All the Learned Things

I started writing in elementary school and have had dreams of being published since about then. I excelled in my high school English classes and wrote my first novel. Admittedly, it wasn’t that good, though I learned much about writing. My second (first? other?) major in college was English and I took whatever creative writing classes I could, learning more and more. After college, I queried the novel I’d written for my senior creative writing seminar—and didn’t get positive responses. I didn’t understand that I hadn’t yet learned enough. I put that novel aside. I put writing aside for years. Then, two years ago, I started writing again. Since, I’ve completed two novels. It wasn’t until this past summer and a random email that I got more serious than I ever have been about publishing.

I’ve learned so much in the months since summer, but these last two weeks with Pitch Wars have taught me even more. I want to share these things with you. Some are serious, some aren’t. Some are about Pitch Wars itself, while others are about my MS. Some I’ve been thinking about for days and others I’ll probably stumble upon while I write this. All of them are important to me and my publishing quest. I may not know the results of Pitch Wars until Wednesday, but all of these learned things have made this contest worth it.

MENTOR/MENTEE TORTURE: Pitch Wars is fun for all of us—mentors and mentees—but it’s also hard on us. On the mentee side, it’s hard to read all the vague mentor tweets about Pitch Wars. I want to know if I’m in or out. I want to know if mentors liked my pitch. I want to know if others like my novel as much as I do. Waiting is torture. And though I can’t speak for the mentors, their tweets say they’re just as tortured by this process. It’s hard to read 100 or so submissions and choose just one (plus two alternates). It’s hard to get your top pick when someone else wants it. It’s hard to reject writers who are good, just not right for you.

WHEN I GROW UP, I WANT TO BE A PITCH WARS MENTOR: Though it’s probably as hard (though differently) on the mentor side, I love everything the mentors are doing for us mentees. Some are giving feedback to all their mentees. Some have said they’ll review the entire MS not just for their first pick, but also for their two alternates. Some are tossing out words of wisdom in hopes that we’ll pick them up and use them to polish our novels and get an agent. I want to help writers the same way these mentors are helping me.

HOW TO WRITE A QUERY: One way mentors have helped me is their advice about query writing (either via tweets or their blogs). A successful query, when pitching the novel, talks about the important character(s), the conflict (what happens), and the stakes (why this is important to the character/world). With their advice, I pitched a strong query for this contest. How strong? I won’t know until at least Wednesday.

PASSIVE VOICE & ZOMBIES: One mentor tweeted that passive voice is bad. I already knew this much. The way to know if you’re using passive voice? If you can add BY ZOMBIES to the end of your sentence. I laughed so hard when I read this mentor’s tweet. I wanted to see just how many passive sentences I could write because I wanted to use as many by zombies as possible. I blame this on my friend who forced me to watch The Walking Dead.

SHE FELT: Holy $%&#! I had no idea how many times I’d used this—and I had no idea how unnecessary it was. It’s one of those Show Not Tell things that teachers were always talking about, though I don’t remember them ever using this specific example. Someone reviewing my pitch prior to the contest’s entry date pointed this out to me. MY FIRST SENTENCE STARTED THIS WAY. I didn’t know. I know now. Yikes. I’ve since done a purge of she felt in my MS.

TREAT EVERY SENTENCE LIKE A TWEET: For those of you who don’t know, each Twitter tweet must be less than or equal to 140 characters. Twitter is unforgiving about this. At some point, someone decided we mentees should start tweeting the cool parts of our novels—whether to pass time or to entertain or to entice agents, I don’t know. Regardless, it was a great game. Each quote could only be 118 characters (140 characters – 10 characters for #PitchWars – 10 characters for #coolparts – 2 characters for spaces between the quote and the hashtages). Each tweet had to be precise and amazing. As I dug through my MS, I found some sentences that I loved but that had a few too many characters—and a few too many words. Goodbye, adjectives and adverbs and irrelevant phrases! Hello, cool tweet! Though of course I don’t have to limit every sentence in my MS to 128 characters, the premise is sound. Cut the fat. KISS: Keep It Simple Stupid.

WRITERS HELPING WRITERS: Before this summer, before that email, before Twitter, I had no idea that I didn’t have to do this alone. I now know what I’ve missed. There’s a huge community of writers out there and all of them want to help all the others become better writers and get their novels published. I can’t say enough how much I love this. I can’t say enough how many great writers—mentors, mentees, observers—I’ve met during this contest. My number of followers has nigh doubled in these two weeks, as has the number of people I’m following. We’re our cheerleaders: cheering each other on and holding up the pyramid.

NEVER GIVE UP. NEVER SURRENDER. Galaxy Quest, anyone? At some point this weekend, I’d given up hope that I’d get a mentor. I didn’t receive page/synopsis requests. I didn’t read any tweets from my mentors that could be hinting at me or my MS. I was sure I was out. Then came yesterday. One of my mentors threw out four separate hints about one of their top picks—and any of those hints could have been about me. ALL OF THEM COULD HAVE BEEN ABOUT ME. The chances that they were about me? Let’s not get into that. The point is, I was sure I’d lost…but now, I’m not so sure. There’s always hope.

FOR THE AGENT, NOT THE WIN. I won’t know until Wednesday if I’ll have a mentor. Even if I don’t have one, I’m good with that. My goal for this contest wasn’t to get a mentor (though of course it would be AWESOME if I did). My goal was to make connections and improve my pitch. My ultimate goal is to publish my book…and the first major step to doing that is getting an agent. If I don’t get a mentor, I’ll take my shiny query to one more contest and see what’s there to learn. After that, I’ll start querying. My novel is good. I just have to write the right query and find the right agent at the right time. I CAN DO THIS. You can, too. Want to join me?