How the Pitches Went
Jun. 28th, 2006 11:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dr_pretentiousNow that I have the first of the two partial mss that got requested nearly ready to mail out, I have time to report on how the requests happened.
First, I spent a lot of time and energy on a fit of stage fright. Although I am by nature gregarious and can sell almost anything I actually believe in, when the bottom falls out of my belief in my own work, I totally lose the ability to sell it. All day Thursday, any time I crossed paths with KJ (who runs the conference), I would say (1) Tell me what you need a volunteer to do right now, so I can do it, and (2) It will really be best for everyone if I cancel my agent and editor appointments, because the finished book is too long, and the book that can be the right length is months from completion. KJ wasn't having any of it. Over the previous several months, she had had to field too many phone calls from people with good intentions who said stupid things like, I need an agent appointment so I can pitch this book I'd like to write someday. What's that? Why, no, I've never written anything before. KJ knows that, over the past three years, I've averaged well over 100,000 words per year, and my drafts consistently clean up well, so dammit, I was going to sit my butt in the chair and pitch, because she wanted to hold my books in her hands.
So, despite my best efforts to weasel out of my appointments, I had to rewrite the pitches for Hands of Beltresa and The Traitor of Imlen. Then I had to pace around the hotel room![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
annathepiper and I were sharing, repeating my two little sentences again and again.
The day of my pitch to the Illustrious Editor, the IE and I were seated next to one another at lunch. This is notable mainly because I demonstrated that I come by my lj handle honestly. The Illustrious Editor told an anecdote about how, before George R.R. Martin's current series became wildly successful, he had a disastrous book tour. At one reading, she said, Martin actually had negative attendance. How, you might ask, does one have negative attendance? Martin's reading was at a Barnes & Noble, and the moment the manager announced that his reading was about to begin, the three people at the cafe got up and left in order to avoid it. Attendance: -3. I opened my mouth, and the words that came out were, "Wow, I had better luck than that when I was scheduled opposite the Dalai Lama." Which is true, and a funny story (the more so for not being a reflection on any personal virtue or talent of mine, but rather a reflection on the dubious state of Cape Town's public transit system), but I am absolutely certain it was not the most politic thing I could have said. Fortunately, the comment sank to the bottom of the sea, and everyone at the table switched abruptly back to discussing genre fiction.
You can imagine how this affected my stage fright.
I don't think I concealed my terror very well when my appointment finally rolled around. It went like this:
Illustrious Editor:
Go ahead.
Me:
Hands of Beltresa is the first volume of a two-family saga about unlikely allies who, in a time of riots and invasion, must band together to master lost ancient magics to save their city. And this is the moment when I confess that the manuscript is about 300,000 words long and under heavy revision. I would not be here now, risking your ire and risking wasting your time if KJ had not commanded me to pitch this book to you.
Illustrious Editor:
300,000 words? It sounds like a fun project, but there's nothing I can do with a book that length. Can you cut it in half?
Me:
I can cut it back, but probably not far below 250K. I have a related project that's incomplete, if you're curious. Or you can use our remaining three minutes to get coffee. I'm a volunteer. Do you need anything?
Illustrious Editor:
Let's hear about the other project.
Me:
The Traitor of Imlen is the story of a bastard-born aristocrat who sacrifices her honor, her name, true love, and the ancient magics of four nations, to do justice in the colony she was sent to rule with an iron fist.
Illustrious Editor:
Is it short?
Me:
50K at the moment, projected to weigh in at 100K. The soonest I can have it in complete working draft is September.
Illustrious Editor:
September's perfect. My summer's completely flooded with manuscripts. Send me a partial and synopsis in three months.
So now, I have to finish the prequel in three months. That was daunting enough by itself, but the next day, I had an appointment to pitch to a Much-Vaunted Agent from a Famous and Venerable Agency.
The Much-Vaunted Agent was kind of enigmatic. She didn't mingle. She barely spoke except when she was on panels. I'd web-stalked her dutifully before packing for Seattle, so I knew that she represented mostly literary fiction and mystery writers. It was not at all clear to me why KJ, in her aspect as cosmic matchmaker, thought the Much-Vaunted Agent would be interested in my work, but that was the appointment I had. To my great relief, the MVA listed fantasy among her interests while she was speaking on a panel. Still, I was convinced that nothing could possibly come of the appointment. Because I had nothing to lose, I wasn't nervous, and accidentally told the truth about a bunch of things I usually try to avoid talking about in the presence of people with power. She kept surprising me, so I kept talking. It went like this:
Much-Vaunted Agent:
Go ahead.
Me:
Hands of Beltresa is the first volume of a two-family saga about unlikely allies who, in a time of riots and invasion, must band together to master lost ancient magics to save their city. And this is the moment when I confess that the manuscript is about 300,000 words long and under heavy revision. I would not be here now, risking your ire and risking wasting your time if KJ had not commanded me to pitch this book to you.
Much-Vaunted Agent:
She did? Interesting. How did you write a book that long?
Me:
::blink::
Um, it was an accident. I thought I would write it just for myself while I was between teaching jobs, only it turned out to be really good, and I was happy in my work for the first time in ten years, so I left academia for it and never looked back. I keep expecting to regret walking out, but that keeps not happening.
Much-Vaunted Agent:
What is it about this fantasy world that you love so much?
Me:
My cradle stories weren't fairy tales. I was raised on Thomas Jefferson and the Charter Oak and the Cave of the Regicides. When I was a baby, my father literally sang me the Federalist Papers. It's really a problem to be addicted to epic fantasy, to have that genre as my home aesthetic, and yet to be allergic to the Big Lie of the Divine Right of Kings. You see the problem. I wanted a fantasy novel with a democratizing revolution that left the world more enchanted rather than less, and nobody was ever going to write that book the way I wanted to read it, unless I wrote it myself.
Much-Vaunted Agent:
::blink blink::
A three-chapter partial won't be long enough. I'd like you to send me 100 pages. That should be enough to give me a taste of your world.
Me:
Are you sure you want to see it? The first half of the manuscript is smooth as glass, but the second half is still under revision. I'm hoping to knock several thousand more words out of it.
Much-Vaunted Agent:
100 pages, ASAP. Do you have a synopsis ready?
Me:
Not a current one. I've cut the book in half already, and the most recent synopsis draft is structured all wrong now.
Much-Vaunted Agent:
I don't want to create any delays. Send it without a synopsis. This might turn out to be a really special book.
Me:
Here's hoping.
So I scurried back to my room to see where the hundredth page fell. It fell seven pages shy of one of my favorite chapter closings, one in which I break the reader's heart with the smallest of my several sledgehammers. Today's work was to whittle the ms back until page 100 fell right at that chapter break. Done. Seven pages gone, and only one of the cuts was more than a single sentence long. Most of the cuts were dialogue tags and gear-grindingly slow exposition from the second Haldur chapter. I'm a lot more optimistic now than I was about getting the whole ms down closer to 250K, which I would really like to do in the next month, just in case the Much-Vaunted Agent requests the full.
So, here's the current crazy plan:
(1)Finish a complete revision pass on the big book in July, while continuing to research cavalry warfare for the prequel so that the prequel's battle scenes will not suck.
(2)Write the prequel's synopsis and finish roughing out the manuscript in August. I laid down the 50K I have now in 30 days, so I know it can be done.
(3)Revise the prequel in September, so that when I ship the partial, the full is ready enough to go.
(4)Rough out the next Rugosa Coven novella in October. My tattoo artist character finally let me see the story he wants me to tell.
How I'm going to do all that while teaching my current student load is a mystery to me, but I spent a lot of time last weekend with people who can crank out an 80,000 word salable, polished ms from start to finish in a month. I don't think I'll ever want to work that fast, but I like knowing it can be done. I'm very curious to find out how I pull all this off.
First, I spent a lot of time and energy on a fit of stage fright. Although I am by nature gregarious and can sell almost anything I actually believe in, when the bottom falls out of my belief in my own work, I totally lose the ability to sell it. All day Thursday, any time I crossed paths with KJ (who runs the conference), I would say (1) Tell me what you need a volunteer to do right now, so I can do it, and (2) It will really be best for everyone if I cancel my agent and editor appointments, because the finished book is too long, and the book that can be the right length is months from completion. KJ wasn't having any of it. Over the previous several months, she had had to field too many phone calls from people with good intentions who said stupid things like, I need an agent appointment so I can pitch this book I'd like to write someday. What's that? Why, no, I've never written anything before. KJ knows that, over the past three years, I've averaged well over 100,000 words per year, and my drafts consistently clean up well, so dammit, I was going to sit my butt in the chair and pitch, because she wanted to hold my books in her hands.
So, despite my best efforts to weasel out of my appointments, I had to rewrite the pitches for Hands of Beltresa and The Traitor of Imlen. Then I had to pace around the hotel room
annathepiper and I were sharing, repeating my two little sentences again and again.The day of my pitch to the Illustrious Editor, the IE and I were seated next to one another at lunch. This is notable mainly because I demonstrated that I come by my lj handle honestly. The Illustrious Editor told an anecdote about how, before George R.R. Martin's current series became wildly successful, he had a disastrous book tour. At one reading, she said, Martin actually had negative attendance. How, you might ask, does one have negative attendance? Martin's reading was at a Barnes & Noble, and the moment the manager announced that his reading was about to begin, the three people at the cafe got up and left in order to avoid it. Attendance: -3. I opened my mouth, and the words that came out were, "Wow, I had better luck than that when I was scheduled opposite the Dalai Lama." Which is true, and a funny story (the more so for not being a reflection on any personal virtue or talent of mine, but rather a reflection on the dubious state of Cape Town's public transit system), but I am absolutely certain it was not the most politic thing I could have said. Fortunately, the comment sank to the bottom of the sea, and everyone at the table switched abruptly back to discussing genre fiction.
You can imagine how this affected my stage fright.
I don't think I concealed my terror very well when my appointment finally rolled around. It went like this:
Illustrious Editor:
Go ahead.
Me:
Hands of Beltresa is the first volume of a two-family saga about unlikely allies who, in a time of riots and invasion, must band together to master lost ancient magics to save their city. And this is the moment when I confess that the manuscript is about 300,000 words long and under heavy revision. I would not be here now, risking your ire and risking wasting your time if KJ had not commanded me to pitch this book to you.
Illustrious Editor:
300,000 words? It sounds like a fun project, but there's nothing I can do with a book that length. Can you cut it in half?
Me:
I can cut it back, but probably not far below 250K. I have a related project that's incomplete, if you're curious. Or you can use our remaining three minutes to get coffee. I'm a volunteer. Do you need anything?
Illustrious Editor:
Let's hear about the other project.
Me:
The Traitor of Imlen is the story of a bastard-born aristocrat who sacrifices her honor, her name, true love, and the ancient magics of four nations, to do justice in the colony she was sent to rule with an iron fist.
Illustrious Editor:
Is it short?
Me:
50K at the moment, projected to weigh in at 100K. The soonest I can have it in complete working draft is September.
Illustrious Editor:
September's perfect. My summer's completely flooded with manuscripts. Send me a partial and synopsis in three months.
So now, I have to finish the prequel in three months. That was daunting enough by itself, but the next day, I had an appointment to pitch to a Much-Vaunted Agent from a Famous and Venerable Agency.
The Much-Vaunted Agent was kind of enigmatic. She didn't mingle. She barely spoke except when she was on panels. I'd web-stalked her dutifully before packing for Seattle, so I knew that she represented mostly literary fiction and mystery writers. It was not at all clear to me why KJ, in her aspect as cosmic matchmaker, thought the Much-Vaunted Agent would be interested in my work, but that was the appointment I had. To my great relief, the MVA listed fantasy among her interests while she was speaking on a panel. Still, I was convinced that nothing could possibly come of the appointment. Because I had nothing to lose, I wasn't nervous, and accidentally told the truth about a bunch of things I usually try to avoid talking about in the presence of people with power. She kept surprising me, so I kept talking. It went like this:
Much-Vaunted Agent:
Go ahead.
Me:
Hands of Beltresa is the first volume of a two-family saga about unlikely allies who, in a time of riots and invasion, must band together to master lost ancient magics to save their city. And this is the moment when I confess that the manuscript is about 300,000 words long and under heavy revision. I would not be here now, risking your ire and risking wasting your time if KJ had not commanded me to pitch this book to you.
Much-Vaunted Agent:
She did? Interesting. How did you write a book that long?
Me:
::blink::
Um, it was an accident. I thought I would write it just for myself while I was between teaching jobs, only it turned out to be really good, and I was happy in my work for the first time in ten years, so I left academia for it and never looked back. I keep expecting to regret walking out, but that keeps not happening.
Much-Vaunted Agent:
What is it about this fantasy world that you love so much?
Me:
My cradle stories weren't fairy tales. I was raised on Thomas Jefferson and the Charter Oak and the Cave of the Regicides. When I was a baby, my father literally sang me the Federalist Papers. It's really a problem to be addicted to epic fantasy, to have that genre as my home aesthetic, and yet to be allergic to the Big Lie of the Divine Right of Kings. You see the problem. I wanted a fantasy novel with a democratizing revolution that left the world more enchanted rather than less, and nobody was ever going to write that book the way I wanted to read it, unless I wrote it myself.
Much-Vaunted Agent:
::blink blink::
A three-chapter partial won't be long enough. I'd like you to send me 100 pages. That should be enough to give me a taste of your world.
Me:
Are you sure you want to see it? The first half of the manuscript is smooth as glass, but the second half is still under revision. I'm hoping to knock several thousand more words out of it.
Much-Vaunted Agent:
100 pages, ASAP. Do you have a synopsis ready?
Me:
Not a current one. I've cut the book in half already, and the most recent synopsis draft is structured all wrong now.
Much-Vaunted Agent:
I don't want to create any delays. Send it without a synopsis. This might turn out to be a really special book.
Me:
Here's hoping.
So I scurried back to my room to see where the hundredth page fell. It fell seven pages shy of one of my favorite chapter closings, one in which I break the reader's heart with the smallest of my several sledgehammers. Today's work was to whittle the ms back until page 100 fell right at that chapter break. Done. Seven pages gone, and only one of the cuts was more than a single sentence long. Most of the cuts were dialogue tags and gear-grindingly slow exposition from the second Haldur chapter. I'm a lot more optimistic now than I was about getting the whole ms down closer to 250K, which I would really like to do in the next month, just in case the Much-Vaunted Agent requests the full.
So, here's the current crazy plan:
(1)Finish a complete revision pass on the big book in July, while continuing to research cavalry warfare for the prequel so that the prequel's battle scenes will not suck.
(2)Write the prequel's synopsis and finish roughing out the manuscript in August. I laid down the 50K I have now in 30 days, so I know it can be done.
(3)Revise the prequel in September, so that when I ship the partial, the full is ready enough to go.
(4)Rough out the next Rugosa Coven novella in October. My tattoo artist character finally let me see the story he wants me to tell.
How I'm going to do all that while teaching my current student load is a mystery to me, but I spent a lot of time last weekend with people who can crank out an 80,000 word salable, polished ms from start to finish in a month. I don't think I'll ever want to work that fast, but I like knowing it can be done. I'm very curious to find out how I pull all this off.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-06-29 05:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-29 05:38 am (UTC)GOOD LUCK!!!!
no subject
Date: 2006-06-29 06:02 am (UTC)You do realize, of course, that now I'm trying to think of female mystery agents to figure out who the MVA is. The biggest problem, of course, is that I'm thinking of two ... neither of whose names I can remember (though I remember some of their authors).
no subject
Date: 2006-06-29 06:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-29 06:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-29 06:45 am (UTC)Much-Vaunted Agent:
::blink blink::
Dr. P = That, is very, very awesome! It is one thing to pitch a novel successfully, but another thing entirely to pitch your own personal zeitgeist and get a request for chapters! (I even founded a cult five-thousand people strong, and nobody ever asked me for chapters - but a lot of people did want to know where their thrice-damned button was.)
Goal! You can do it!
-Dthon
no subject
Date: 2006-06-29 06:48 am (UTC)re: MVA: W00T!! And we all know you can do it. And those first editions shall be ours, precioussssss, yes. We forgets the sun, we forgets the taste of bread, but we don't forgets the literary crack that is Beltresa, my preciousssss... we wants it!
no subject
Date: 2006-06-29 06:52 am (UTC)GO YOU!!!!
Somebody took a chance on Diana Gabaldon's Outlander(around 200,000) and look where she is today! Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel's Dart (a WW alumni in fact) came in at a whopping 315,000!
I am so very pleased for you! SO AWESOME! May you be next!
no subject
Date: 2006-06-29 07:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-29 08:14 am (UTC)You rock! Best of luck with all the to-dos!
no subject
Date: 2006-06-29 08:43 am (UTC)Your pitch to the MVA sold me too. Perhaps after the success of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrel, the publishers will be more open to something that pushes in a new direction, but remains grounded in a historical perspective.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-29 11:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-29 12:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-29 01:52 pm (UTC)And all those words actually have to make sense, too. Unlike, say, my thesis, which is about 90,000 words, took me 4 years, and is mostly gibberish...
Wow.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-29 02:25 pm (UTC)Your father sang you the Federalist Papers?
Now, not being American myself, I have only the vaguest conception of what the Federalist Papers are. But I'm pretty sure that Gilbert & Sullivan were not involved...
no subject
Date: 2006-06-29 03:10 pm (UTC)I am so VERY, VERY HAPPY for you!
And you do know I want you to autograph my copy for me once it's in print!
no subject
Date: 2006-06-29 04:03 pm (UTC)Many literary revolutions happened when someone figured out that the only way to read the book she really wanted was to write it herself ... En avant, Soeur Revolutionnaire!
no subject
Date: 2006-06-29 04:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-29 05:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-29 07:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-29 10:04 pm (UTC)I'm still looking forward to the next installment/draft of your project. We need your book.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-29 10:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-29 10:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-29 10:10 pm (UTC)Mostly, I'm resigned to the probability that the first book I wrote will not be the first book I sell. As
no subject
Date: 2006-06-29 10:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-29 10:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-29 10:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-29 10:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-30 02:56 am (UTC)Honestly, I really think you are doing the hardest part now. Everyone who has read any distance into the big book so far has gone "gah!! Give me more!!" Well, I did, anyway.
Inductively, seems reasonable that Much-Vaunted Agent will have the same reaction. :)
It's really cool to hear all about how novels get pitched. I'm looking forward to reading your posts about all stages of getting published.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-30 09:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-30 09:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-30 12:40 pm (UTC)