More than five hundred people went sleepless in Seattle the last week in July. I was one of them.
We took part in the four-day annual conference of the Pacific Northwest Writers Association, which had crammed in enough formal activities to keep us going at least 12 hours a day.
Panels of agents and editors helped prepare us for making our pitches by warning us what not to say. For example:
“Don’t say, ‘I’ve written the next Harry Potter…but my story is even better.’”
“Avoid telling us, ‘My writing is like that of F. Scott Fitzgerald’” [or Ernest Hemingway or any other iconic American author].
“We’d rather not hear, ‘My book is a guaranteed best seller.’”
“When we ask you to give us a title of a similar book, so we have an idea of where yours would fit on a bookstore or library shelf, don’t say, ‘Mine is a cross between “Little House on the Prairie” and the “Transformers” comic book.
In planning my pitch I avoided all these blunders, but that didn’t keep the jitters at bay during the hour before my pitch session began. I decided to hang out and rehearse in a space empty, but for a few people, tables and chairs.
“I’m pitching this morning,” I said to a woman as she filled her coffee cup while I dunked my tea bag. I knew that those four words would communicate what I was feeling to any fellow writer.
“I’m a therapist,” she answered. “Would you like to talk?”
I answered that question in a nano-second. She had successfully pitched to an agent a few years ago and her book was now on sale in the conference book store.
I went on to give my two-minute spiel in a calmer state of mind. I talked to three agents and one editor and all said they’d like to receive samples from my novel. The outcome might not have been different without my new acquaintance’s help, but my attitude toward giving it had been transformed. She was my fairy godmother that day.
Ann Oxrieder has lived in Bellevue for 35 years.She retired after 25 years as an administrator in the Bellevue School District and now blogs about retirement at http://stillalife.wordpress.com/.
