Saturday, November 24, 2012

Getting Ready for #pitchwars on Monday, 11/26, Plus #pitchmas Coming Up

Okay, there's been a lot of twitter chatter on this next contest, so I'm including a bit more detail than usual. However, you'll still need to follow the links for the full details. On Monday, 11/26 Brenda Drake and a team of authors will be hosting PitchWars.
We're extremely excited to announce an upcoming event where agented authors, industry interns, and editors team up with aspiring writers to shine up their manuscripts and pitches to present to some awesome agents.
Here's the deets...
·        The teams will consist of 1 agented author or industry intern or editor (coaches) and 1 aspiring author.
·        November 26: The coaches (listed on the linky below) will post on their blogs what genre/category they want to coach. They'll be very specific genres. Aspiring writers will hop around and decide which coaches best fit their manuscripts.
·       Between November 26- December 5: Aspiring writers will submit 3 "applications" to their top choices for coaches to the contest email (check site for parameters, formatting, etc!) That means, participants will send three separate emails to the contest email addressing each with one of their three top choices for coach.
AND here are the mentors!:
Lots of YA, but some NA and four Adult in there too. A great opportunity to get some feedback on your manuscript AND query and get it in front of an agent. :-) .

On December 4-6, Pitchmas, A Holiday Pitchfest (multi agent/editor) will be happening on Jessa Russo and FeakySnucker's blogs. On December 4th Jessa will be hosting a pitch polishing workshop leading up to the first opportunity to pitch that evening on Tamara (FeakySnucker) Blog. PLUS a list of participating editors and agents is up for anyone who wants to peruse:
This will be a three-day event (you will not have to participate in all three days if you don't want to) where your peers will first help you hone your Twitter/Blog pitches and then you will have the chance to pitch your manuscript to your dream editor or literary agent!!! *All manuscripts must be completed and polished.
With NaNoWriMo winding down I expect there may be a spate of other contests in mid-December, before the holiday lull. In the mean time, if you missed them last week, a bunch of sites have been posting some great writing advice:
Red Sofa Literary Agency, in honor of NaNoWriMo is posting writing and submission advice every day! Day #13 - Best time to Query is good, as is Day #10 - Revise, Revise and  Revise again. Heck all of them are good, go and take a look.
Lit Reactor had a good post recently about Eight Words to Seek and Destroy in your Manuscript. They always have interesting and informative articles as well - from editorials on the Sock Puppet incidents at Amazon (and Amazon's reaction) to grammar tips to a discussion titled "Should Some Books Be Banned?" Not a bad place to check out or subscribe to the 'feed' for. (They also have classes and seminars, however I have no experience with them and cannot personally recommend them, so do your due diligence and ask around, read reviews, etc, before signing up)
Rachelle Gardner is on a roll with posts on What Does Your Online Activity Say About You?, 'The Best Blogging Tip Ever' and Writing a One Sentence Summary.

Finally one several of my friends (an myself as well!) can relate to: Writer Beware Blogs  Guest Blog Post: Mustering the Courage to Turn Down a Publishing Contract. While the hosts of all these contests I link to do their best to provide clear and unfettered access to publishers and agents, you still need to do your due diligence and check out each one. I'd suggest you do it prior to entering so if there's a request for more information you can go in eyes wide open and not just in a heady rush. To be clear, I'm not saying there have been any publishers which are on any of the 'beware' lists, or anything of that nature, in any contest that I am aware of, just that it make sense to not automatically assume a publisher (or agent) is in 'good standing' because they are taking part in a contest. (and that was clear as mud, but hopefully you get the point)

Along the same vein, Sarah LaPolla's blog post on 'Shady Business' ties in well with the above post. She talks about 'new' agents who have no experience as well as new (e)publishers and has EXCELLENT advice on what to look for (and what to watch out for).

Happy reading, and to those people participating in NaNoWriMo, go, go go! Fingers crossed you make your goal. (Making a note to myself, if I ever organize a pitch contest, I might want to run it the last week of November. People should be over their exhaustion from the explosion of  Fall contests. Maybe a 'black friday' one. Liking this idea! Something to mull over for next year).