Thursday, April 28
The Pitch Session
More thoughts from last weekend's Pike's Peak writer's conference:
I'd listed three agents on my registration form as agents I wanted to meet with during a pitch session. I'd based my choices on a listing of the types of fiction they represented: all three included "literary" fiction, so I picked them. I registered so late I figured all available slots would be gone, so I was not surprised when I got an e-mail a few days before the conference saying my first choice was unavailable. No problem, I wrote, back, I'll just add my name to a list in case anyone cancels.
Now, I didn't really know what a pitch was, when I wrote back. I didn't even know what I was getting into. I knew many of the sessions led by editors or agents had strict rules: "no pitches allowed in this session" so clearly there was some value to a pitch appointment. And I'd read in the brochure that I'd have eight minutes to talk with an agent at an assigned time if I got one. But since I didn't really have a book to sell -- my five or six novels (depending on how you count them) are all in various forms of second and third drafts -- I was OK without a pitch appointment. I was going to the conference because I had some questions I wanted to ask, some things to learn about agent-writer relationships and I figured that if somehow I ended up with a pitch appointment I'd ask questions and see if agents in general were interested in me as long-term career-building writer or more interested in my current project. So when the e-mail came back saying I had a 10:10 a.m. Saturday morning pitch appointment with my second choice, that was my plan: to talk about me, list a few of my unpublished novels and talk about which writers I liked and whose footsteps I saw myself following in. And keep my fingers crossed.
My plan changed when I arrived. As I sat and listened Friday during my friend's read-and-critique, and as I sat in on other read-and-critique sessions that afternoon, and the main speakers Friday night and mostly as I listened to other writers describe their book/pitch to me informally, it was clear the point was to get a foot in the door with my current project. Selling Me as Novelist was pointless. I needed to pitch one of my books, and the best possible outcome was for the agent to ask me to send the first 30 or 50 pages. Clearly, the point was to pitch one book, one novel. And the point of the pitch was to have a hook, a stand-apart one-sentence 25 words or less summary of your book. It's that summary you read in TV Guide, or, if you read about Hollywood movies, the pitch screenwriters make to producers that crystallizes their story: "It's Jurassic Park meets Titanic." "It's Monty Python meets Star Wars." "It's Rambo times Kindergarten Cop divided by Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind." Or whatever. These are all things everyone else seemed to know, and I suppose I would have known it too if I'd been serious about trying to get my work published.
Clearly, I didn't have a pitch, a hook, a query or even a book to sell. The novel I've been working on (and off) since last fall currently defies that sort of tag simply because I've yet to reread it and attempt to summarize it into a short blurb. Ditto the last two novels I've done. I did have a book jacket blurb I'd written for Messiah's Sneaker, a novel I wrote first drafts for in '97-'98 and spent some time querying agents about in early 2001. It goes a little something something like this: "Messiah's Sneaker is a fast-paced, fun-filled romp through doomsday cults, suburbia, garage bands, American corporate life and the Norwegian Mafia in a search for truth and family values."
And so as Friday became Friday night, and as Jared's vision of his own pitch moved from getting feedback on his query letter to actually pitching his novel, I will admit I had dreamy visions of wild success dancing in my head. So I tried to recall and rewrite my Messiah's Sneaker pitch and I jotted notes and got carried away and became just a bit nervous. My heart skipped a beat or two at dinner when the agent I had an appointment with the next day sat down at our table in the corner, and again when I rode the elevator up with her (and five others) after the speaker, and I tried to crack wise and be funny. I wanted her to remember me. To like me. To sign me up. (Nevermind the reason I want an agent in the first place: so I can avoid all that awkward selling of myself and my work, the hard work of publishing. I just want to write and turn the work over to agent to try and sell…. and then call me back when it's time for edits and self-funded book promotion tours.)
Saturday morning I sat in on a session led by the agent I was assigned to expressly to see what she was like, to listen to her talk about the industry and her role in it, to try and gain an idea or two about who she was. Turns out she's been successful mainly repping chick lit authors to date (although her catalog listing and web site mentions high-caliber literary fiction as something she seeks). So maybe I was pitching the wrong books and should've gone with one of my "guy lit" books. Since I couldn't recall enough of the plots and details of those, I stuck with Messiah's Sneaker.
I rode the elevator up to the pitch room about 15 minutes early, after pacing the lobby for 20 minutes silently reciting my pitch to myself and then feeling stupid for doing so and then worrying about the pitch and then not worrying about the pitch and reminding myself my attendance here was to learn the business, not sell a book. But what if...right? Those 'what-if' thoughts are hard to kill.
The pitch appointments are held in a crowded, stuffy suite on the seventh floor. Every eight minutes, seven new writers go into the small room and make their pitch. Eight minutes later, they stagger out a side door into the hallway and a new batch of seven eager writers go in from the smaller waiting room. While I waited for those 15 minutes to pass, I sat in the hallway on my haunches or paced very tiny three-step loops, trying to remember the key words of my pitch: doomsday cults, garage bands, corporate America, surburbia, Norwegian mafia. Jared and I had decided my pitch was funnier if I said "and of course" before listing Norwegian Mafia as last on the list. At three minutes to our time, they lined up my group of seven in order of the chairs we'd be sitting in, and at one minute to our time we heard the "one minute to go" warning from inside the door and our cheery small talk ended and we got serious. Game face time. When it was our time, 10:10 a.m., we walked in.
I scanned the room to find my assigned agent: she was sitting at the sixth of seven tables and the conference worker pointed me to her when my card came up after the first five were seated. The small round tables, covered in white clothes, were maybe two feet across. Two chairs sat on opposite sides, agents or editors sitting on their halves, our side's chairs empty and open. It looked and felt like the speed dating scene in Hitch or other movies: I had eight minutes to convince this person she wanted to read my stuff, which could lead to …. (dreams of glory and riches unimaginable go here…).
We shook hands, she remembered me from dinner, I thanked her in advance for her time and attempted small talk about how she must feel at a conference like this (in my own reverse subconscious way trying to stand out by being different by *not* pitching in my pitch session), how everyone was wanting a minute of her time. I was not using my time wisely; the other six writers were already deep into their pitches and the noise level rose as they talked excitedly.
She asked what I had, and I started talking. I did OK for the first minute or two, and when there was no reaction after my initial flurry, her eyes blank, I moved into how the story starts to unfold. I stumbled into a corner and her eyes started to go blank -- can you imagine sitting on her side for two hours, listening to wanna-bes and nearly-ares and almost-theres desperate for approval and success trying to sell their stories this way -- she said she'd stop me there.
She asked me a couple of questions -- who's the main character, what's his main conflict and so on, easy questions I more or less botched. Or I did OK. I don't know. Then she said something like, "Well, it's not really what I represent, but this sounds kind of interesting or unusual so why don't you send me the first 30 pages." She gave me a card and asked that I snail mail them to her at that address on recyclable paper.
Everyone around me was still going strong. It appeared I finished early. By a couple of minutes. So I asked if I could ask her a few questions with the rest of my time, and she said sure, so I asked about how she selects writers, what's important to her, what she looks for, someone with one big book, or someone with potential for more (she definitely, in her case, prefers building a career with a writer -- she herself is more or less just starting out, been in business for two-and-a-half years and sold something like 20 books she said), and then I asked her something else and she answered and then there was one minute to go and then time was up and I thanked her and we were herded out and the next group was ushered in. I liked her. I'd like her to be my agent. But then, there are probably 50 others who'd make me feel the same way if I'd met them first. So who knows. And I certainly don't think my pitch wowed her any sense of the word. I'm just another writer to her, nothing to get excited about.
Still, I will admit to being thrilled at the moment she asked for more pages -- I'd had an opportunity to grab her card in the earlier session when I heard her speak, but I purposefully refused to pick one up, telling myself that I wanted to be given one, I wanted to earn it. And I did, sort of, maybe, although later as I talked to more people I got the distinct feeling -- unconfirmed and merely my opinion -- that the agents probably had to agree to ask for pages from us ink-stained (carpal-tunneled?) writers (to keep the writers conference culture alive and well).
So my natural cynicism quickly took hold and then took over. But still: I was invited to send her the first 30 pages of Messiah's Sneaker. And I plan to do it. No sense wasting an opportunity like this.
I'd listed three agents on my registration form as agents I wanted to meet with during a pitch session. I'd based my choices on a listing of the types of fiction they represented: all three included "literary" fiction, so I picked them. I registered so late I figured all available slots would be gone, so I was not surprised when I got an e-mail a few days before the conference saying my first choice was unavailable. No problem, I wrote, back, I'll just add my name to a list in case anyone cancels.
Now, I didn't really know what a pitch was, when I wrote back. I didn't even know what I was getting into. I knew many of the sessions led by editors or agents had strict rules: "no pitches allowed in this session" so clearly there was some value to a pitch appointment. And I'd read in the brochure that I'd have eight minutes to talk with an agent at an assigned time if I got one. But since I didn't really have a book to sell -- my five or six novels (depending on how you count them) are all in various forms of second and third drafts -- I was OK without a pitch appointment. I was going to the conference because I had some questions I wanted to ask, some things to learn about agent-writer relationships and I figured that if somehow I ended up with a pitch appointment I'd ask questions and see if agents in general were interested in me as long-term career-building writer or more interested in my current project. So when the e-mail came back saying I had a 10:10 a.m. Saturday morning pitch appointment with my second choice, that was my plan: to talk about me, list a few of my unpublished novels and talk about which writers I liked and whose footsteps I saw myself following in. And keep my fingers crossed.
My plan changed when I arrived. As I sat and listened Friday during my friend's read-and-critique, and as I sat in on other read-and-critique sessions that afternoon, and the main speakers Friday night and mostly as I listened to other writers describe their book/pitch to me informally, it was clear the point was to get a foot in the door with my current project. Selling Me as Novelist was pointless. I needed to pitch one of my books, and the best possible outcome was for the agent to ask me to send the first 30 or 50 pages. Clearly, the point was to pitch one book, one novel. And the point of the pitch was to have a hook, a stand-apart one-sentence 25 words or less summary of your book. It's that summary you read in TV Guide, or, if you read about Hollywood movies, the pitch screenwriters make to producers that crystallizes their story: "It's Jurassic Park meets Titanic." "It's Monty Python meets Star Wars." "It's Rambo times Kindergarten Cop divided by Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind." Or whatever. These are all things everyone else seemed to know, and I suppose I would have known it too if I'd been serious about trying to get my work published.
Clearly, I didn't have a pitch, a hook, a query or even a book to sell. The novel I've been working on (and off) since last fall currently defies that sort of tag simply because I've yet to reread it and attempt to summarize it into a short blurb. Ditto the last two novels I've done. I did have a book jacket blurb I'd written for Messiah's Sneaker, a novel I wrote first drafts for in '97-'98 and spent some time querying agents about in early 2001. It goes a little something something like this: "Messiah's Sneaker is a fast-paced, fun-filled romp through doomsday cults, suburbia, garage bands, American corporate life and the Norwegian Mafia in a search for truth and family values."
And so as Friday became Friday night, and as Jared's vision of his own pitch moved from getting feedback on his query letter to actually pitching his novel, I will admit I had dreamy visions of wild success dancing in my head. So I tried to recall and rewrite my Messiah's Sneaker pitch and I jotted notes and got carried away and became just a bit nervous. My heart skipped a beat or two at dinner when the agent I had an appointment with the next day sat down at our table in the corner, and again when I rode the elevator up with her (and five others) after the speaker, and I tried to crack wise and be funny. I wanted her to remember me. To like me. To sign me up. (Nevermind the reason I want an agent in the first place: so I can avoid all that awkward selling of myself and my work, the hard work of publishing. I just want to write and turn the work over to agent to try and sell…. and then call me back when it's time for edits and self-funded book promotion tours.)
Saturday morning I sat in on a session led by the agent I was assigned to expressly to see what she was like, to listen to her talk about the industry and her role in it, to try and gain an idea or two about who she was. Turns out she's been successful mainly repping chick lit authors to date (although her catalog listing and web site mentions high-caliber literary fiction as something she seeks). So maybe I was pitching the wrong books and should've gone with one of my "guy lit" books. Since I couldn't recall enough of the plots and details of those, I stuck with Messiah's Sneaker.
I rode the elevator up to the pitch room about 15 minutes early, after pacing the lobby for 20 minutes silently reciting my pitch to myself and then feeling stupid for doing so and then worrying about the pitch and then not worrying about the pitch and reminding myself my attendance here was to learn the business, not sell a book. But what if...right? Those 'what-if' thoughts are hard to kill.
The pitch appointments are held in a crowded, stuffy suite on the seventh floor. Every eight minutes, seven new writers go into the small room and make their pitch. Eight minutes later, they stagger out a side door into the hallway and a new batch of seven eager writers go in from the smaller waiting room. While I waited for those 15 minutes to pass, I sat in the hallway on my haunches or paced very tiny three-step loops, trying to remember the key words of my pitch: doomsday cults, garage bands, corporate America, surburbia, Norwegian mafia. Jared and I had decided my pitch was funnier if I said "and of course" before listing Norwegian Mafia as last on the list. At three minutes to our time, they lined up my group of seven in order of the chairs we'd be sitting in, and at one minute to our time we heard the "one minute to go" warning from inside the door and our cheery small talk ended and we got serious. Game face time. When it was our time, 10:10 a.m., we walked in.
I scanned the room to find my assigned agent: she was sitting at the sixth of seven tables and the conference worker pointed me to her when my card came up after the first five were seated. The small round tables, covered in white clothes, were maybe two feet across. Two chairs sat on opposite sides, agents or editors sitting on their halves, our side's chairs empty and open. It looked and felt like the speed dating scene in Hitch or other movies: I had eight minutes to convince this person she wanted to read my stuff, which could lead to …. (dreams of glory and riches unimaginable go here…).
We shook hands, she remembered me from dinner, I thanked her in advance for her time and attempted small talk about how she must feel at a conference like this (in my own reverse subconscious way trying to stand out by being different by *not* pitching in my pitch session), how everyone was wanting a minute of her time. I was not using my time wisely; the other six writers were already deep into their pitches and the noise level rose as they talked excitedly.
She asked what I had, and I started talking. I did OK for the first minute or two, and when there was no reaction after my initial flurry, her eyes blank, I moved into how the story starts to unfold. I stumbled into a corner and her eyes started to go blank -- can you imagine sitting on her side for two hours, listening to wanna-bes and nearly-ares and almost-theres desperate for approval and success trying to sell their stories this way -- she said she'd stop me there.
She asked me a couple of questions -- who's the main character, what's his main conflict and so on, easy questions I more or less botched. Or I did OK. I don't know. Then she said something like, "Well, it's not really what I represent, but this sounds kind of interesting or unusual so why don't you send me the first 30 pages." She gave me a card and asked that I snail mail them to her at that address on recyclable paper.
Everyone around me was still going strong. It appeared I finished early. By a couple of minutes. So I asked if I could ask her a few questions with the rest of my time, and she said sure, so I asked about how she selects writers, what's important to her, what she looks for, someone with one big book, or someone with potential for more (she definitely, in her case, prefers building a career with a writer -- she herself is more or less just starting out, been in business for two-and-a-half years and sold something like 20 books she said), and then I asked her something else and she answered and then there was one minute to go and then time was up and I thanked her and we were herded out and the next group was ushered in. I liked her. I'd like her to be my agent. But then, there are probably 50 others who'd make me feel the same way if I'd met them first. So who knows. And I certainly don't think my pitch wowed her any sense of the word. I'm just another writer to her, nothing to get excited about.
Still, I will admit to being thrilled at the moment she asked for more pages -- I'd had an opportunity to grab her card in the earlier session when I heard her speak, but I purposefully refused to pick one up, telling myself that I wanted to be given one, I wanted to earn it. And I did, sort of, maybe, although later as I talked to more people I got the distinct feeling -- unconfirmed and merely my opinion -- that the agents probably had to agree to ask for pages from us ink-stained (carpal-tunneled?) writers (to keep the writers conference culture alive and well).
So my natural cynicism quickly took hold and then took over. But still: I was invited to send her the first 30 pages of Messiah's Sneaker. And I plan to do it. No sense wasting an opportunity like this.
