Horseshoes & Hand Grenades

Rumors ran all over the #PitchWars Twitter feed yesterday that Brenda Drake would be announcing the contest’s winners at midnight EST. This was bad for me for two reasons.

1. I’m one of those people that need sleep. Seven hours will do, but I prefer eight (or ten…but that rarely happens). Since I had to get up for work at six the next morning, staying up to midnight would be a bad idea.

2. I really wanted to stay up for the announcement because I was pretty sure I had a good shot of being on that list. Then again, I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be on it, no matter how close I was sure I’d be. (Self-doubt, etc.)

Either way—my name there or not there—I didn’t see myself falling asleep soon after reading the announcement. So I went to bed around eleven.

And then woke up less than four hours later. I fretted in the darkness, wondering if the winners were posted, if I was one of them. Because there were three reasons I thought my name might be there.

1. Less than twenty-four hours after I submitted my materials to the contest, one of the mentors emailed me, asking for my first fifty pages. OMG.

2. About a week later, that same mentor emailed me again, this time looking for a synopsis. Which meant my first fifty had been good enough that the mentor was curious about the rest of the story.

3. On Sunday, two days before the mentors had to turn in their final picks, that same mentor emailed me a third time, wanting to know my query history for THE BUTTERFLY GHOST (which was nonexistent). I figured the mentor was looking for some way to differentiate between top picks, which meant I was still in it.

So about 2:45 this morning, I couldn’t wait any longer. I grabbed my phone and opened the internet. Brenda Drake’s blog was already there waiting for me. All I had to do was refresh the page.

My name wasn’t there.

I wasn’t surprised, but that didn’t mean I felt any less disappointed and bitter. I’d wanted this so bad. I’d believed in THE BUTTERFLY GHOST and I’d been so sure this mentor did, too.

Turns out, the mentor just believed in a couple of other manuscripts more. I received a personalized rejection email from the mentor later that morning. The mentor explained that I was in the top five, that this was a book the mentor would love to buy and read, that the concept and writing were great. And in the end, the mentor encouraged me to keep going.

And I will.

I’ve often heard the saying that close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades, but I’m not sure that’s true here. Sure, I didn’t get a Pitch Wars mentor, but I did get the best feedback I’ve had yet on one of my manuscripts. In the mentor’s initial email asking for my first fifty pages, the mentor said my query was stellar. I’m taking as a sign that I might stand out of some agent’s query slush pile.

That said, I’m taking a bit of break, starting today. At the end of that break, I’ll read through my manuscript one more time, making a few more changes based on feedback I’ve gotten from critique partners, fellow Pitch Wars mentee hopefuls, and Write On Con attendees. Then, I’ll be querying, hoping to find some agent that loves my manuscript just a smidge more than all the other great ones out there.