TRADING PLACES: NOTES FROM THE PITCHWARS SLUSH

When my first play was produced, I had the chance to sit on the other side of the audition table. This was a total Freaky Friday moment for me after many years as an actor. It was incredibly eye opening to see how often actors were rejected for reasons that had absolutely nothing to do with their degree of talent.

I recently had another Freaky Friday experience as one of the middle grade mentors for Brenda Drake’s online contest PitchWars. In PitchWars, prospective participants submit queries and five pages to the mentors of their choice. As mentors, we had a few days to sort through our applicants and pick one—ONE!—and two alternates. We gave our mentees feedback on their full manuscripts, helped them craft their pitches, and later in January, the selected pitches and first pages will go up for an agent-judged contest.

As I sorted through the 65 middle grade applicants who had applied to have me as a mentor, I was suddenly on the other side of the audition table again. After years of my own querying journey, I had a condensed glimpse into the life of a literary agent—and I realized how it’s not always about being good enough or not.

A few observations that I hope might help querying writers:

·      I turned down a TON of great material. And I turned it down easily. The quality of my submissions was extremely high—there were only one or two who clearly had no idea what they were doing. Most were really solid. But once I’d read a couple that I absolutely adored, it became incredibly easy to pass on anything that didn’t surpass those. I feel like I better understand now how agents have to absolutely fall in love with something to take it on.

·      I read a lot of not-awesome queries followed by fantastic pages. There are a lot of resources out there for query critique, but I don’t think they’re being as well utilized as they could be. This is what I said over and over in my feedback to writers I didn’t select: Queries should sound like back jacket copy, not like a list of events that happen. Try to keep the whole thing around 250 words. Try to answer these questions: 1) What does your main character want/need? 2) What’s standing in their way? 3) What will they have to do to overcome it? (This format doesn't work for all manuscripts, but it worked for probably 95% of what I saw.)

·      I read many submissions with completely solid writing and very good voice, but the premise just didn’t feel fresh. Portal fantasies, dying races of magical creatures, feisty princesses, coming to terms with the death of a parent. You might have written a fantastic manuscript around one of these things—I’ve written about one of them myself—but you have to make sure that whatever sets your story apart really shines through in the query and first pages.

·      Following agent guidelines is important. SO important. I don’t want to undermine this. If an agent says “no horror” then by all means, don’t query them with horror. But if they don’t mention horror at all, and you think they might be a good fit? No harm in trying. My top pick was, not surprisingly from my wish list, a literary verse novel. But my two alternate picks were things I absolutely never would have predicted I would choose—super creepy & superheroes (not together). But great storytelling + terrific voice trumps all and those two pulled me in, despite having subject matter I wouldn't usually gravitate toward.

Have you ever had a Freaky Friday publishing moment? Have you gotten a valuable glimpse into a different position—an agent, an editor, a reviewer? Did you learn anything? How did it enrich your journey as a writer?

RUMORS book giveaway!

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Rumors from the Boys' Room, A Blogtastic! Novel is the MG second book in this series, released October 11th by Random House. I'm very happy to do the first giveaway here for a signed copy of this book.  It's written in notebook format with illustrations to go along with the text. 


From B&N: These days the lives of middle schoolers seems to take place as much online as off. In this male counterpart of her Gossip from the Girls' Room, Rose Cooper takes us inside the blogosphere as preteen boys and girls find their way in a place where shared secrets and posted rumors can change almost everything in just a click. Editor's recommendation.


Just post a comment to be entered to win!

Winner of The Rotten Adventures of Zachary Ruthless is...

JARED LARSON! Congrats, Jared! 

Please email us your address here!

Winner of GOSSIP FROM THE GIRLS' ROOM!!

Thank you so much for all the wonderful comments and support for my debut book release of GOSSIP! I had a terrific and successful first book event (which I will be sharing on my blog shortly). Now, for the winner of the GOSSIP Giveway, congratulations to 

Theresa Milstein!!!

Thanks again to everyone who entered! Theresa, please send me your mailing address and I will have the book and  swag mailed right out to you!

xx,

Rose Cooper

Nightshade City Winner is JF Posthumus!!!!

JF, YOU WON!! Please email us your name and address and a signed copy of NIGHTSHADE CITY will be on its way to you next week!!!! w00t!!! Thanks to all who took part in the fun!!!! ;)

HAPPY BOOK B-DAY, NIGHTSHADE CITY!!! GIVEAWAY!

Billycan from Nightshade City

Finally!!! The rats have arrived!!! In honor of their arrival, I'm giving out 2 signed copies of NIGHTSHADE CITY! One here and one on my blog! So, you have 2 brilliant chances to win! To enter, follow each blog if you don't already and leave a comment telling me your favorite book of all time!!! That's it!! Contest ends at midnight tonight! I love you guys and thanks so much for
your support!!! I can finally relax now--NOT!!! ;)
xoxo -- Hilary

And the Winner of WILDFIRE RUN is....

Bish Denham, your name was pulled out of a magician's hat! (The stuffed rabbit that came with the magic kit disappeared long ago, so I'm happy we had such a good use for the hat.) If you'd email me your address at dee.garrestson@current.net, I'll get the book out to you.
Thanks to you and everyone else for commenting!  Stay tuned for future contests.

Getting Published - What I learned along the way

I’m thrilled to be kicking off the Project Mayhem blog with a giveaway of a signed hardback copy of WILDFIRE RUN. I was so happy when Hilary asked me to be part of this blog. Writing is such a solitary occupation that being able to connect with other writers keeps me going and inspires me.



Mayhem is a good word for life these days. WILDFIRE RUN will be released on August 31st, and I’m working on revisions of book two, WOLF STORM, while also juggling the moving about of my children, who are suddenly old enough to have lives and complicated schedules, but not old enough to have driver’s licenses. Where is the time freeze button? Life was much simpler when they took naps and didn’t expect to go out at night. Anyway, it’s a good mayhem, and I wanted share some of the things I learned on my very long journey to get to the published stage. I could natter on about writing for pages and pages, but for now, I’ll just focus on three things that helped me get to this point.


When I first started writing, I assumed it couldn’t be too hard to write a book. After all, I’d read thousands of books. (I’m old enough to be able to claim this.) My early attempts sounded good to me, not so good to everyone else. Major ego deflation, but necessary to let me know I needed to improve. Over the years I wrote short stories, picture books, mysteries, and one failed romance so bad I’ve blocked most of it from my memory. I helped someone write his memoir. I rewrote stories over and over. All in all I wrote thousands of words, and by the mere act of writing, I learned. Just trying to get words on paper forced me to learn.


My first breakthrough didn’t come, though, until I decided to go beyond the advice to read, read, read, and to really study what made particular books work. I picked a few authors whose books I loved and took those books apart. I figured out what made me laugh, why I was interested in the characters, and most importantly, why I kept reading and rereading. In the process, I learned a tremendous amount about pacing, dialogue and description. I still go back to certain books for inspiration when I hit a dry spell.


My next light bulb moment came when I was struggling to write a synopsis, the bane of a writer’s existence. This is where other writers reading this will emit a sympathy groan at the sight of the word ‘synopsis’. I discovered a book on writing which not only helped me manage a synopsis, but also helped me develop characters who were more than cardboard versions of heroes, villains, mean kids and sidekicks. The book is called WRITING THE FICTION SYNOPSIS. Good title, right?


Shockingly, the book’s worksheets actually wanted me to organize my thoughts, to list the characters’ goals, motivations and conflicts. I hate to admit it, but I’d never really been organized about writing. I was one of those writers who just wrote, thinking the story would miraculously happen. Maybe it does for some writers, but I’m not that talented. My stories needed some intensive care and planning to be readable and interesting.


The last major breakthrough came when I realized I had to find a plot that would spark some interest, and a mystery story I had rewritten four times didn’t have it. At conferences I pitched the mystery to many agents who were polite but clearly not excited, which was incredibly frustrating for me, because I thought I finally had something with all the elements in place.


As a last ditch effort I signed up for an intensive writing workshop, and from it I concluded my mystery was not the right story for me to focus on as an unpublished writer. The workshop organizer stressed over and over that unknown writers have a hard time getting noticed with quiet stories. It’s not impossible, but it adds more difficulties on top of an already difficult process. There is a market for quiet stories and many people write them beautifully, but I decided in my case it was time to try another approach.


I decided I needed a loud story, a story I could describe in a few sentences, a story that would make people (agents and editors) lose the glazed look in the eye I had seen so many times before. I trunked the mystery and wrote something else. That’s how WILDFIRE RUN came about, the story of Luke Brockett, the son of the U.S. President who gets trapped at Camp David after a disaster. Luke and his friends Callie and Theo have to find a way to escape the security systems gone haywire before a wildfire overtakes them. When I got the offer from HarperCollins to publish the book, it made all those years of work worthwhile. I’m excited that the book has been selected by the Junior Library Guild for the fall in their new high interest middle reader category. You can view the book trailer of WILDFIRE RUN below. A teacher's guide and a book club guide can be downloaded from my website: http://www.deegarretson.com/


One of my writer friends, Alice Loweecey, who has had an equally winding publishing journey, has a saying I’d like to appropriate to end this post: “Never give up! Never surrender!” That’s a good motto to live by in the publishing world.


So I hope everyone reading this sticks around with us. Other members of Project Mayhem will share some of their publishing journeys in later posts, and I’m very interested to hear their stories as well. To enter for a chance at the copy of WILDFIRE RUN, please follow us and comment below. (My children are very excited because I told them they would get to pick the winner in a random drawing.)

 

Project Mayhem is coming.You have been warned.

We are coming soon....readers beware.