Pitch Wars

Today I submit Apocalypse to Pitch Wars. Pitch Wars is a yearly contest whereas writers submit what is basically a query package — query letter, bio, synopsis, and first chapter — into selected potential mentors, who will in turn pick a writer they want to work with. They will help develop and polish query materials and give the writer the opportunity to meet with industry representatives to pitch their novel.

I’ve done this twice before. I guess the odds are less than 1% that one would get selected. I’m okay with that; I’ll keep trying. My novel has been improved. My query letter has been improved. I have grown as a writer. This may be the year.

Or it may not be.

But it will never be if I don’t try.

I don’t know where I’m going

I know I’ve been writing very boring posts lately, and for that I apologize. My justification (not excuse) is NaNo and projects.

What have I been thinking about lately? NaNo and projects. Ok, that’s not a good start to a blog.

I’ve also been thinking about my relationship with writing. On one hand, I’ve hit some very positive rejections that have 1) given me ideas of how to improve, and 2) have said positive things about my writing.

I might actually be taking my writing more seriously than I have before, and with that I wonder more if I can get my writing to the point where it deserves being published. I don’t know if I’ve gotten there with my stories, and I wonder what it would take to get to that point.

I still have some big things out there — I have Prodigies at DAW, Apocalypse at Tor, Voyageurs in a novella contest, a submission to Pitch Wars, and — well, I don’t think I will win any of these. And I don’t know what to think about this.

Letdown

Yesterday I woke up with that feeling that something good, really good, was going to happen.

Instead, I got two rejections.

It’s laid me a bit low. It’s not that I haven’t been getting rejections all along; I can be a bit superstitious at times, and I felt as if the universe bitch-slapped me.

I’m stewing in the very common writer’s self-castigation: My writing isn’t interesting enough, my writing isn’t good enough, I’m not good enough.

Still, I turned my pitch for Prodigies to Pitch Wars, which is a competition to find established authors who will work with you to improve your pitch materials so that they entice agents.

I keep trying, because I will never get published if I don’t try.