For those of you in the writing community, or perhaps just the Twitterverse, you may have noticed that the past two weeks have been a whirlwind of writing contests. If you obsessively follow what trends on Twitter, you have to have noticed #PitchMadness or #PitMad swirling about on the site.
To break it down for those of you who aren’t in the know, Pitch Madness was a two level contest being hosted by four participating blogs. There was an initial slush pile round with 300 entries, which were then narrowed down to sixty by a series of slush pile readers. Those sixty are then posted in groups of fifteen and left on the blogs for a few days in which time agents will then bid on the ones they want to read.
I happened to be lucky enough to be one of those chosen sixty, and I also happened to get three agents attempting to outbid each other on my entry. Contest rules state that you only send what the winning agent asks for, but in some cases, you can get other offers on your manuscript later on. Once again, a rare moment of good luck dictated that I get two other partial offers aside from the first one. Cue me jumping around flailing and generally being over the moon.
The following night there was a Twitter Pitch Party for any agents who wanted to participate. I posted the pitch my parents had helped me with on and off over the course of the day, and got no bites. Then, right before the contest ended, I revised the pitch slightly and ended up getting another partial request from a different agent.
Earlier in the month, I also entered a Secret Agent contest on a blog that provides all sorts of awesome opportunities for writers. I entered the first 250 words of The Recruited, and waited for the agent to leave their feedback. Because of the way this contest ended up working out, the winners were announced before I got to see the feedback on my entry. And, surprise surprise, I ended up winning that contest.
I really don’t know how to explain the luck I’ve had with this book lately. All I can do is keep my fingers crossed and hope that something good comes from one of these requests.
The one downside of this whole situation, a downside I had to be prepared for, is that I did receive a rejection on a full a few days ago. And it sucked for a day or so, I won’t lie. Then again, I still have two fulls and four partials out currently. Maybe it’s because of those numbers that the sting of that rejection diminished a little more quickly than I would’ve expected.
For those of you in the querying trenches like I am, keep chugging ahead. When I’m unconvinced or feeling down, I tell myself that eventually, all my hard work is going to pay off.
And you know what? It almost always works.