Amazon Breakthrough Novel Contest Opens Soon

Amazon will open soon for entries for the 2012 Breakthrough Novel Award--are you ready? Here are the quick details from their website:

"The Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award brings together talented writers, reviewers, and publishing experts to find and develop new voices in fiction. The 2012 international contest will award two grand prizes: one for General Fiction and one for Young Adult Fiction. Each winner will receive a publishing contract with Penguin, which includes a $15,000 advance.

Open submissions for manuscripts will begin on January 23, 2012 and run through February 5, 2012."

One of the most important components of your entry is the pitch, and I thought I'd round up some web pages with useful advice on pitches, and the related query summary:

Have to start out with Pitch University; so much good stuff squirreled away in the articles and case studies!

Nathan Bransford has many concise, helpful blog posts on crafting a pitch, but his post on "The One Sentence, One Paragraph, and Two Paragraph Pitch" handily combines his advice in one place.

The Absolute Write Water Cooler forum has a Query Letter Hell section in Show Your Work, and it is a crash course in what works and what doesn't in a query.

And see that blogroll I have in the sidebar? Hit all those blogs and do a search for "queries" and "pitches", and you'll find a gold mine of information from agents, editors, and writers. Even doing a search on Google will yield some worthwhile sources.

Good luck to those who enter--and even if you don't enter, it's a great excuse to polish your pitch!


(clip art source)

Prioritizing

In my recent interview on Pitch University, the final question and answer were:

Q. What skill is next on your list to learn?

Angelica: Learning to balance my everyday demands and my writing time. And social media time. And laundry time. And time with my husband. I'll let you know if any of those happen.

Since that interview, it has seeped into my brain that this balance would not happen on its own. So I'm changing a few things in order to give me more actual writing time.

Firstly, I've been pretty faithful about posting on this blog 2-3 times a week, and I want to be able to continue to do that. But much of my blogging time is spent searching for contests and researching other topics to blog about. So I'm going to be trying some new things like interviews with authors (the first one will be next Monday, May 16, with debut-YA author Karen Sandler) and some updates on what I'm reading.

Also, my posts have not been on specific days, but in the future I'm shooting for always posting on Mondays, and then another post on Wednesday or Thursday. I wanted some flexibility in there so that I can take advantage of YA Highway's Road Trip Wednesday topics that strike my fancy.

I also decided to take a hiatus from my critique group meetings for a while. This was a really hard decision to make--I learn so much from being a part of this group, and I hope I offer good insights in return. But the fact of it is that Tu and Thurs are my only entire writing days (not split up by errands and appointments) and our meetings occur every other Thursday. So I had to ask myself, "Which is the more productive way to spend that time: writing, or talking about writing?"

The writing won out. I will still offer them feedback on their pages through email, but I'll have that precious chunk of time back. And my husband will get to see me outside of my office occasionally, which will be a plus for him. And once I have my full draft finished of Crow's Rest, I'll be back to darken their door.

What about you? Do you have any secrets to balancing your writing life and, well, a life?

Interview at Pitch University

If you haven't been following Pitch University, with its lessons on pitching from industry experts and opportunities to pitch to agents from the comfort of your home, then you've been missing out on some real gems.

I've been participating with comments and pitches from day one, so Diane asked me to do a short interview on what I've learned in the process.

At the time of the interview, I couldn't think of an answer for the "personal theme music" question, so I used the answer my husband gave me when I asked him, "What music do you hear when you think of me?"

But afterwards, I thought of the Chumbawumba song "I Get Knocked Down" and how that's what the early stages of querying and pitching felt like back in my naive days, when I thought just completing a book would have agents and editors knocking down my door. When that didn't happen (much to my utter shock), I started researching dream agents and sent off my queries. Only to discover that the "dreamy" feeling wasn't mutual--they just weren't that into my book. Or at least not that early draft.

But meanwhile I was taking steps to change that dynamic:

I joined some critique groups

I started reading every book and blog I could find on craft, marketing, and networking (and started my own blog, joined twitter and facebook)

Went to a few conferences

And most importantly, I went back and applied the things I learned to that mess of an early draft of my novel


All these things helped give me the confidence and the writing chops to take that feeling of "I get knocked down" and add the rest of the song lyric: "But I get up again, you're never going to keep me down." And that's what makes me send out the next query or enter the next contest. Or submit a video pitch for that matter.

So, dear readers, what about you--what keeps you sending out that next query? What do you do to further your writing skills?

Revised Video Pitches

If you haven't been following Pitch University, you may not have seen the good news/bad news scenario that followed my video pitch submission. The good news was that both my pitches were chosen for the Pitch Evaluation Lab last Wednesday. The bad--well, more terrifying than bad--news was that I had to finish revisions by that Friday morning. Knowing that I had a dentist appointment Thursday morning, as well as our crit group Thursday afternoon. And to make it more interesting, we had an intense thunderstorm with wind gusts of up to 80mph--all of which will be picked up by microphones if they're sensitive enough.

But I squeaked in under the wire, and I'm pretty pleased with the results. These will come in handy for the SCBWI Spring Spirit Regional Conference next weekend. I'm pasting my revised pitches below, or you can go to Pitch U's site and see the Before & After with Adam Friedstein's comments.

Sneak Peek at My Book Pitches

In case anyone is wondering why I haven't posted in a while, I've been busy making videos. Pitch University's Pitchfest starts up again March 20, with agent Adam Friedstein of Anderson Literary Management viewing and commenting on video pitches.

I've done a new pitch for my completed YA novel, Spirits from the Vasty Deep, as well as my work-in-progress, Crow's Rest. We can't submit our videos until Sunday the 20th, but I thought I'd put them up here for a sneak peek.





Is anybody else submitting a pitch this time around? And you may have noticed that Pitch University is now offering a query feedback option!

RTW and some news!

Road Trip Wednesday is a "Blog Carnival," where YA Highway's contributors and followers post a weekly writing- or reading-related question and answer it on their blogs. You can hop from destination to destination and get everybody's unique take on the topic.

This week's topic: Who are your favorite literary couples?
You know -- the ones you like by themselves, but LOVE together!



First, some nominations in adult titles: Sookie and any of her many lovers (but especially Eric), Claire and Jamie in Diana Gabaldon's Outlander, and Jack and Eliza in Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson.

For YA: Mary "Jacky" Faber and Jared in the Bloody Jack books, Blossom and Alexander in Ghosts I Have Been by Richard Peck, and Aislinn and Seth from Melissa Marr's Wicked Lovely series.

What do all these various couples have in common? Each half of the whole is a fully-realized character, with a "real" life taking place offstage. No sitting by the phone waiting for a call for these love interests!

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And now for some news! My video pitch was chosen to be critted for Pitch University's Pitch Evaluation Lab! What's more, I impressed agent Christine Witthohn so much that she asked me to send her the full manuscript of my book!

I would really encourage people to dive in and submit a video--it's a great learning experience, and it just may lead to a request!

P.S. for another example of my burgeoning mad video-ing skills, check out this special video for Valentine's Day

Are You Ready to be Schooled?

Pitch University launches their first "Pitch U Pitchfest Week," wherein agent Christine Wittohn of BookCents Literary Agency will consider your pitches. If a video pitch intimidates you, they've added options for audio and written submissions to ease you into the process.

There are lots of details to get straight, so be sure to read the rules carefully. I recorded a pitch last week that I liked, and after re-reading their rules I discovered that I'd left out the important "completed" tag. So I tackled it again, and I thought I'd post the result today, in case anyone sees some glaring errors I need to fix by Sunday.



And as a bonus, some advice to prospective pitchers on word choice: beware dangerous word combinations like "sets a ship," or you could end up with a blooper like this:


Yes, I said "Olivia Herald sets a shit" before I cracked up. Mom would be so proud.

If you'd like to read the text of the pitch, it's the same one that's on my Novels page above.

Start the New Year Off with a Pitch

2011 is just around the corner, and already some exciting new opportunities for writers are stacking up.

Starting January 24, the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Contest will be open for submissions, including your pitch. Each winner will receive a publishing contract with Penguin, which includes a $15,000 advance. There is a general fiction category and a young adult fiction category, and last year it was really interesting to read all the entries during the 4 elimination rounds.

One of my crit partners made it through to the semi-finals, and got a lovely Publisher's Weekly review to show for it. I am planning on entering in 2011, if this round of agent submissions doesn't pan out.

The other opportunity to stretch your pitching muscles comes with the launch of the Pitch University site on January 1. Their manifesto lets you know what to expect:

Writer POV:

1. Writers write books.
2. We re-write books.
3. We do not pitch.
4. We do not sum up in "sound bites."
5. That is foreign and evil.
6. We especially do not sum up in person, because we are not salespeople.
7. In fact, sales is never taught in creative writing classes, because it is a totally unrelated career.

The Dilemma:

1. Editors and Agents need us to sum up.
2. So do Readers.
3. They believe us when we say what our book is about.
4. But we suck at this and are apt to stutter, wander, and make something brilliant sound like fragmented (yet earnest) dream-lings of a lunatic mind.
5. Or just something lacking characters, plot, and any hint of conflict.
6. They--the editors, agents, and readers--offer to meet us in public, face-to-face, at conferences, pitchfests, and bookstores.
7. We call this the public land of our suckiness.
8. Because the hardest thing of all is that we actually keep trying to get this right.
9. We love what we do.
10. Enough to learn to pitch.
11. Yeah, that much.
12. Today, we're here at Pitch University, and we are ready to rock.

Sounds good to me--I have a query that I like, but whenever anyone asks, "What's your book about?" I'm left with my mouth hanging open as I fumble for a response that does my story justice. NOT professional, and I used to be a professional storyteller, for Pete's sake! We got a camcorder for Christmas, so now there's no excuse for me not to try this.