{"id":402,"date":"2017-03-18T23:38:15","date_gmt":"2017-03-18T14:38:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/?p=402"},"modified":"2017-03-21T04:30:48","modified_gmt":"2017-03-20T19:30:48","slug":"success","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/success\/","title":{"rendered":"Success"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The last two weeks felt like they were part of someone else&#8217;s life\u2014a real author&#8217;s life\u2014that I got to borrow for a little while. I went over my manuscript with a virtual magnifying glass to find any problems\u00a0I might have missed the first hundred times I revised it, and I found that I rely on crutch words far more than I would have liked to believe. (I will also use ten words where one would do, as that last sentence makes clear.)<\/p>\n<p>I very much enjoyed working with\u00a0the\u00a0awesome and supportive writers who were on my Pitch Madness team. I got some (badly needed) help with my\u00a0query letter, something I was brand new to doing. I probably learned more in the almost-two weeks of Pitch Madness than I have from years of perusing writing books and forums.<\/p>\n<p>And ever since our pitches went live for the agent round on\u00a0Thursday, I&#8217;d been telling myself that even if I got no interest, the experience I&#8217;d had was already enough of a win. I went through the list of participating agents and noticed that horror is not an overwhelmingly popular genre, so I was trying to keep my expectations realistic.<\/p>\n<p>(<a href=\"http:\/\/samanthajoyce.com\/se5-ya-horror-the-fire-before\/\" target=\"_blank\">Here is my pitch and first 250 words<\/a>, if you want to see.)<\/p>\n<p>But I got a request! An agent\u00a0wants to see more of my story.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/TeamCandyCastle?src=hash\">#TeamCandyCastle<\/a>\u2019s THE FIRE BEFORE had 1 requests with the largest by <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Whitley\">@whitley<\/a> at Gumdrop Pass! <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/PitchMadness?src=hash\">#PitchMadness<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Heather Cashman (@HeatherCashman) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/HeatherCashman\/status\/842845277526679554\">March 17, 2017<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>(&#8220;Gumdrop Pass&#8221; means that the agent wants my query, synopsis, and first 50 pages.)<\/p>\n<p>So it was a very happy St. Patrick&#8217;s Day indeed.<\/p>\n<p>I cannot say enough good things about the Pitch Madness experience. As a person new to the process of seeking an agent, I am incredibly grateful to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.brenda-drake.com\" target=\"_blank\">Brenda Drake<\/a> and all the published writers and agents who participate every year to help people like me. And special thanks to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.maryannmarlowe.com\" target=\"_blank\">Mary Ann Marlowe<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/samanthajoyce.com\" target=\"_blank\">Samantha Joyce<\/a>, my helpful and supportive mentors for the contest. You guys actually made the process of writing queries and polishing the manuscript seem\u2014gulp\u2014<em>fun<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>(I also learned\u00a0that it\u2019s a good thing I\u2019m not an agent, because I had NO sense whatsoever of which books would attract a lot of attention and which ones would not. Any time I tried to guess, I guessed dead wrong.)<\/p>\n<p>If you have a polished manuscript ready to query by the time the contest rolls around next year, you really owe it to yourself and your novel to submit it. And there are plenty of Twitter pitch days before that. I&#8217;ve been bitten hard by the querying bug, so I&#8217;ll be there for #PitMad next Thursday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The last two weeks felt like they were part of someone else&#8217;s life\u2014a real author&#8217;s life\u2014that I got to borrow&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[6,5],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=402"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":415,"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402\/revisions\/415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}