{"id":540,"date":"2017-08-29T14:34:44","date_gmt":"2017-08-29T18:34:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/?p=540"},"modified":"2017-09-04T20:54:48","modified_gmt":"2017-09-05T00:54:48","slug":"pitch-warrior-2017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/pitch-warrior-2017\/","title":{"rendered":"Pitch Warrior 2017"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you were wondering what the heck this<\/a> was about, here\u2019s the rest of the story.<\/p>\n

After my enjoyable experience with Pitch Madness<\/a> this spring, I knew I wanted to enter Pitch Wars. Pitch Wars sounds\u00a0like Pitch Madness on steroids. Instead of reading your first 250 words and your pitch during the selection process, experienced writers\u00a0read your query and your first chapter. They might\u00a0request anything up to and including your entire manuscript (gulp) while choosing a writer to mentor. Mentors and their mentees then work together for two months to get those manuscripts ready for an online showcase in November, where participating agents review\u00a0the novel pitches and samples and make requests.<\/p>\n

Really, it would have been stupid to not<\/i> enter.<\/p>\n

At first I had every intention of submitting The Fire Before<\/i>, the YA horror novel I submitted to Pitch Madness and queried throughout the first part of the year.<\/p>\n

But as the rejections for that novel piled up, it became clear to me that I started querying The Fire Before<\/i> about ten years too late. At this particular point in time, many\u00a0agents would rather gouge their eyeballs out with a spork than read another “Chosen One” YA tale that\u2019s intended to be the start of a trilogy, to boot. What feedback I got let me know that The Fire Before<\/i>\u00a0didn\u2019t bring anything new to a very overused story type.<\/p>\n

Ouch. That makes me sad; I love that poor little book and its cast of characters, and I spent years trying to make it publishable. But while I\u2019m not giving up on it, I started getting a bad feeling that entering it into Pitch Wars would be a waste of everyone\u2019s time. And I just didn’t have enough time to try to rework it into something new and different.<\/p>\n

However, I had another option. (You know how experienced writers will tell you to always be working on something else? That’s good advice. Very good.)<\/p>\n

During the April and July Camp NaNoWriMo sessions, I edited my NaNoWriMo novel from last November, Blood Tide<\/i>. And the more I worked on that novel, the more I started feeling that I should submit it to Pitch Wars instead of The Fire Before<\/i>. I couldn\u2019t tell you why, exactly; submitting a manuscript\u00a0that was still so new felt like a real risk.<\/p>\n

But the novel\u2019s storyline seemed far more cohesive. Maybe that\u2019s because The Fire Before<\/i> was the first novel I ever wrote, and Blood Tide<\/i> is the sixth. I like to think I learned at least a little bit about novel structure while writing all those books. Something about Blood Tide<\/i> just feels<\/em> more like me; it\u2019s the kind of story\u00a0I really want to be known for if I\u2019m lucky enough to reach that point in my career.<\/p>\n

When The Fire Before<\/i> failed to advance in one last contest I entered in July, I took that as a sign from the writing gods and threw myself behind Blood Tide<\/i>. I\u2019d been revising it anyhow; I just redoubled those efforts with Pitch Wars’\u00a0August 2-6 submission window in my sights.<\/p>\n

I selected four potential mentors, submitted to Pitch Wars\u00a0on August 4th, and was very pleasantly surprised to get a fast request for the synopsis and the full MS from one of the mentors. (Thank goodness I\u2019d been inspired to write a synopsis over the July 4th weekend; it was all ready to go.)<\/p>\n

The three weeks of waiting weren\u2019t easy, but hanging out on the #PitchWars tag on Twitter eased the tension. And that\u2019s one of the best things about Brenda Drake\u2019s contests; whether you get picked for any of them or not, hang out on the contest hashtags and you\u2019ll meet lots of writers and probably make some friends.<\/p>\n

And the mentors in these contests are established writers with families and their own careers. They don\u2019t get paid to do this; they take time out of their own lives because they want to help people like me. It\u2019s an amazing, heartening thing. (The next time you hear someone spouting off about how published authors and \u201cBig Publishing\u201d won\u2019t let the little guy in and want nothing to do with new writers? Bull. Shit. I’ve connected with many kind, helpful\u00a0writers and agents over Twitter.)<\/p>\n

The mentor who requested the full kept in touch with me and asked me occasional questions about my expectations for Pitch Wars. I told myself that even if I didn’t get chosen, my novel was\u00a0obviously\u00a0under consideration, and that was something to be happy about\u00a0in itself given how many submissions mentors got. (I think the final tally for the whole competition was around 2600.)<\/p>\n

And then, after one final week that seemed longer than the two weeks before it had, the mentor\/mentee lists went live on August 24th.<\/p>\n

I was in the middle of something at work that afternoon when my phone started buzzing so much I\u2019m surprised it didn\u2019t fly off my desk. (At least I\u2019d had the foresight to mute it!) I checked my Twitter notifications, and sure enough: The list\u00a0was\u00a0up.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t want to look right there in the office, figuring that I\u2019d need a little bit of privacy whatever the news was. Our bathroom gets lousy phone reception and Brenda’s site was getting clobbered by all the traffic, so I went down to the building\u2019s main floor. I\u2019d intended to tuck myself into a quiet little corner, but when the list finally popped up on the phone\u2019s screen, I couldn\u2019t resist and looked at it right out in the lobby.<\/p>\n

And, long story short, this happened:<\/p>\n

\n

Am beyond thrilled to be a #PitchWars<\/a> mentee! Can't wait to work with @PeteMC666<\/a> and get Blood Tide into shape.<\/p>\n

— Nicole Willson \ud83d\ude08 (@insomnicole) August 24, 2017<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n