What To Do With Yourself After #PitchWars Is Over

Whether you read my last post or not, you're probably here right now because you're participating in #PitchWars (or maybe hoping to get into some other contest) this year.

It's been a year since my own Pitch Wars experience. I've learned a lot since then. I also, I think, made quite a few mistakes. For one thing, I let my lack of success in the contest get in the way of my writing. I'm STILL struggling to get over that.

For another, I stopped working on new things, dragging all my old manuscripts out for another trot around the block. There's nothing inherently wrong with this except that maybe there's a good reason they all were in the drawer in the first place? I guess I thought I could fix them if only I tried. Maybe I can. Maybe someday I will.

But for me, the joy of writing has always been in the Shiny New Idea. Whatever captures me at the moment is the journey I want to be on at the time. I LOVE getting Shiny New Ideas. Except for the last year, I didn't. I had one idea that I really loved. To put that in perspective, usually I get about 4-5 Shiny News in a year and have to pick and choose between them.

But I'm not blaming that on Pitch Wars, or anything else I did last year. I'm blaming that on me.

Anyway. Back to the part about you. Whether you get a lot of requests today or not, or whether you get an agent in the next week/ month/ six months, or not, here's the thing:

This contest (or any other) does not define you. It does not define your writing. It does not mean you will make it, or you won't. I've seen people in contests get 10-15 requests and still not have an agent a year later. I've seen people get 1 request and find the agent of their dreams and a book deal and so on and so forth.

That thing people keep telling you about publishing being subjective? They are not broken records, nor are they just saying that to make you feel better. It's SO TRUE. Nothing can be everyone's cup of tea. I know people who didn't like the Harry Potter series, for crying out loud.

Today they are judging you on your pitch and first page. Not even what you would send in a query letter. That is a very, very small portion of your work to make decisions on.

But, just making it into the contest means there is something special about you. THAT is a success. No matter what happens today and tomorrow, you've done something incredible. Rest on that for now, and try not to let the agony of waiting get to you. (As The World's Most Impatient Person, I am well aware of how that feels).

And, to take another Industry Advice Cliche, perhaps most importantly, keep writing. Why? Because you deserve to do that for yourself.

2013, or, the Year I Felt Like a Sham

It's really no secret that 2013 wasn't a great year for me.

In fact, I had a hard time hiding how terrible last year was. Lots of professional, personal, and social disappointment made me cranky at best and otherwise morose at worst. I tried to stay away from social media once I realized how whiny I'd become even there, but I also didn't want to be silent, so I still visited now and then.

That could have been a mistake of its own. 

I won't list everything that happened in 2013, even here in this post, because frankly, most of it you don't have any context for, and the rest of it you don't want to know. There are a few highlights I'll mention though, because together they show why, exactly, 2013 was the year that made me feel like I didn't know what I was doing, wasn't worth much, and would never amount to anything.

They also show why, despite all that, I have hope for 2014 and won't ever give up, and why you shouldn't, either.

In January of 2013, the agent round of Pitch Wars happened. (Go check out the blog post tag #PitchWars in the sidebar to understand what I'm talking about). I'd been lucky enough to be picked for the contest in December 2012 by not one but two mentors, and after choosing Cupid-- a truly delightful lady-- we worked hard to get my neolithic Romeo and Juliet manuscript into shape. In my head, I really thought this was it-- my time had come. Two mentors had wanted me so much they hadn't been able to let me go, surely the agents would feel the same way!

Except they didn't. I got a couple of requests from awesome agents, but was mostly ignored. I felt horrible. I'd chosen Cupid, she'd gushed over my work and went above and beyond my expectations to fix it. She'd worked her butt off to help me-- and still did, long after the contest was over, I might add-- and I'd let her down. My lovely, kind mentor.

After Pitch Wars, I entered a different YA manuscript into another contest in April/ May, called The Writer's Voice. I was absolutely stunned when I was once again chosen by more than one mentor and again had to pick. This time I chose Monica Bustamante Wagner. Monica is one of the sweetest people I've had the fortune to work with. She helped me whip my MS and query into shape and once again I headed for the agent round with my head full of stars and my heart full of hope. 

Only to have the Exact. Same. Thing. Happen. Again.

I let Monica down, too. My lovely, kind mentor. 

At this point, I sort of began thinking I was cursed. I mean, come on. But I'm not a terribly superstitious person-- though I do believe in a good story-- so I was a bit frustrated, too. 

I didn't write a lot of new words in 2013 (with one big exception). I spent most of my time re-working and editing my old MSs, mostly because I truly believed in each and every one of those books. Perhaps that was my mistake. 

Perhaps my mistake was deciding I was a bit fed up with waiting and losing patience and breaking the rules by querying more than one MS at a time. Perhaps my mistake was caring so much and not having enough distance from my work to realize that the market was wrong, or the story was wrong, or the voice was wrong, or the category was wrong, or yada yada yada. The feedback I did get varied widely and directly contradicted itself, telling me either everything was wrong with my work or something intangible was wrong with my work.

In my real life profession, I faced many similar situations trying to secure a better position at my zoo. Phone calls, interviews, hope, wonder, joy-- disappointment. Perhaps my mistake was that I could get into the race but not finish it. 

Whatever the deal is/ was, there's no one to flat out tell me what I'm doing wrong. Sometimes, there isn't anything wrong with me or you, per se. Sometimes, there are just better options out there. For all of 2013, I was not the best option. 

But someday I will be. Even if I have to make myself the best option. I have other things I can focus on-- a big change is heading my way this year. I can self-publish and take control of my writing life. I can start my own horse-training business and forget worrying about advancing at the zoo. I have pretty good building blocks in my life already: my husband, my pets, my friends, my family, and most of all, I still have writing. 

I think that needs to stand out: I still have writing. 

At the end of the day, I write for one person. Me. Sure, I'd love to share my work with the world through a large publisher and see my book on the shelves at B&N, but the most joy I get out of writing is just DOING it. I still love all my books because I wrote them because I loved them. 

So no, I won't quit writing even though I feel like a failure. A fake. A sham. Forget that. I'm going to keep writing.

And you should, too. 

Pitch Wars Lead-Up Week: Life Imitates Art, etc.

Yesterday I posted the photo that inspired ETERNAL EMBRACE. But if I'm honest, it wasn't just the photo. It was the story behind it.

I mentioned that this grave had been found in Italy. But not just anywhere in Italy. It was found in Mantua, Italy.

If you know your Shakespeare, you might be freaking out a little bit right now. I did.

In high school, I had the fortune of playing a small part in a community theatre production of Romeo and Juliet at the exact same time we studied the play in our English class. (Somewhat funny story: the movie SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE also came out then. It was a Very Romeo And Juliet Year for me). I had the whole thing practically memorized by the end of the unit, between the theatre production and the skits and live readings we did as a class and the interpretations we did for my speech team and the seventeen times I went to see SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE. Romeo and Juliet holds a very special place in my heart.

So when I read about this couple, found locked together forever in the SAME ITALIAN CITY where Romeo is exiled in the play, it just felt right that I should . . . write about them. They were buried, miles from Verona (where the play takes place), together. They had to have died at or near the same time, like the lovers in Shakespeare's play. They were young. They were so inseparable that no one would divide them even in death.

That-- that is the kind of love that makes my heart skip a beat.

Pitch Wars Lead-Up Week: A Real-Life Love

So I was lurking around the internet one day a couple years ago and saw this picture that made me cry.

From here

Granted, I had just recently gotten married so I was kind of a romantic emotional wreck anyway BUT it still really, really connected with me. The short version is that archaeologists found this grave in Italy. They estimate it to be about six thousand years old, and the couple are young (under twenty), one male and one female.

You guys. I don't know how much you know about the Neolithic. But they just didn't bury people together. Unless something special or extra tragic happened. A double burial like this? Never been seen before.

With a writer's efficiency, my mind asked how they wound up in that grave together, and then immediately started answering the question. And ETERNAL EMBRACE was born, from the dust and eroded bone of their tragedy.

But it gets even awesomer. And tomorrow, I'll tell you why.

Pitch Wars Lead-Up Week: The Playlist of Their Lives

I don't normally get into listening to other people's playlists for books (unless I really really love them), so I won't be offended if you skip riiiiight over this one. But I thought I'd at least throw it out there because music influenced SO MUCH of this book. Heartaching, heartbreaking music. Music that makes me FEEL things. You know. So I know I'm not a robot.

I will do you a favor and not tell you every song I've listened to. Just the ones that are particularly close to my heart, and the heart of the story.

Wow. I feel like I'm in a beauty pageant. Here's hoping I don't fail the interview portion of the competition.

If I had to pick a theme song for ETERNAL EMBRACE, it would be Rabbit Heart [Raise It Up] by Florence + the Machine. Not only did FloMac's music influence a large part of this novel, this song in particular is very, very relevant.

There are also a couple FloMac songs that influenced or just plain fit for specific chapters of EE. These include Heavy In Your Arms and Dog Days Are Over.

Adele and Sara Bareilles also make appearances, with Set Fire to the Rain and Let the Rain, respectively. Funnily enough, both of these songs have over-arching relevance as well as specific influence on a very short scene where it's... raining.

If you have a Spotify account and want to listen to the entire ETERNAL EMBRACE playlist, you can find me there as wickedmoon921.

Pitch Wars Lead-Up Week: Naming Neolithic Characters

When I decided to write a book set in the Neolithic period, I didn't realize that naming my characters would be so difficult. I mean, you can go the route that I've seen in other books and do names like He-Who-Walks-In-The-Garden, but I a.) wanted something a bit shorter and b.) wanted something a bit sneakier. You know, names I could fit hints and clues about the plot into. *cue evil writer laugh*

ETERNAL EMBRACE is set about 6,000 years ago in Europe. At that time there was a lot of symbolism in Neolithic settlements but not much in the way of writing. Stone carvings were fairly common, especially in religious contexts, but not of words. In fact, there doesn't seem to be much agreement on any particular Neolithic language. So, realistically, finding accurate character names would be close to impossible without a time machine.

I decided to settle for something that just sounded like it came from ancient times, but I didn't want to steal another language and have someone be upset that my characters lived in Europe but spoke Ancient Egyptian or similar. I also frankly had no idea where to begin making up my own, aside from the technique I mentioned in the first paragraph. However, there's the Basque language, only now spoken in parts of modern-day Spain and France. The tiny, meandering roots of Basque go way back to the Mesolithic.

I got really excited when I found this dictionary of a theoretical language called VCV (standing for Vowel-Consonant-Vowel), derived from the Basque language. Then I was really disappointed when further research proved this theory to be... unreliable. Whether it's accurate or not, using this dictionary did give me some pretty period-sounding character names, and I did get to hide some plot clues in them. Even if I'm the only person who knows what they are.

For example, the father of my main male character is named Esoha. The interpretation I chose for his name is "wise counselor," which is exactly what I wanted him to be.

Made-up names? Yes. Awesome names? Still also yes.

Pitch Wars Lead-Up Week: A Little Bit About A Little Book

The easiest place to start sharing little bits about ETERNAL EMBRACE is the setting. 

It's a YA historical romance, set in the Neolithic period. Boy, was this a challenge for me. I'm a major history nerd but the Neolithic was a bit ... new... to me. (Ha. That was a joke. Neo-- new-- I'll show myself out). After months of research, luckily aided by my college's ample library, I wrote a book. 

In the time period ETERNAL EMBRACE takes place in, life hadn't changed much for thousands of years, but it was slowly starting to morph from the hunter-gatherer society we've all read about into the agrarian lifestyle that we all KNOW. This time in history is so fascinating because it's so reachable. These people lived in a place we all carry deep in our hearts and memories. A simple village, sturdily built, populated by farmers and herders. Some nomadic societies lingered, but as humankind figured out that raising crops and herds meant they didn't have to follow the food, they planted roots, literally and figuratively. 

Survival for most people doesn't change much more until the Industrial Revolution. Sure, politics and nations and peoples and cultures came and went, but the structure of humanity stayed with raising crops and livestock to survive. We still do it today. This time period was a cusp between the world we know and a world we can only imagine. 

Of course, with the new drive to raise livestock and crops, both those things become very important to the people of this time. Not only survival, but currency comes in the form of said livestock and crops, and a family without them will fare poorly indeed.  

 

Which is important for my main character, as it turns out. 

More tomorrow :)

One Week til PITCH WARS!!!

... and I am going to freak out.

*breathes into paper bag*

*puts head between knees*

*breathes into paper bag some more*

When this unexpected, incredible journey began over a month ago, I never thought the end would come up so... quickly. I sent my entry in to Cupid last night and then promptly felt a bit sad. How could this awesome, amazing thing be almost over?

Well, I won't grab for the tissues just yet. There's still the agent round, starting January 23rd. And regardless of how that goes, this has been an experience to remember. I've met so many awesome people because of Pitch Wars. And of course, I got to work with Cupid, who helped  me make my beloved book into something even stronger and better! *squee*

For the next few days I'll be posting little bits here and there about my Pitch Wars book, ETERNAL EMBRACE. So stay tuned, and don't forget to check back starting on the 23rd for more on the agent round.

Pitch Wars: An Unexpected Journey (that's only just begun!): Part 2: Even More Colons In The Title Than Before!

So when we last left off, I had just discovered that two awesome ladies wanted to mentor my manuscript in Pitch Wars. And I had come to the awful realization that I could only work with one of them.

Okay guys and gals, I'm going to be upfront here and say that you won't find many details in this post about WHY I made the decision I made. I respect both Sharon and Cupid waaaaay too much to publicly post why I chose one over the other.

The 24 hours immediately following the Twitter-splosion were, how shall I say, intense. Here is a breakdown of what happened:

The emails/ DMs/etc. came in between 2 and 3 in the afternoon, while I was at work. I went and stared at a cheetah for a while and took care of some parrots, all while in a daze, then drove to a birthday dinner with friends from work around six. I shared the craziness there and tried to resist checking my phone every five seconds. I think I only checked it every ten.

When I came home around 8:30/9, I discovered that my rabbit had not eaten her dinner and was lying with her belly pressed to the floor of her house-- a sign of intestinal distress in bunnies. Instead of the intelligent, thorough research I told myself I would do before making my decision, I spent the rest of the evening snuggling her and trying to decide if it was a bad enough episode that she needed to go to the emergency vet or if she would recover with some home-administered first aide. I was also a bit concerned because I had to be up at 5:30 AM to go back into work. I stayed up with her-- dozing off for a few minutes here and there-- until about 4 AM when she started showing signs of improvement and finally ate her dinner.

Since none of you know my rabbit, I will say now that snuggling her is pretty much a three-handed endeavor. Even when she doesn't feel well, she's . . . wily.

When my husband finally came out to ask why I hadn't come to bed, I went back to bed with him and managed to get a little over an hour of sleep, telling myself I'd do that research on my break, or my lunch, and email my decision then.

Yeah. No.

Things popped up all morning long, keeping me from doing little more than reading emails they'd each sent me and remembering what I could of blog posts I'd read. All that did was make the decision more difficult. I called my husband and my best friend and chatted briefly with a close writing friend between cutting up vegetables and weighing all sorts of pellets and meat for animal diets. Brenda was patiently waiting for me to tell her my decision so she could finish her blog post. Not to mention Sharon and Cupid!

To employ a narrative cut, I chose Cupid.

Was it a hard decision? Well; given that it took me about a month to find a new laptop-- yes. I'm a HUGE what-iffer, which has served me well as a writer, but not so well in real life. I'm great at finding reasons to doubt myself once I think I know what I want.

Do I regret my decision? Hell naw. I only regret that I couldn't pick them both. But that would have been a bit selfish of me, huh? (Also against the contest rules, and all that. Whatevs).

So yeah. Not glamorous. Not even all that exciting-- though it was action packed.

Now comes the truly hard part, anyway! Time for Cupid and me to get to work!



Watch out, #PitchWars!

Pitch Wars: An Unexpected Journey (that's only just begun!)

Last Monday, something incredible happened.

Well, really, the story starts a bit earlier, on the last day to submit to Pitch Wars. Pitch Wars, if you haven't heard, is an online contest that's been all the talk on Twitter lately, run by Brenda Drake and a team of very. awesome. mentors.

The game? Each mentor picks one mentee and a couple alternates from the pool of people who applied to them with their query letter and first pages. The teams would be announced on Wednesday, December 12th. If two mentors wanted the same person, that person would be notified on Monday, December 10th, and decide which mentor they wanted to work with. Each mentor/ mentee combo would have a little over a month to perfect and critique the mentee's manuscript, pitch, and first page, and near the end of January each entry would be presented to a panel of agents.

Okay. Now to the meat of the story. I almost didn't enter because I couldn't decide which manuscript to put forward. After putting up Twitter pitches, a couple of mentors expressed interest in different manuscripts, which didn't help narrow it down but did help me feel like I might have the tiniest hope.

One of the mentors, Sharon, had asked what might be holding people back from entering and I told her that I felt it was too late and mentors had already made their choices. But her encouragement convinced me to enter anyway. I wrote three emails, one to Sharon Johnston, one to Andrea Hannah, and one crazy off-the-walls one to Cupid of Cupid's Literary Connection. I sent them off and held my breath.

Actually, I tied all my hopes up in a basket and sent it down the river. I've been down this path before-- and been covered in armadillo hide by the battle scars. Plus, it was absolutely crazy to submit to Cupid. I may as well have forgotten that entry right away-- I'd seen Cupid's other contests and the people she worked with were GOOD. Really though, my chances were slim with any of them. I'd also seen the entries in recent contests, and the other work out there right now is... well, let's just say I had tough, tough competition.

Last Monday, the 10th, I still had it in my mind that I'd be waiting two more days to receive my rejection letters. I'd talked to Sharon some on Twitter and she had asked for more pages, but that didn't mean anything. I'd been there before, too.

I woke up and made a gingerbread house before rushing off to work. During a quick break in my afternoon, I stopped and checked my phone.

There was a DM on Twitter from Brenda Drake. Two mentors (Sharon and Cupid) had selected me. Could I please make my decision and let her know?

Cupid had followed me. So, actually, had a bunch of other people. And the mentions and messages were still pouring in.

And then I read my emails. And cried, right there, behind the scenes, with other employees shooting me confused looks (but not concerned because of the huge smile on my face). The things Cupid and Sharon had to say about my manuscript!

Not one, but two people I liked and admired, liked my work. Liked it enough to want to work with me.

My high lasted a few hours until the end of my shift and the start of a birthday dinner with friends. On the drive to dinner, I realized the downside:

I was going to have to say no to one of them.

More on the decision later!