Pitch Wars: Behind the Curtain

For the third year in a row, I’m a mentor in a contest run by Brenda Drake called Pitch Wars. You’ve heard this spiel before in this space, but this basically means that querying writers submit to contest mentors (usually agented writers). The mentors then pick mentees to help them get their manuscripts in the best shape possible before an “agent round” where a select group of agents comb through the entries and make requests publically on each entry.

The contest has a growing number of success stories, with dozens of writers agented and/or gaining book deals in direct correlation to the contest. My mentee last year, the super awesome Kellye Garrett, was offered representation IN A BAR at 10:30 at night by an agent who loved her Pitch Wars submission (they were at the New England Crime Bake the week after the agent round).

So, yeah, Pitch Wars does incredible things for writers. Mostly because it provides a spotlight on something that might be great but overlooked in a pile of queries. I’ve benefited from that spotlight myself, meeting my agent through the contest in its first year.

Thus, as I think it’ll be helpful for querying writers to hear, not just those in the contest, I thought I’d give a little insight. Well, actually three little pieces of insight:

1. Numbers matter

2. Taste matters

3. Context matters

First, the Numbers: The quality of the work always matters, of course, but here’s the deal: ALL the submissions in my contest inbox are wonderful. Seriously. The competition is FIERCE, the queries are strong, the opening pages are polished and all the writers seem affable and ready for a working relationship.

Which is awesome. Except there are 78 of those hardy competitors in my inbox. In the whole contest there are 1,591. Less than a tenth of those will be chosen as mentees. This year, there are no alternates. Each mentor choses a single mentee. Which means I have to reject 77 great writers. And some mentors with wider tastes have to reject double that.

Now, think about an actual agent and not just a contest mentor. Many agents get at least 100 queries per day. Maybe more. Yet many only take on a handful of clients per year. Maybe only one or two. Yet they get possibly 365 times the number of queries I have to comb through for this contest.

Moreover, of the clients they take on, less than half will get a deal out of their first book on submission.

Yes, it will always be a numbers game.

Second, Personal Choice: I am not an agent or an acquisitions editor, but, like them, I am human. Which means that as I comb through my entries, there are some that snag my attention much quicker than others. I have a tendency to enjoy crime fiction (duh) but I also really like humor. I can’t read strictly somber books any more than I can watch strictly somber movies. I’m sure they’re amazing. I. just. Can’t. And that is my humanity showing.

Thus, as I sorted my submissions into “Favorites,” “Maybes,” and “No, Not for Me” folders, I decided to go with my gut. After doing this twice before, I’m starting to get a little better at understanding what works for me personally and what doesn’t.

Unfortunately, because there were so many great submissions, I ended up with 30 Favorites, 30 Maybes and 18 No, Not for Me.

My gut likes many things, obviously. Which leads me to my third insight…

Third, Context Matters: There have been truly great manuscripts that didn’t get a single request in Pitch Wars but went on to be agented and sold after the contest. Yes, this happens. Why? The contest setup.

Pitch Wars is different than querying in that each writer gets 300 words to show their stuff, not a query and 10 pages (or whatever a certain agent prefers). Here, there’s a pitch of about 35 to 75 words at the top of the page and then about 250 words of the writer’s first page below it. That’s it. From there, agents request partials and fulls.

Therefore, the first page and the concept are extremely important in this contest. I’m convinced the only reason I “won” the adult round of Pitch Wars the first year is because my pitch and first page described (in sickening detail) the death of a chef in his very own kitchen with his very own tools. It worked very well within the contest parameters. Even if it was gross.

As I narrow down my favorites and my maybes, I’m thinking not only of how I personally feel about the manuscript, but how I’d craft a pitch and what the first page would look like as a teaser. Those things are just too important to success in this arena. And I want my mentee to feel successful and get as much out of the contest as possible.

This might seem cold and calculating. BUT, in a way, it’s “just business.” Agents and acquiring editors must do this too. Agents might be looking for a certain type of book that fills a spot in their list. Or something that they know editors are looking for in a submission. Editors are hoping to fall in love with a book that works in their imprint, catalog and calendar. They turn down far more than my 78 submissions in a year because they have to, not because they want to.

SO, all that said, if you are querying, entered in a contest or in my inbox (hi!), please understand that there is a heavy amount of thought that goes into evaluating writing submissions. It’s not a perfect science. It’s run by the reader’s heart, head and gut—just like your writing.

The Pain of Arriving at “It’s Just Not for Me”

For the second year in a row, I’m a mentor for Brenda Drake’s Pitch Wars contest. Last time, I gave a pretty comprehensive behind-the-scenes look at what it’s like trying to pan for gold in a huge writing contest.

This time around, I thought I’d talk a little more in depth on the very worst part of the contest: Seeing great work and then having to say no.

It’s particularly painful because most writers know what it feels like to put their best work out there and then to be told no—sometimes for a vague reason. Or for a reason that seems so minor that you just want to throw your hands up and say, “Why is that a no? That’s an easy fix.” Or you just get the dreaded “I just didn’t connect with this manuscript.”

I’ve been there on all of those and totally understand how frustrating rejections like that can be to receive. But thanks to this contest I also know how frustrating the flip side can be.

This year, there were more than 1,200 entries—double last year’s totals. Each entrant could pick up to four of the 75 mentors to submit to, using posted wish lists and preferences to figure out who might like what.

Though none of us are agents or acquisition editors, the whole aspect of the “hunt and peck” method of trying to match your manuscript with someone who might love it is very similar to trying to find the right match “for real.”

And sometimes that leads to the same annoying answers as above.

I narrowed my wish list this year and got 78 submissions, most of which were adult mysteries and thrillers, as requested.

Out of those 78, I was required to pick two writers to mentor—one will be my main mentee and the other will be an alternate.

Which means I have to say no to 76 manuscripts.

Not an easy thing—not only as a fellow writer but because approximately 90 percent of those manuscripts are something I could say yes to.

Going through the entries, I ended up with a huge “maybe” pile. Very few pitches ended up in the “no” pile right away and most of those were because the word count was hugely off (below 50,000 or above 120,000). Probably eight or so were flagged right off the query as having mentee potential. That number grew as I sifted through the maybes, looking at both the pitch (for a second time) and the submitted pages (one chapter).

So, what separated the maybes from the “check out more pages” from the two people I choose after eventually reading requested pages?

The same bit of “it” that seems to separate a “yes” from a “it’s just not right for me.”

As to what that X factor is, I still don’t know, and I’ve felt it 90-plus times recently.

Which makes me a little bit more understanding of those vague responses we all know and hate.

Because sometimes the reason is vague. Sometimes the idea and/or the writing is there, but it really isn’t just for you. Or it’s all there, and it’s for you but there’s something that puts you on the fence.

Obviously, because of the parameters of the contest, I was in a frame of mind where I really did just have to pick two writers. Agents and editors can sign however many writers they feel comfortable adding within a certain amount of time. They aren’t limited. But, that said, they still can’t take on every manuscript and writer that they like.

On Twitter, I likened this phenomenon to the classic children’s book Millions of Cats by Wanda Gag. In that story, a little old man goes out to find a feline companion to bring back to his wife. He stumbles upon a veritable kitty sea and can’t decide which one to bring back, so he brings back ALL of them—“hundreds and thousands and millions and billions and trillions” of cats.

As you can imagine, this ended badly: With all the cats (save one) eating each other when he asked them to decide among themselves who was the prettiest cat. The surviving cat didn’t even compete. That’s how it lived.

Just imagine if we asked writers to do that when gunning for a shot at a mentor/agent/editor.

So, that mentor/agent/editor has to use his or her best own judgment—even when something isn’t actually wrong.

How do you deal with the vague subjectivity of the literary world?