All About "The Writer's Voice" Twitter Pitch Party

And to wrap up the month’s festivities, we give you “The Writer’s Voice” Twitter Pitch Party!

If you want to play…

Pitch your finished manuscript on the hashtag #WVTP. (In other words, your Twitter pitch must include the hashtag #WVTP; otherwise, the agents will only see it if they're already following you.) You may pitch anytime you see an agent online--just don't go crazy and pitch more than once during an agent visit. We will monitor the hashtag and gently inform you if you're being obnoxious.

The agents will be hopping in and out of the feed during the party hours (12:00 noon to 6:00 p.m. EDT tomorrow) and tweeting their requests for the manuscripts that pique their interests. Simple, right? Not if more than one makes a request on the same pitch!

Keeping in the spirit of “The Writer's Voice,” if two or more agents request the same pitch, you must choose one of them and announce it in the feed. (They promise not to hold any rejections against you.)

If you get a request...

You must e-mail us at TheWritersVoiceContest(at)gmail(dot)com and tell us which agent requested your work. We'll verify the request and send you the agent's submission guidelines.

So get your Twitter pitches ready and meet us at #WVTP tomorrow, May 24, at 12:00 noon EDT. Anyone may enter, including “The Writer’s Voice” finalists and even other writers who didn’t make it into the contest, so it’s sure to be a party! And don’t forget to check out the agents’ Twitter feeds to get a feel for what they’re looking for:

John M. Cusick as @johnmcusick
Vickie Motter as @Vickie_Motter
Natalie M. Lakosil as @Natalie_Lakosil
Pam van Hylckama as @BookaliciousPam
Hannah Bowman as @hannahnpbowman

Good luck! Feel free to leave any questions you might have in the comments below.

"The Writer's Voice" Twitter Pitch Party!

Because we love you so much, we have the amazingly talented John M. Cusick of Scott Treimel NY and the equally talented Vickie Motter of Andrea Hurst Literary Management throwing a Twitter pitch party on the hashtag #WVTP on May 24 from 12:00 noon to 6:00 p.m. EDT.

Pitch your finished manuscript on the hashtag #WVTP. (In other words, your Twitter pitch must include the hashtag #WVTP; otherwise, the agents will only see it if they're already following you.) The agents will be hopping in and out of the feed during the party hours and tweeting their requests for the manuscripts that pique their interests. Simple, right? Not if they both make a request on the same pitch!

Keeping in the spirit of “The Writer's Voice,” if they both request the same pitch, you must choose one of them and announce it in the feed. (They promise not to hold any rejections against you.)

And one more thing: We may have other agents joining in the Twitter pitch frenzy.

So get your Twitter pitches ready and meet us at #WVTP next Thursday, May 24, at 12:00 noon EDT. Anyone may enter, including “The Writer’s Voice” finalists and even other writers who didn’t make it into the contest, so it’s sure to be a party! And don’t forget to check out the agents’ Twitter feeds to get a feel for what they’re looking for:

John M. Cusick as @johnmcusick
Vickie Motter as @Vickie_Motter

Good luck! Feel free to leave any questions you might have in the comments below.

(Work-in-) Progress Report: Steve

Word count (to the nearest thousand): 55,000
Status: FINISHED WITH THE FIRST DRAFT!
Attitude: Pumped

Well, Steve’s first draft came in a bit longer than I’d originally anticipated (by about 10,000 words), and yet I finished him much faster than I was expecting to. All told, it took me a little more than a month to crank out this first draft (a week back in February and three or four weeks this summer). A little more than a month! That’s crazy fast, at least for me.

I don’t know why this project came together so quickly. Maybe it was the character. (Of all the main characters I’ve written, Ella Mae is quite possibly my favorite. She’s smart and spunky but still twelve years old. Her black-and-white view of the world--at least at first--is one of the things that makes her so interesting.) Maybe it was the story. (Steve essentially grew out of two questions: “What if you dropped a Japanese man in the middle of small-town America in the early 1950s? And what if that Japanese man weren’t entirely…natural?”) Or maybe it had something to do with the tough rejection I received at the end of July. (Based on a series of e-mails I exchanged with that agent, I really thought that rejection was going to be an offer. So when the rejection came in, I threw myself back into Steve. I believe I wrote 2,000 words that first day.)

But whatever the reason, I’m not going to complain:) As much as I’ve enjoyed watching the pages fly by while working on this first draft, I can’t wait to revise. My editing skills just continue to improve, and I already have a list of changes, big and small, that I need to make. Bring on the revisions!

A few more tidbits about Steve: He’s an MG historical with a dash of science fiction. If I had to compare him to two classic titles, I’d go with FRANKENSTEIN and TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, two of my all-time favorites. Those comparisons are a little audacious, I know, and I don’t plan to use them in an actual query letter. Not that I have anything resembling a query letter yet. I like to let the story develop a bit before I try to tackle one of those...

(I have been tinkering with a logline over the past couple of weeks, though. You can find it over there in my sidebar. If you’re a logline king/queen--or still just trying to figure them out, like I am--feel free to give me your thoughts in the comments!)

So what about you? How has your latest work-in-progress been coming along?

(Work-in-) Progress Report: Bob

Word count (to the nearest thousand): 65,000
Status: Exactly halfway through the second draft
Attitude: Antsy

Because I really, really, really, REALLY want to get Bob off to beta readers, even though I know I’m still (at least) a few weeks away. Like the first draft, this second one has been progressing more slowly than I’d like--but in the past week, week and a half, I’ve finally made some progress.

I think it has something to do with the fact that I’m a better writer now than I was when I started Bob, so I had to spend some extra time bringing those earlier chapters up to snuff. (Anyone know the origin of that cliché?) Two possible explanations for this phenomenon: First, the more you write, the better you write, so you’ll always be a better writer by the end of a manuscript than you were at the beginning. Second, anytime you take a significant break from writing (which I usually do after I finish a project, and which I especially did between Bob and SEE THE SAMELINGS, as I had a newborn in the house), it takes a while to get your voice back.

And so. The second draft has been coming slowly, but it’s gaining momentum. (Woohoo!) I’m sure you’ll be the first to know once I finally finish it:)

In other news, I’ve been playing around with pitches lately, as you can see from my sidebar. (I added a new one today, in fact!) Although I feel pretty good about writing a two- or three-paragraph pitch a la the query letter, I still find one-sentence pitches tricky. (And what is it with all these parenthetical asides…?) Awesome agent Nathan Bransford shared some fabulous tips in a recent blog post, but I’m still tinkering. And tinkering, and tinkering.

So how are your works-in-progress coming along? Slowly, quickly, wonderfully, awfully? And I’d love to hear the pitches for your latest projects. Share away!