Okay. Nationals are over. In case you missed it on our blog or some other writerly type blog, last week was the RWA national convention. It was four days of workshops, luncheons, speakers and the dreaded PITCH> Yes that is a “P”.
However, it could easily be replaced with a “B” because they are. A bitch, I mean.
After the process of condensing your book to about 200 words, than re-wording it fifty times and practicing saying it fifty times, we went careening into the pitch sessions, almost late from train delays, and gave the dreaded Pitch. Weeks of buildup for eight minutes of Hell. Done. Good. The stress is over with and done. Right?
Wrong.
Now it’s time for the submissions. You’re all excited to have those requests for partials or fulls when you’re still in the hotel and tellin
g your friends how the pitch went. How lucky can you be? An agent wants to see your work! Wooo Hooo!
Than you get home and start to put together the actual submission. Aye-yi-yi.
Why can’t they all ask for the same thing in the same format? This one wants a 1 to 5 page synopsis and fifty pages as an attachment. That one wants three short paragraphs of a blurb and three chapters pasted inside the body of an email. Another one wants the entire ms (all six pounds of it) and a 5 to 10 page synop printed, double-spaced on 20 lb paper with left justification and Times New Romance font, sent with a SASE for the reply.
I realize they have no clue what other editors or agents are asking for, and that each needs the material in a format that will allow them to get to my submission the quickest. BUT, this will take me almost as much time to reformat all these submissions to comply with the differing guidelines as it did to write the book! Please…. Someone get me an administrative assistant.
What… no assistants in the real world?
Off topic, but as important: I met a great bunch of bloggers this week! We all had dinner at a Lebanese restaurant. Great fun.
Katie, Charlotte, Kati, Amy, Rosie and Barbara. You guys were all a hoot. I’ll send you the loot I promised as soon as I get all these submissions ready!
Oh and I can’t forget Wendy, super-librarian. Poor thing had to sit through listening to Sam and I gripe about bad service and become catty-bitch girls at lunch. Have you ever had a server ask you “What’s your problem?” I did. Let me tell you, the reaction was not pretty.
I now have a total girl-crush on Lisabea.
All in all it was a good conference. I learned a lot, met some great people and reconnected with some old friends.
Now off to submit… and not in the way Eden Bradley would write about.
Kiss Kiss
~Mari
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