Pitch Session Part I

After reading Rachelle Gardner's latest blog post I decided to tackle her assignment head on, which are 11 questions to get a fiction writer to craft a pitch.

For the non-writer friends out there reading my blog, a pitch is a quick way to reveal your plot to a literary agent. Writer's conferences schedule pitch sessions between a writer and an agent in which the writer gets 3-5 minutes to sell her novel to a prospective agent. If the agent is intrigued, she will ask for the synopsis.

The Battle of Writing Prompts

I haven't been feeling inspired lately. Call it writers block; call it lack of discipline. Call it what you will. I haven't written that many words on the page lately and it bothers me. Searching for inspiration, I consider writing prompts. 

I've tried writing prompts before, but I never accept the first one I read. Instead, I read the catalog of writing prompts until I find one that inspires me and use that one, which completely undermines the point of a writing prompt in the first place. 

Although I'm reluctant to be sucked down the rabbit hole of distraction that is the internet, I'm a little desperate for a creativity spark this morning.

What are you reading?

Bastian Balthazar Bux.

Carl Conrad Coreander. 

Two names of characters from the novel The Neverending Story by Michael Ende.  I'm reading this book to the boys right now.

If I ever get a flock of sheep, I will name two of them Bastian Balthazar Bux and Carl Conrad Coreander. It is meant to be.

While supervising the boys doing their homework yesterday afternoon, I created two boards on Pinterest for the breeds of sheep and chickens that I would like to have on my little farm should that little dream ever come to fruition.  Check them out here and here .  The chickens are mostly heritage breeds. The sheep are just cute, especially the Olde English Babydoll Southdown Sheep, which is a heritage breed as well as the Jacob sheep with their wicked cool horns. TEACHER HUSBAND and the boys really like the Jacob sheep. 

I'm off to stalk (ahem, I mean follow) literary agents on Twitter in my seemingly never ending search for an agent. I swear finding an agent is like dating.

P.S. Did you notice my Daring Greatly badge from Dr. Brene Brown? Hard not to miss, but I added it there because, aside from being inspired by Brene, I am daring greatly in my search for a literary agent and publication. 

Daring Greatly.  More of us should do that everyday. 

The Truth About Writers

I know one thing about us writers. We are the world's best procrastinators.

We either have the tidiest, cleanest houses--you know, because that toilet needs to be scrubbed or the kitchen floor mopped before we get our butts into a chair to devote time to writing. Or we get sucked down the rabbit hole of the internet, stumbling from one blog to the next, calling it "doing research," which is one reason I don't write historical fiction. I'd spend way too much time researching the history and culture of 15th century Scotland. Or whatever.

Case in point: Today, I used a vacation day so I could devote my entire day to writing my second manuscript while the boys are at school and TEACHER HUSBAND presides over the AP World History exam. The house would be blessedly quiet. Perfect for writing, writing, writing.

What did I do? I spent the morning scrubbing the kitchen counters. And not just a cursory wipe down either. No ma'am. I cleared everything off the counter tops and scrubbed them down with lemon verbena scented all purpose cleaner. I cleaned the toaster and my water kettle for making tea. I reorganized. Got the gunk off the back splash.

I read a little. Paused for lunch. Read some more. Got "my hair did." (It looks fabulous, by the way.)  Only now with one hour and twenty minutes to go before the bus pulls up to the curb and my boys come spilling out along with the other neighborhood kids, I sit down to write.

Yeah. Us writers? We are the queens and kings of procrastination!    

To tweet or not to tweet?

I don't know what I'm doing. There. I've said it.

I'm not doing a good job using social media to attract readers. I'm struggling with Twitter. It's like a foreign language to me with all the hashtags and "@" comments. What does that even mean?  I've even reviewed Twitter 101 advice on YouTube and it still doesn't make any sense. I'm like your 89 year old grandmother who is technologically challenged.

I thought I had hit my stride. I was feeling capable with 29 people following me on Twitter. I marveled at how I attracted so many followers without saying or doing much. Then doubt crept in. I started to wonder how on earth could I have attracted 29 followers when I tweeted only four comments?

Then I reviewed my profile. I realized that I don't really have 29 people following me. It's that I'm following 29 other people on Twitter and that I actually have 4 people following me. That's it. Three of them marketing agencies, stalking me for business.

While I'm on this roll of complaining, I don't know what to tweet about either. I'm not capable of creating pithy, succinct sayings in 140 characters or less. I’m a novelist for heaven's sake, which I tweeted yesterday, feeling proud of myself.

That's the thing. Not being published yet, I feel like an impostor. Dear gentle readers, I need your help! What do you tweet about? How do you come up with short and sweet comments under 140 characters? And most importantly, what do you tweet about?  

Distractions, distractions, distractions

Back in high school, I wanted to be an entrepreneur. (In addition to being a writer, of course.) I just didn't know what kind of business to operate.

I had terribly oily skin as a teenager, prone to breakouts, but I struggled to find a skincare system that worked. I read an article somewhere about using a mixture of cornmeal and oatmeal as a mask to help reduce the breakouts. I cut out the recipe and tried it. And boy howdy did it help.

One day, my dad mentioned that a young woman with whom he worked had acne breakouts just like me. Would you sell her the oatmeal mask? Um? Okay. I mixed up the dry ingredients of the recipe in a plastic container and included instructions of how much water to add to make a paste. Smear it on your face, wait till it dries then rinse off with warm water.

I don't remember how much I charged for this concoction. I'd like to say that I performed a cost analysis on the cornmeal, oatmeal and the little bit of cornstarch in the recipe, but I don't think I was that sophisticated. I think I just made up a dollar figure and here's the thing: she paid it! According to my dad, her skin improved. (So did mine. I don't know what it is about oatmeal, but it works on oily skin.)

This sparked an idea. I started researching containers and what kind of advertising and marketing I'd need to do to sell this corn & oatmeal concoction to the world. I had visions that this little business venture would fund my college studies.

Keep in mind, I'm a child of the '80s--hair bands and Trans-Am cars--there was no internet. Researching packaging ideas was looking at the ads in the back of magazines for suppliers. You had to write a business letter asking the company for their catalog, often paying a nominal fee of $2.50-$3.50 to get it. Advertising consisted of researching the fees for the ads in the back of the magazines.

The idea continued to percolate. I researched how to write a business plan.  Although I continued to sell the corn & oatmeal concoction to my lone customer, ultimately, I didn't move beyond that. The idea fizzled out once I started looking at the logistics. I really didn't know what to do and I was overwhelmed. I quickly lost my way.

I've often wondered how different things may have turned out if the internet existed when I was in high school. How easy it would have been to find packaging suppliers. Get how to articles on branding and marketing. Sell stuff on etsy, among other websites. Then along comes a magazine called Willow and Sage.  It's exclusively devoted to homemade bath & body products, including packaging ideas. What the fudge!? Where were you 20 years ago?!

As I peruse the premiere issue, I'm excited about all the recipes for making body scrubs and body butters out of natural products. I'm thinking of gift baskets for my friends and relatives. Logo creation. How cool would it be to make my own natural body products and sell them! This was the very idea I had in high school, although I wasn't able to translate the visions in my head to practical execution.

As the idea of world domination via natural body products swirl in my mind (as if!) I remember: I'm a writer. I have a book to publish. This is just another distraction from my writing.

What distracts you from your writing?  

     

Publish my manuscript online. Yes or no?

There is a small debate in the writing world and it's this: do you publish your manuscript directly to your blog in installments or not?

One online writing class that I took through RWA (read about them here) about how to blog--the person teaching the class insisted that as writers the last thing you want to do is publish your novel directly to your blog chapter by chapter. Not only do you risk being plagiarized, but why would a publisher have an incentive to publish your work if it is already available for free on the internet? This person admitted that some authors have found success that way so it is a viable option.

Then there are the others in the opposite camp who believe that it is perfectly acceptable and insist that you should share your manuscript on your blog. For example, I'm intrigued by this book: How to Blog a Book: Write, Publish, and Promote Your Work One Post at a Time by Nina Amir. (It's on my wish list.)

I've glanced at this book, and I don't think she advocates publishing your novel chapter by chapter per se, but she does share practical advice on how to create blog posts around your manuscript and how to attract readers to your blog, thus building a platform with the intention that a publisher will sign you on for a book deal. The stark reality of today's publishing world is that a publisher is less likely to pick up an unknown author these days unless she has a built in following on her blog (and other social media).

I'm not sure in which camp I fall. I see wisdom in both sides of this debate.