35 Words or Less

Let’s talk about how frustrating it is that your entire future can be contained in thirty-five words or less.

I know my last post was about how important the first 250 words of a manuscript can be, but I think I’m struggling over thirty-five just as much. Why? It’s a bit of a story.

For starters, Brenda Drake is hosting Pitch Madness on Monday. To enter this contest, you submit the first 250 words of your MS along with a thirty-five word or less pitch. The number of people who can enter is unlimited (so I’m guessing it’ll be somewhere in the hundreds…several hundreds) and only sixty make it to the agent round, which means that in order for me to get to that round, my pitch will have to STAND OUT. I don’t think caps will cut it.

I’ve got my first 250 nailed down…I think…but that leaves me the elusive perfect thirty-five word pitch. I started tinkering with it a couple of weeks ago because I knew it would take me awhile. Want to be me here for a second? Imagine: you have to cram an entire book into thirty-five words. Pick a book, any book (okay, not a picture book) and give it a shot. You have to include the main character(s), the plot, and the stakes. Now go.

Easy? Not so much. Now imagine that you’re doing this under pressure, knowing that people will be reading this and judging if those thirty-five words are worthy enough to put in front of agents (and in case you’re not a regular here or you’re not a writer, agents are the liaisons entre between writers and publishers). Now how easy is it? Yeah. Thought so.

A couple of weeks ago when I thought I’d come up with my thirty-five word pitch, I sent it to three critique partners. They’d all read my book…and none of them liked it. A couple of them started with what I had and changed it. The third tossed mine out the window and started fresh. I took their suggestions, tinkered, tweaked, and came up with what I thought was a great pitch.

At this point, I made a small error—I sent the pitch to a family I love and trust (a mom, a dad, and two teenage girls). I thought they’d have a suggestion or two, some things I could easily fix. Well, no such luck. Of the thirty-five words in my pitch, they got stuck on one. That’s right—ONE. At first I thought they wanted to change that one word just in my pitch...and then I realized they were asking me to change it in my entire manuscript. Uh…what???

It wasn’t scary enough, they said. It needed to give readers chills even without all the details I emailed them about it. I thought a lengthy FaceTime conference was in my future, but they toiled without me. Rumor has it they debated my ONE WORD for over an hour, maybe two. I, meanwhile, sat down with my thesaurus (aka Word and Google) to see what I could come up with.

So what did we come up with? Nothing. Feel free to laugh out loud because I did. We’ve decided the word should be changed in my pitch (not my entire MS, thank God), but as to what word I might change it to…we’re still stuck. I mean, we’ve got a word or two, but none of us can agree on which one’s perfect.

Herein lies the stress. I have about forty-eight hours to figure this out. I could keep the initial word or I could delete it or I could find another. None of these seem right. I feel like it’s not the ONE WORD that’s my issue but my ENTIRE PITCH. There’s a perfect pitch out there, but I’ll never find it, not in time. I’ll send what I’ve got, knowing that it’s not my best. I’ll watch and wait and see what happens, all the while questioning my decision (whatever it’ll be) about this one word, about all thirty-five words. I’ll do these things like it’s my last chance, like my writing career could be over before it’s started, and I’ll fret and fret.

And then I’ll remember that this is just a contest. Yes, something amazing could happen. Maybe those thirty-five words won’t be perfect, but they could be good enough. They could get me to the agent round. Even if they don’t, it’s not the end of my writing world. I’ve sent out only one query for this MS and there are so many more agents. I’ll take a deep breath and calm down. Win or lose, I’ll know that this thirty-five word pitch won’t be the end.