Month: September 2019

  • While I Await Pitch Wars News…

    While I Await Pitch Wars News…

    Official Pitch Wars LogoThis past Friday night, between bouts of puking my guts out (thank you, ill-timed stomach flu), I submitted my entry materials for this year’s #pitchwars competition. Now, as I await news… or silence… or whatever, I thought I’d distract myself by writing up a quick blog post. Clip from movie The Sandlot of kids getting sick on the Tilt-a-Whirl rideQuick being the operative term because I’m still fending off this vicious stomach bug and it’s difficult to type with my arms wrapped around this giant “just-in-case” mixing bowl in my lap.

    So, let’s talk about the Pitch Wars organization because what else would I want to talk about while trying not to think about it?

     

    What is Pitch Wars and How Does it Work?

    Brenda-Drake-Author-PhotoIf you’re unfamiliar with the organization, pop over to their website and have a quick peek. Pitch Wars was started by author Brenda Drake back in 2012. I heard about it when a fellow Lesley University alumna tried out for the competition in 2017 (or 2016, I can’t quite remember) and got in. She had an incredible experience working with her mentor. So, when I was working to finish the draft of my thesis manuscript in 2018, she encouraged me to try out, too. 

    To sum up, the organization offers aspiring (read unpublished) writers a chance to work with a mentor (read published and agented author) to revise a completed manuscript in preparation for an Agent Showcase (happening in February this year). If an agent likes what they see during the showcase, they may request a query and first pages. It’s an incredible way to build community, connect aspiring writers with established writers, hone craft skills, make friends, and perhaps even launch careers. It’s also insanely popular. This year, over 3,500 aspiring authors tried out.

    Here’s the big ol’ donkey kick to the abdomen for applicants, though. They can only submit to FOUR participating mentors, and most mentors get well over 100 submissions. Some get upwards of 400 submissions! Still, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

     

    My First Attempt at Pitch Wars:

    Writing Goals As I said earlier, I tried out in 2018. Alas, I did not get in, but the experience still carried tremendous benefits for me. 

    For one, it kept me from stalling on a manuscript I was struggling to finish. You see, Pitch Wars requires applicants have a full manuscript completed, and fear of not getting the end of my novel absolutely perfect had been paralyzing me from writing the third act. The Pitch Wars competition was just the motivation I needed to get over my fear of a terrible first draft. Good, bad, or ugly, I got the damned thing done.

    Which, by the way, is kind of the whole point of Pitch Wars. The organization pairs up established (and agented) authors who have walked the path new writers are trying to walk. They have written their own terrible first drafts. They’ve revised them, no doubt multiple times. They queried agents and did so successfully. Many of them did so as Pitch Wars mentees, and now they’re paying it forward as participating mentors despite being super busy promoting debut books of their own and writing their next novels. 

    Image of a printed manuscript with someone actively revising it by handSo, I didn’t get accepted, but I got motivated. Actually, I then used all of NaNoWriMo18 to revise the beast! Huzzah!!

     

    Pitchwars, Take Two!

    As I said on my #BoostMyBio page, I’m nothing if not persistent. A year has passed and a lot has happened since last fall. That includes revisions of my manuscript. I’ve got strong feelings about my story. I’m not ready to give up on it yet. So, I’m trying out for Pitch Wars yet again. The manuscript still needs work, and the competition is a chance to work on it with someone who knows a lot more about the publishing industry than I do.

    A mentor who shall remain nameless (but whom I am keeping my fingers crossed picks me to mentor) put it succinctly when she tweeted that she’s not looking for perfect. A perfect manuscript doesn’t need grooming with a guiding mentor. She’s looking for an imperfect manuscript with potential. A diamond in the rough, so to speak. I paraphrased all of that, by the way.

     

    If I Don’t Get In… Again?

    Black and white photograph of a manuscript lying on a table with a pencil across it, waiting for revision.Then, at least I will have tried. And, it won’t mean I stop working on the manuscript. It just means I’ll be revising solo instead of with the guidance of an established author. Is one scenario preferable to the other? Sure, but you get what you get and you don’t get upset, as my kids’ favorite saying from camp goes.

    If you, like me, are an aspiring writer with a finished manuscript and dreams of landing an agent who will help turn that manuscript into a fully realized book, I urge you to investigate Pitch Wars and try out. There’s nothing to lose and so much to gain, even if you don’t get chosen.

     

    Thanks for stopping by, and as always, happy writing to you.

  • A Summer of Short Stories!

    A Summer of Short Stories!

    Summer SunsetI went on hiatus from posting to the blog back in March. Now, summer’s at an end here in the Witch City, so it’s time to get back to blogging with a summer recap. For the past few months, my focus has been on short stories, both reading and writing them!

     

    When Opportunity Knocks

    BoskoneThis past February, I sat in on a Boskone panel discussion titled “Tough Love for New Writers.” Among other participants, award-winning editor Neil Clarke of Clarkesworld Magazine sat on the panel. Following the lively and informative discussion of the short story market, I ended up chatting with Mr. Clarke. What was involved in becoming a slush reader for your magazine, I asked? Shoot me an email, and I’ll give you the application link, he replied. I did, and he did, and I applied. To my great surprise, he offered me a spot as a reader!

    And so, since early April, I’ve been reading slush submissions at Clarkesworld Magazine. The experience changed pretty much everything I’ve been doing between then and now.

     

    A Crash Course in SFFH Short Fiction

    Not that I don’t have any experience reading genre fiction. In fact, SFFH is pretty much all I read. It’s just that it had been almost 20 years since I’d read many SFFH short stories. Some A. S. Byatt, collection by Jeffrey Ford, the 2017 Year’s Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy. But that was about it. As such, I waded into reading slush last April feeling horrifically ignorant of the current market. 

    Eager to correct my deficit, I grabbed a subscription to Clarkesworld and started reading every short story that made the final cut. What better way to fine-tune my reading eye than to see what stories were being chosen each month for publication? It helped, but I wanted more. 

    Twitter DiscussionAnd then the SFWA announced it was raising their pro-rates from $0.06/word to $0.08. Twitter exploded with debates, discussions, and pleas for financial support either through subscriptions or Patreon contributions. Editors from several of the top genre fiction magazines shared their thoughts, insights, frustrations, and hopes about the state of the industry, the pros and cons of the newly set pro rate, and the desperate need for more authentic financial support from readers. It became clear that my goals to self-educate aligned with industry goals to fund the new pay raise.

     

    Required Reading for the New Slush Monkey

    Here’s the list of short story magazines to which I now have a monthly subscription (in no particular order). I can confidently testify that each is a source of excellent fiction, and I urge every writer of short stories, both new writers and established writers, to invest in yourself as well as in the industry by grabbing subscriptions of your own. (Many of these magazines make the stories they publish available to read for free on their websites, but I wanted to be more than a freeloading parasite.) 

    Clarkesworld Magazine Image result for genre fiction magazines

    Beneath Ceaseless Skies 

    Asimov’s Science Fiction 

    Nightmare Magazine 

    Lightspeed Magazine 

    The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction 

    Uncanny Magazine 

    If that seems like a lot, it is. As for cost, those seven subscriptions tally up to about $30.00/month, a more than affordable expense now that I’ve stopped drinking diet coke every day. Skipping my daily stop at the vending machine seems a reasonable sacrifice to get access to tons of great fiction every month! And my money is supporting a better industry than, you know, the Berkshire Hathaway corporate beast.

    Bonus! Nearly all of those magazines have weekly podcasts, too. My commute has never been so enjoyable!

    Renewed Interest in Writing Short Stories

    Writing at the CafeOf course, reading so many excellent SFFH short stories each month (as well as reading submissions for Clarkesworld) has rekindled my interest in writing short stories of my own. How could it have not done? When the school year ended, and summer began, I started writing and submitting my own work.

    The thing about short fiction is this: in my opinion, it’s hard to do well. Not that writing a book isn’t also difficult. It’s just difficult in a different way. Long-form fiction has the luxury of room on the page for tangents and extra adjectives and perhaps even a few adverbs. Novelists can get away with stuff that writers of short fiction can’t. The writing in short stories has to be tight, crisp, clear, sharp. 

    Have you ever tried to sharpen a knife with a ceramic rod, gotten the blade to the point of being kind of sharp, and thought with a shrug, “Eh, that’s good enough?” Well, if you apply that analogy to writing short stories, kind of sharp isn’t going to make the cut. Authors of short fiction need to wield that ceramic rod with enough skill to get that blade obsidian sharp. And that’s no easy feat. 

    I spent the summer practicing my knife sharpening skills. Anyone who knows me won’t be surprised by that. Overwriting is my authorial Achilles heel. My fictional blade isn’t sharp, but it’s getting better. Reading outstanding short stories day in and day out helps. Writing and revising short stories day in and day out helps, too.

     

    Next Steps?

    I plan to keep reading slush and, for now, keep writing and submitting short stories. I’ve set aside my latest novel revisions. If all goes well, I will be able to take a wickedly sharp blade to the manuscript when I return to it later this winter. 

    Tell me, writers, what strategies do you use to keep your skills knife sharp?

    Thanks for stopping by, and as always, happy writing to you.