I’ve been working on my WIP, Drawn Together, off and on for about three years now and I’m still not finished the first draft. That’s included at least three false starts that involved scrapping over 25k words, months on end without writing at all, desperately misjudging how long my first draft would be, and all kinds of other things that have slowed me down. But recently, one thing happened that has made all of the suffering - the mental health breakdowns, the imposter syndrome, the crushing self-doubt - worth it. A Twitter pitch contest.
Now, let me back up and quickly explain Twitter pitch contests to those of you who don’t know what they are. Basically, several times a year, there are events hosted by members of the writing community where you can pitch your book in a tweet or two using the event’s hashtag and participating literary agents can ‘like’ your tweet. If an agent ‘likes’ your tweet, it means they want you to send them your completed manuscript (and whatever other documents they require like a query letter and/or synopsis) and they will give you an expedited review of your work.
There are events like #PitMad that are open to every genre, events like #DVPit that are open to every genre but only accept manuscripts from diverse/marginalized authors, and events like #SFFpit and #KissPitch that are specific to a particular genre. There are even some events hosted by smaller publishing houses, such as #CarinaPitch (the focus of this blog post!), where editors from that house might ‘like’ your tweet. The only rule for participating in these events (other than following genre/diversity specifications) is that your manuscript MUST be finished. Editors and agents want to see your work right away and most of them have a very small window for you to submit to them after the contest date.
Of course, this hasn’t stopped me from putting all the contest dates in my phone calendar as if I’m going to be finished writing, editing, and rewriting in time to submit to any of them. But that’s where Carina Press and #CarinaPitch come in.
Carina Press is a romance publishing house that’s on my list of places to submit to one day. I follow all of their in-house and freelance editors on Twitter, as well as their official company account, and I keep up-to-date on what kinds of stories/tropes their editors are looking for.
So when I found out that #CarinaPitch was happening back in April, I was understandably bummed that I wouldn’t be able to participate. But by lucky chance (read: me purposely doing it to torture myself), I happened to read the details the night before the contest happened. Lo and behold, they were opening up the contest to books on proposal this year, which meant I only needed to have the first 7,500 words of my manuscript completed.
That night, I didn’t sleep at all as I frantically worked on my 280 character pitch. My wonderful best friend and fellow writer, Justine, helped me rewrite and refine the pitch that I eventually submitted, even though she was at work and had more important things to be doing.
Obviously, because I’m telling this story, one of the editors liked my pitch. I used the entire month-long submission window to polish the first three chapters of my manuscript, write and polish a query letter, and write and polish a five page detailed synopsis letter. It was quite possibly the most stressful and exhilarating thing I’ve ever done.
Less than two weeks later, I got a message from the editor I submitted to, requesting my full manuscript when it’s finished and providing the detailed feedback that was one of the benefits of submitting to the contest.
It’s been just under two months since that day and I’ve been hard at work, trying to balance writing and working so that I can have my manuscript ready to submit as soon as possible. Writing is still hard and I still have days where I doubt my story and my abilities but knowing that there’s a stranger out there whose job it is to judge unpublished manuscripts who likes what she’s read of mine is a huge help.
If you'd like to learn more about #CarinaPitch and what it involves, go here.
What are your thoughts on Twitter pitch contests? If you’re a writer, would you ever submit to one? If you’re a reader, have you ever read a book that was picked up from one? Let me know in the comments!