're interested in trying an event like this, here's a list of other similar events:
Pitch America (focuses on Latinx voices)
Hot Summer's Cool Pitchfest
Pitch Slam
DVPit (coming up in October)
Nightmare on Query Street
AdPit and KidPit (in November)