The Hard Stuff

I thought losing Baker’s Dozen was tough. (Don’t believe me? See my Plan A’s Dark Thoughts post.) I told myself that Pitch Wars would be easier. After all, getting a Pitch Wars mentor wasn’t really important as long as I improved my pitch. I must be a damn good liar because I convinced even myself that was true.  

There are big differences between Baker’s Dozen and Pitch Wars. For Baker’s Dozen you submit a logline and the first 250 words, which isn’t what you’d send to query an agent; for Pitch Wars you submit a query and the first five pages, which is exactly what you’d send to an agent. For Baker’s Dozen you submit your materials and wait three weeks in relative silence for the results; for Pitch Wars you submit your materials and spend a week reading the #PitchWars feed on Twitter. This feed, it’s torture.

The mentors talk about how they love everyone’s work, but can only choose one. They say they’d read any number of these books if they were published. They say it’s killing them to reject all but one person. I believe these are true, but that doesn’t make me feel any better. It makes it harder.

Remember how I blogged that Pitch Wars odds were incalculable? Not so, based on the tweets I’ve read this week. For example, one of my mentors tweeted that she received around 90 submissions. I have a 1/90 chance of having her as my mentor. That’s a 1.11% chance. Compare that to the Baker’s Dozen odds of 11.67%. Bleak, right? And that’s just one of my four mentors. For all I know, the other three have more submissions and my chances are even lower. Not that I expect to get a mentor—there are too many talented writers out there who don’t have agents.

Still, I’d like to know if my query and MS are any good. There are tons of mentor tweets running around about the awesome submissions they’re reading. So how do I know my book is one they consider to be good? I don’t—not unless the mentors email me asking for additional pages. Many of them have emailed mentees for these (and sometimes a synopsis). How do I know? That damn #PitchWars feed. Mentors have tweeted that they’ve done this. Mentees have tweeted that they’ve gotten these requests. I haven’t received an email. This doesn’t mean I won’t get one: the Pitch Wars winners aren’t announced until Monday, so there’s still plenty of time for mentors to read and want more of my stuff. Plus, the mentors I submitted to (or three of the four anyway) have been relatively silent. If they’re reading and requesting more, they aren’t really saying so.

Another way to know if my entry is good? Many of the mentors say they’ll send feedback to every mentee. This scares me. Of course I want to know…but do I really want to know? What if they tell me that my stuff is horrible? They may say, “Yeah, this is good, but not that good.” Not that they’d say that—the mentors seem like great people. (In fact, they’re so entertaining that Twitter will be boring when the contest is over.) It’s hard to wait this week—all the while reading tweets about the good stuff—to find out what the mentors think, especially since all four mentors I submitted to said they’re interested in YA sci-fi. What happens if not one of them likes what I’ve written? Bad sign. Bad, bad sign. If not one in four of the average YA sci-fi readers would like what I’ve written, that doesn’t bode well for my publishing prospects. But I want to know anyway. I want the mentors to be honest with me. If you’re a mentor and you’re reading this and you’re going to give feedback to all, please be honest. That’s what I want, right? Uh…right.

Yet, waiting for results—waiting to know if my query and MS are any good—isn’t the hardest part of this contest. The hardest part is that I’ve made Twitter/writer friends. I’ve helped people with their queries and pages…and now I’m reading about their success. They’ve gotten requests for more pages. Mentors are interested in what they’ve written. Of course I’m happy for them—it’s awesome that they’re having success in this contest. They may even snag a mentor. But me? I’m still here, same as I was before. No requests. No validation that my words are worth anything. Others are getting what they want—what I want—and I’m not. That’s the hard stuff.  Again, I’m not saying this won’t happen for me. It might.

Whatever happens, I need to keep perspective here. I know this. I need to remember that my goal for this contest was to improve my pitch so that when I send it to agents, I get a positive response. I need to remember that I have to ride out this hard stuff to get there. I need to remember that these contests aren’t all there is. Winning a contest isn’t my dream. Publishing my book is.