In the never-ending pursuit of improving my writing and *fingers crossed* getting published, I recently stumbled upon Pitch Wars! It’s pretty darn fantastic, if you ask me. One hundred individuals, all deeply entrenched in the writing business, agreed to help one person each with their manuscript. Authors were allowed to submit their query and a portion of their completed manuscript to up to five individuals in the hope of becoming a mentee.
You can read more about the process on Brenda Drake’s site, since she hosted the whole thing.
The end result? I wasn’t chosen. I’ve gotten some feedback, but nothing that speaks to the quality of my writing, which I’m going to be optimistic about (I’ve gotten enough compliments on my writing that I think that’s a reasonable reaction). I have to admit, I went through a couple of days of sadness and self-doubt before being able to move on. As so many have said, the literary world is so subjective. The good news is, it leaves me plenty of time to move on and explore more opportunities.
For instance, I decided to participate in the #PitMad and #CPmatch twitter parties. I’m happy to report that I got 1 agent request for my #PitMad twitter pitch, and I connected with 2 writers over the #CPmatch party. For those of you who don’t know, CP stands for Critique Partner.
The query rejections keep rolling in, but I’m happy with how well Arctic Discovery has performed so far, despite some initial mistakes.
In spreading my wings, I’ve decided to write some short stories and start shopping them around. If I can get my work in some anthologies and magazines, then that will go a long way towards bolstering my writing resume. I’m working on a story about a siren (mythically inspired, but definitely a deviation from the norm), and there’s an element of my Running Toward Illumia idea that I want to use for another short story.
So, the moral of the story is… just keep swimming, just keep swimming. It’s a long journey, but when it comes to writing, there really is no destination, just The End.
