THE SELECTION & THE ELITE

I judge books by their covers.

Sometimes, I don’t even read the jacket or back—I go by the cover alone. I won’t deny that I do this. Almost every book I’ve picked because I liked the cover has been a good choice. There was only one time where the cover didn’t work in my favor—even now I have to stop myself from picking up another book by that same author with an equally as gorgeous cover—but that’s the exception and not why I’m writing now.

I was stressed (Pitch Madness, etc.) and wanted a fluffy book—one that was light, entertaining, and took my mind off all the other things. My friend and I were at a bookstore browsing the YA shelves when a paperback caught my eye. A red-haired girl in a sleeveless frilly turquoise dress and I was hooked. This book would be fluffy, perfect. I didn’t even need to read the back. Before leaving the bookstore, I bought THE SELECTION by Kiera Cass.

Later when I started reading, I was sure the book confirmed my quick cover judgment. America, the main character, was a poor teenage girl in love with the boy next door and wanted nothing to do with a competition between thirty-five girls to win the heart of the country’s prince. More than anything, the setup of the competition reminded me of the TV show The Bachelor, which my friends and I obsessed over in college. We’d spent many hours in the common room laughing and shouting at the TV screen and the show’s ridiculousness, entertainment, drama.

Further reading confirmed THE SELECTION’s fluffiness. Of course the boy next door broke up with the poor teenage girl, who decided to try to enter the competition—and of course she got picked. She moved to the palace, into a life of luxury, with hopes only for money for her family and great food for herself. So far, so fluffy.

Even once America started to fall for the prince, I was still comfortable with my book choice. Of course she would fall for the prince, otherwise there was no reason to write the book. But somewhere along the line, the book picked up subplots that weren’t so fluffy. I’m not just talking about the petty bickering—The Bachelor style—between the Selection girls. America’s maids were whispering about things they didn’t want America to hear, one of America’s friends was keeping a secret, rebels attacked the palace, and there was something funny about that prince. It wasn’t fluffy anymore, but I couldn’t put it down.

Before I finished THE SELECTION—which, PSA, doesn’t really end—I stopped by a bookstore to buy its sequel, THE ELITE. I had to have it. Now, two days after getting THE ELITE, I’ve finished THE SELECTION and read all but sixty pages of THE ELITE. Without too much spoilage, I’ll say that I’m pretty sure there’s a dystopian subplot about to erupt and I know there’s something funny about that prince. I also know I’ll put off working on my own manuscript this evening to finish this Kiera Cass novel.

The only problem I have with this series is that the third book—THE ONE—doesn’t come out until May. It’s not really a problem, though, because I’ll enjoy rereading THE SELECTION and THE ELITE right before THE ONE is released. I’m glad I judged THE SELECTION by its cover, even if it wasn’t the fluffy book I’d imagined. In fact, I’m glad it wasn’t fluffy. Thank you, Kiera Cass.

I Wish I Knew Why

Several people thanked me for my last post (Marshmallow Persistence) because it was positive and inspirational. That was a good day—the Veronica Mars movie came out and by all accounts on the Pitch Madness contest side of things, I didn’t know if I was in or out.

Well, I’m out. I’m not surprised. If you’ve read other posts, you know I didn’t get into other contests. Some people have contest success and some don’t. It’s the way of things…but I wish I knew why. I want to know if my pitch was weak, if there were too many other manuscripts for my genre, if my first 250 words didn’t catch the readers’ attention, if my genre wasn’t on specific agent wish lists. The thing about contests—most anyway—is that you never find out why you weren’t in.

While I followed the contest feed closely since submitting my entry, I’m not following it anymore. It’s hard to read about others’ success and congratulations. It’s hard when you can’t ask the slush readers and blog hosts what made other entries better than yours. It’s hard to know you don’t quite measure up. I can’t stop going through my entry in my head wondering just where I went wrong, if I went wrong at all.

You can have a solid pitch, a great 250, and still not make it into contests like Pitch Madness. This should make me feel better, but it doesn’t. For every positive and inspirational post I write, I’ve a dozen others that aren’t so upbeat but never make it to my blog. I’ve heard you’re supposed to keep that stuff to a minimum—after all, you never know who’s reading what and you’ve gotta keep a good image of yourself out there.

Still, rejection is hard.  Rejection days are the bad days. They’re the days where you want to put your head down on your desk or crawl under your covers and hide. They’re the days you wish it rained and rained and you could curl up with a book you love and disappear into another world. They’re the days you want to give up.

But I’m not giving up. I’ve said it thousands of times and I’ll say it again. I’M NOT GIVING UP. Today, as soon as I post this, I’ll pretend this writing world doesn’t exist. I won’t think about my entry, about whether my manuscript is good enough, about my other failed finished manuscripts, about what I’ll do tomorrow. Today, I’ll have a green beer and say thanks for St. Patrick’s Day, my brother, all the good things in my life.

Tomorrow, I’ll go back to finishing revisions on the manuscript I entered for Pitch Madness. I’ll turn my attention to March Madness while I prep my query. And then, sometime soon, I’ll send out a few queries, and then a few more, and then a few more. I’ll bury the bad days and look forward to good ones, knowing they’re out there somewhere if I just keep going.

Marshmallow Persistence

Guys, I’m a marshmallow. It’s Veronica Mars movie release day—P.I. day—and I thought it’d be good to confess that and to tell you why we writers (or, hey, all of you with dreams) can never give up. If you’re a marshmallow too, then you already know where I’m going with this. If you’re not, give me a few paragraphs and I’ll show you.

Veronica Mars was a TV show awhile back about a teenage girl who helped her father with his P.I. business. I loved it because Veronica was the teenager I wanted to be—smart, confident, cute, sarcastic. The show lasted for three seasons before it got canceled. Thing is, the final episode wasn’t a finale—it wasn’t an episode where everything gets tied up in a neat little bow so you can move on with your life. There was no bow, not even ribbon from which to make a bow. It just ended.

I wanted more, other fans wanted more, the cast and crew (Rob Thomas, Kristen Bell, et al.) wanted more…and for years they tried to get it. YEARS with no success, but they didn’t give up. Finally, last March Rob Thomas launched a Kickstarter campaign—two million dollars raised in one month and Warner Brothers would make a Veronica Mars movie. Well, we marshmallows with our dreams of more Veronica Mars stepped up and donated way more than two million in way shorter than a month. (You can Google this if you want more information.) And a year later, today the Veronica Mars movie is released.

For years, I’ve been trying to get an agent and publish a book. I queried a manuscript when I got out of college and failed epically because I didn’t know what I was doing (and the MS was crap). I gave up, stopped writing, and didn’t think about my dream for a few years. Stupid me.

I can’t say it was the whole Veronica Mars movie thing that got me dreaming again, but maybe it was. Last fall, I queried another manuscript, thinking I knew what I was doing…but I still didn’t. I had too much to learn and I’ve spent months since then learning it. Maybe I haven’t learned it all, but another query failure hasn’t stopped me from dreaming, not this time.

Now, I’m submitting my third manuscript to contests, most recently to Brenda Drake’s Pitch Madness. I don’t know if I’ll make it to the agent round because—like I said in my last post Why the Odds Don’t Matter—it’s not about my odds but about whether slush readers/agents want what I’ve written and how polished my writing is. I’m a realist and I’ve been reading the slush tweets about all the awesome entries, so I’m not sure I’ll make it. Even if I don’t, that doesn’t mean I’ll give up. I’m going to query.

And if I don’t have query success this time, I still won’t give up. I’ll go back to that MS I queried last fall and make the revisions I know it needs. (See my January post Let’s NOT Start at the Very Beginning if you want to know more on that.) I’ll enter that MS into contests while I write another one. And so on until I either get a book published, my priorities change, or I die. (Morbid, yes?)

I’m a sci-fi girl (who entered a YA sci-fi for Pitch Madness), so whenever I think about how I have to keep going, I think of Galaxy Quest and Tim Allen’s battle cry: NEVER GIVE UP. NEVER SURRENDER. I also think of Rob Thomas, Kristen Bell, Veronica Mars, and how the show was canceled in 2007 and now SEVEN YEARS later there’s a Veronica Mars movie. Dreams sometimes take years to become reality and I’m willing to work at it as long as it takes. I’m not giving up on my dream and I hope you aren’t either.

Why the Odds Don't Matter

Around midnight this morning Brenda Drake tweeted that she’d received 527 entries for the Pitch Madness contest. I’m one of those entries. The top 60 get into the agent round, which puts my odds at 11.39%, right? Well, no.

This isn’t my first contest. Last year I participated in Authoress’s Baker’s Dozen and Brenda Drake’s Pitch Wars as well as this year Michelle Hauck and Amy Trueblood’s Sun vs. Snow and Authoress’s January Secret Agent contest. One major thing I learned from these? When you enter a writing contest, your chances of getting to an agent round have nothing to do with the odds. The only exception to this is Authoress’s Secret Agent contests, where the winners are randomly determined by a bot. For the rest, the odds don’t really matter.

Think of writing contest odds as points in the show Whose Line Is It Anyway? (I loved that show in high school. We even played our own version of it in my theatre classes.) What was it Drew Carey said every episode? Something like Whose Line? was “the show where everything is made up and the points don’t matter.” Throughout each episode, he’d pass out points like candy. Each episode’s winner had nothing to do with how many points each person had—Drew Carey often just picked someone, anyone, because. The same is true for a writing contest.

Sure, your “odds” of getting to an agent round would be better if there were fewer entries, but contest winners aren’t randomly selected—it’s not just a numbers game. For that to be true, the entries would all have to be “equal” and the selection process would have to be unbiased, like when Authoress has a bot pick her Secret Agent winners. So what, if not odds, determines whether you get to a contest’s agent round?

YOUR WRITING: Writing contests usually say in the rules that you shouldn’t enter if your MS isn’t complete and ready, but we all know there are different levels to MS readiness and our awareness of that readiness. I was one of those people in Baker’s Dozen who didn’t know that I wasn’t ready. Even in Pitch Madness where there’s such a small sample—35 word pitch and 250 first words—the slush readers can tell if your writing is polished. Since my first contest, I’ve rewritten my first 250 words (and many other scenes) innumerable times, adding more tension, cutting out exposition, making sure I had a hook, a good hook. (See my post First 250 Woes if you want more on this.) While most people who entered Pitch Madness probably have polished entries, there’ll be those like mine used to be, those that’ll be eliminated pretty quick.

WHAT THE SLUSH READERS & BLOG HOSTS LIKE: Like I said, writing contests like Pitch Madness aren’t unbiased. If your entry has polished writing but doesn’t grab the slush reader’s attention, it’s not going to the next level. There are several levels in Pitch Madness, and the readers in each will be more selective than they were in the last. Of course they’re going to pick the ones they like. Wouldn’t you?

WHAT AGENTS WANT: Each contest has different agents and each agent wants different things. Readers who pick which entries make it to a contest’s agent round know what agents want. If your MS doesn’t fit an agent’s wish list, it won’t make the cut. Simple, brutal, but true.

Odds or luck or whatever you want to call it has nothing to do with your success in a writing contest—you’ve gotta write well and you’ve gotta write something that’ll sell to the contest’s readers (and agents). This is part of why, when it comes down to it, I know that this, my fifth contest, will be my last for this MS. I don’t know if I’ll get into the agent round of Pitch Madness, but no matter what happens, I’ll have to start querying. I have to get out there and find agents asking for what I’ve written. Querying is just like a writing contest (and Whose Line Is It Anyway?) where the points don’t matter, but there are so many agents that I have to hope at least one has my MS on their wish list.

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.

First 250 Woes

If I were a GIF kind of girl, I’d put one here of a cartoon character beating its head against the wall or bawling its eyes out. Or, even better, I’d find the one from Disney’s The Emperor’s New Groove where the llama-emperor is calling himself a loser. He’s alone, drenched, sitting on a small patch of land surrounded by puddles, and whimpering as rain batters his slouched llama-body. Yeah, that sounds about right.

Maybe I’m being a little melodramatic. It is morning and I’m so not a morning person, so getting two such emails from two separate critique partners about my first 250 words could just be an overreaction on my part. Or not. Because I didn’t have to read far to know their emails weren’t good. First, they both started their emails with my name and we’re so far past that. Also, the one said this is just my opinion and the other it may just be because I’ve been dealing with a puking toddler but. Do either of those sound good to you? Not me. So I exited my email before I read more. I went back to my cereal and tried to pretend this was just an average morning. Ha.

Thing is, there’s nothing more important than the first 250 words of your manuscript. It’s what agents and readers read first and it either makes them want to keep reading or it makes them toss the email/book into their rejection fire. That’s why so many contests have you enter the first 250 words. That’s why when I get bad CP emails about my first 250 that I want to kick and scream and shout SCREW THIS.

Don’t worry. I’ll read my CPs’ emails. I’ll look closely at their suggestions and I’ll fix what I need to…just not now. An afternoon or evening would work better for me.

There will be issues, though. I know this without reading their comments. The more people who read your first 250 and the more times your CPs read it, the more things you’ll have to fix. Everyone has a different opinion. If you want proof, check out Authoress’s Secret Agent contests and read the comments other writers post on each entry. Yes, there are times when people agree and those are the things that you have to fix before you submit anywhere else. But you’ll also see people disagreeing. Some love this sentence, while others think you should cut it or revise it. Some like that verb, while others think it’s weak or too overdone. Some think you’re starting your MS in the right spot, but someone else will tell you that you have to start somewhere else. My first 250 were there for January, so I know what this is like. I was torn, frustrated.

So what do you do when this happens? I thought about this A LOT and I think I’ve figured out an answer. It’s what I tell one of my CPs whenever she has this happen. YOU HAVE TO GO WITH YOUR GUT. You have to go what works for you because in the end, you’re the one who has to be happy with what you’ve written. You can’t go around thinking but all these other people said I should make it like this when a contest or agent rejects you. It’s easy to blame them—trust me, I wanted to email my CPs back this morning and say IT’S NOT MY FAULT because I’ve made so changes based other people’s suggestions. But it is my fault. The ultimate decision is mine. The fate of my MS will be determined by these 250 words, so I’ve gotta make ‘em good, damn good.

Lucky Number JEIL1TZZ: Part Two

Back in January, I wrote a post I called Lucky Number JEIL1TZZ about my experience with Authoress’s Secret Agent contest. For more details, feel free to read that post, but here’s a brief overview. I’d entered my manuscript’s first 250 words and Authoress’s bot randomly picked me, which meant Authoress posted my entry on her blog (along with forty-nine other entries). It turned out that the secret agent wasn’t really interested in my genre, young adult science fiction, but more historical genres.

This should have been the end of the story. It wasn’t.

One thing I’m discovering about this writing world is that there’s never an end to the surprises. Just when I’m sure I’m at the bottom of failure, something happens that shoves me even lower OR something happens that gives me hope and puts a smile on my face. The Secret Agent contest is an example of the latter.

A day or two after the contest’s secret agent was revealed and I learned she wasn’t interested in my genre, I received an email from Authoress. Another agent had read my entry and wanted more, a query and the first few pages. I read this email sitting in my car stuck in snow-induced bad Cincinnati traffic on my way to work. I squirmed, I shrieked, I sent emails to critique partners.

My work day was long and busy, but I squeezed in the time to Google this agent. I researched enough that I was excited to send my query and I knew exactly what personalized details I wanted to include. By the time I made it home that evening, I was bouncing from tension, adrenaline, and my need to send the query NOW.

So I sent my query. I sent emails to my CPs saying I’d done it. And I waited.

I waited…and waited.

Nothing in the publishing industry is fast, but the wait for this agent’s response was interminable. I loved what I’d read during my research and I was SO DAMN HOPEFUL. When the agent’s response finally came, it was short. In a few brief sentences, the agent rejected me. I won’t give you the specifics—I’m still mulling them over with some help from my CPs—but I will tell you that it was the most positive rejection I’ve received. It’s also the only rejection for this MS.

So if you frequent my blog, I may have lied to you a little. I’ve said I never queried WORLD’S EDGE, but that’s not true. I queried once back in October (maybe?) during a Twitter #MSWL day before I knew what I was doing. I also queried once in January. The October query is irrelevant because I’ve learned and changed so much since then. But the January query…that was my first real shot for this MS. The rejection hinted at things I already knew, things I’ve already addressed. It also hinted that I’ve got a better chance with this MS than I thought. If not this MS, there’s hope for another.

I’m not lying this time when I say I’m not querying my MS. I’m still revising, still working with my CPs, but now I’m feeling restless. It’s funny how a rejection can make you excited to query more. I want to query NOW. I’ll wait a little longer, though.