Nullius in Verba

Pitch It

Lexi asked me to say more about the “Pitch.” For those of you who don’t know, a “pitch” is a soccer (or for Lexi, a football) field. It is 90-120 meters by…. It is also what an ale brewer does with the wort….

A “pitch” is the selling of a writer and his (or her) work to an agent or publisher. The pitch is akin to speed dating for writers.

The speed dating analogy seems apt. Each of you are considering having a relationship. If there’s a good fit you will become a team. You will write and do some promotion and allow her (or him) to do her (or his) job which is trying to make the most for your writing. She (or he) will take 15% of everything you make forever.

I am not an expert. I have been only to conferences hosted by the Las Vegas Writers and the Willamette Writers. Their formats varied slightly. Willamette has non-fiction, novel, and screenplay pitching. I don’t recall what LV had beside fiction. All I can do is give my impressions and I’ll use the WWC since it’s my most recent experience. I did a bit of prep before the pitch:

Know the agent’s preferences and specialties. You need to know your audience for a pitch—don’t pitch a horror book to an agent specializing in children’s books.
What is the book about?
Why are you the person to write this? What makes you qualified?
Why now?

I took a résumé folder with my business card attached, the first five pages of my novel enclosed, the working title on the front, and no illusions about going all the way. While I had no illusions, I had hope. There are authors who have gotten book deals from these events. An agent’s want is simple: “The truth, brilliantly told.”

Before the pitch session I waited outside the meeting room along with thirty or so others. Inside, the agents sit, one to a table, waiting for the next writer. When the doors open, I was carried along through as if the dam were breached and I was a cork on the pond. Pitchers have ten minutes, from the moment the doors open, to tell the agent they’ve signed up to pitch to, why you’re the one his (or her) agency simply must sign.

After I sat down, I introduced myself, handed the folder to the agent, and gave him/her a quick synopsis of the story and why I was qualified to write the story: “The God of Trees is an eco mystery-thriller about a forester who wants to continue logging but an eco-terrorist group stands in his way. I’m a forester with thirty years of experience with the California Department of Forestry.” We chatted a bit after that about the current climate about environmental topics. One agent asked to see one hundred pages, the other requested the first three chapters.

I don’t think anyone should read too much into this. By the agents using a writing conference to screen potential writers they know that the writer is serious enough to plunk down cash for the opportunity to be listened to.

By asking to see a sample they don’t have to say no directly to the writer’s face. The chance of landing a contract with an agent and then with a publisher is slim.

After ten minutes, the doors opened and border collies nipping at my heels herded me out.

For more about pitching your work see:

Writing-World.com “The Perfect Pitch: Pitching to Agents at a Writing Conference” by Sue Fagalde Lick
Writing-World.com “How to Pitch Your Book at a Writing Conference” by Cynthia P. Gallagher
Paperback Writer’s Blog; “Novel IV: Pitch.” Though this is about pitching a book you want to write, there’s useful stuff.
Right-Writing.com; “Make the Perfect Pitch: The Novel Query.”

Harry Splutter and the Lure of Hollyweird

Episode 3

(continued from previous posts) … personal injury lawyer.

Harry grabbed Hermione’s hand and yanked her away from the knackwurst that people were beginning to scoop up and make into sandwiches.

“Mustard only, hold the mayo” yelled the grumpy wizard who had already fashioned a neck brace out of thin air and was passing his card around proclaiming him as a magical injury lawyer.

“Keep your robes on, Porko,” shouted the TSA witch. Porko being either one of the unremembered Marx Brothers or one of the forgotten Three Musketeers bars. “I got two hands only.”

Harry and Hermione were sprinting away from this totally baloney scene when Hermione remembered her carry-on and the locket containing the Horcrux.

“Harry,” she yelled, “the locket!”

“Waxio locket,” yelled Harry aiming his wand in the general direction over his shoulder. The wizard, who sat munching his knackwurst sandwich and using a spare card as a napkin, now had his amulet go from a dull finish to a bright luster. It twinkled merrily in the magical sunlight of the ceiling.

“Crap,” cried Harry.

“Wrong spell,” screeched Hermione sensing a running gag. She skidded to a halt and took great aim. The hex-ray machine, where the locket was, stood almost one hundred yards away behind two beefy witches from security bearing down on them. “Accio locket!”

Sparks flew from her wand like sparks from the end of a chopstick. The spell jumped over the security witches and hit the locket between the eyelets. The locket flew over the heads of the security, placed itself around Hermione’s neck, and beneath her robes where it decided it liked how Hermione was developing magically.

“Expellipantus,” she shouted and the security witches fell face first onto the imitation polyester carpet.

“Hard to run with underwear around your ankles,” said Hermione grinning beatifically to Harry. She blew on the glowing tip of her wand, polished it on her sleeves, and more sparks emitted from the tip.

“As Ron would say, ‘that was brilliant,’” said Harry.

She crossed her arms. “When you’re hot, you’re hot,” Hermione said effervescently.

Willamette Writers Conference

This last weekend I attended the 38th Annual Willamette (rhymes with damn it) Writers Conference held at the Sheraton near Portland International Airport (Is Idaho another country?). I went to the 37th conference last year.

The WWC (Willamette Writers Conference not the World Wrestling Commission) runs as if it were a Swiss watch. I have coordinated events and it takes a lot of sweat to make it all integrate smoothly. They do a bang-up job: hot breakfast and lunch (included), Starbucks coffee and assorted teas available throughout the day, eight seminars to choose from (two in the morning and two in the afternoon) covering fiction, film, non-fiction, and children’s fiction; and pitch sessions.

The faculty is first cabin. My favorites this year were Laura Rennert of Andrea Brown Literary Agency, Lee Lofland, and Eric Witchey. Both Lofland and Witchey have articles in this month’s issue of The Writer. If they return next year, I’m sitting in their sessions again (even if they’re repeats).

I liked this year’s conference. Last year’s affair turned out to be a bit of a bust for me. I hadn’t signed up for any of the pitch sessions—one on one pitches cost $30 for ten minutes and group pitches are $15 per session. I figured (wrongly) that the admission fee of $500+ ought to get me some face time (lobby, bar, after seminars, etc.). Plus, last year, a number of Hollywood types who were there to teach the scriptwriting sessions spent a lot of time on the sidewalks cursing into their cellphones. If was as if I’d gone to a Tourrette’s Syndrome convention.

This year I forwent Friday’s banquet and put the cash savings into three pitches—two individual and one group. I took the first five pages of my manuscript to the conference for the pitches. I enclosed the pages in a folder with the title of the story on the front and my card and the pages inside. The result of the pitches is that I now have places to send the first 100 or so pages of my manuscript to be considered by these agents. And, now when I send a query letter I can say that while at the conference (remember me?) both Tony Outhwaite of JCA Literary Agency and April Eberhardt of Andrea Brown ASKED to see my stuff. This suits me much better than a cold query that would otherwise get tossed into the old slush pile with the other 100 queries received that day. It means I go toward the front of the line.

Eric Witchey taught the ABCs (Agenda, Backstory, Conflict, Setting—see September 2007’s issue of The Writer), all common sense stuff, well presented. He recommended James M Frey’s How to Write a Damn Good Novel: A Step-By-Step No Nonsense Guide to Dramatic Storytelling. I’ve already ordered it from Powell’s Books.

He suggested we begin the writing day with a speed writing exercise. The scene will start with either 1) character vs character, 2) character vs self, or 3) character vs setting. Each scene will contain the ABCs. The character will have an agenda, backstory, and the conflict comes from the opposition of the two (or more) participants in the scene.

Quick! Pick two characters–how about “a blind taxi driver and Yoko Ono?”

Witchey says it should be a new scene each time (not the same people in the same scene) since it’s meant to be an exercise. In other words, do not think too much. Turn off the internal editor. Type blindfolded (if you can) so that you’re concentrating only on the scene. Try to write a full scene.

By beginning our day using our imaginations to get things flowing, it is supposed to get our regular story moving once we turn to it. The point of this is to discover gems within the subconscious.

His claim is that when you do get into your story’s scene you’ll be more productive. It sounds simple. He also says not to expect to get it right for the first two-three weeks. Think musical scales. Practice makes (almost) perfect.

Do this exercise six days a week (rest on the seventh).

I’m off to do my speed writing exercise. I wonder what Harry’s going to do next?

Harry Splutter and the Lure of Hollyweird

Episode 2

The hexatometer that Harry had to pass under is a monstrous thing and monstrous is the right word. It’s a green-scaled dragon that’s been taught to sniff out wands, potions, and Old Spice deodorant. Harry took a deep breath as the TSA witch waved for him move through.

“Here goes nothing,” muttered Harry darkly.

“Get on wit’ ya, we haven’t got all day,” groaned the wizard behind Harry.

Harry lifted his arms and put them out to his sides and helicoptered under the itchy nose of the dragon.

“Puh hew,” sneezed the dragon.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” asked Harry dizzily.

“It means the hexatometer thinks you should use deodorant you stupid git,” the TSA witch said savagely. A small savage took umbrage—Harry’s former professor.

“Crap,” Harry grumbled. “So much for Fred and George’s super sanitizing soap.” Fred and George had insisted that the girls world ‘fall all over’ him.

“Now step over there.” She pointed to a spot that had the outline of two clawed feet on the carpet.

“What for?” screeched Harry in a falsetto he didn’t think he still had since going through puberty.

“Because I said so.” The TSA witch turned. “Clean up on aisle seven.”

“What on earth are you talking about?” Harry howled.

“What?” The witch shook her head quickly like she was trying to shake off bees. “Whoops. I mean male orderly needed here.”

A dementor glided toward Harry. All the light around the dark scabrous shape seemed to be sucked into the thing’s robes.

“Those gits are a bigger pain in the butt than Draco Malfoy with bugger pox.”

Harry pulled out his wand and aimed it at the approaching dementor. “Expecto balonum!” Instantly, Oscar Meyer knackwurst cascaded onto the dementor, making it so much pate (the dementor not the knackwurst, I mean who would want knackwurst pate anyway?).

“Harry, it’s expecto patronum ,” Hermione shrieked. She had come back to see why Harry hadn’t come through yet.

“Oh…right. Forgot.” Harry made a ‘doh’ sign by hitting his forehead with the heel of his hand. He used his wand hand and sparks flew from it. Several pieces of plaster were knocked from the ceiling and hit three people standing in the queue.

“My bad,” he said as way of apology to the people slowly getting up out of the rubble, glowering, rubbing their necks and looking for a … (to be continued)

Harry Splutter and the Lure of Hollyweird

In the vein of the Cookenflagen’s on Alan’s website. I would love to continue this story, so email me and I’ll post the continuation.

Episode 1…

Harry stuffed his wand in the back pocket of his jeans and placed the locket with the horcrux in the plastic bin on the metallic table.

A tall wizard behind him growled an obscenity.

“Here goes nothing,” muttered Harry darkly to Hermione. He’d placed seventeen and one-half charms over his own wand to keep the Phoenix core from setting off the detector’s alarms. The half charm had been a bitch to do.

Harry shoved the bin toward the scanner run by a dementor from the Transportation Safety Administration.

“Remember three-one-one,” yelled the faceless bureaucrat. “Be sure you’ve put your potions in a one quart transparent non-enchanted bag.”

“Bite me,” muttered Harry.

“Don’t start,” Hermione warned peevishly. She didn’t know why she had gone along with this crazy idea of his.

Now that Lord Voldemort and Dick Cheney ran things, the more trustworthy goblins had been replaced by rule-oriented dementors. Harry pushed the bin forward into the cold dreary fog emanating from the TSA employee.

In the chill fog that now came up to his knees, Harry reached down, yanked off the red cowboy boots, and tossed them next to the locket. “My feet are freakin’ freezing.”

Hermione held her Griffin d’Air boarding pass at chest height as she marched through the scanner.

A uniformed witch scowled at Harry. “Take off the hat and put it through the hex-ray scanner,” she bellowed officiously.

Harry ripped the black Stetson off his unruly hair and put the chapeau behind the grumpy wizards’ pointed hat. Harry didn’t like his hair and didn’t want to uncover it. It had recently tried to overthrow a country and install itself as president for life.

“Your coat too,” the witch screeched.

“Crap,” snarled Harry as he struggled out of the outer garment and then threw it angrily on the belt crushing the pointed hat of the wizard behind him.

The grumpy witch looked like she had a gas bubble working to escape and waved for Harry to proceed.

“’bout time,” groused Harry.

To be continued…

Take Off Your Shoes and Say Aack

“Make sure your seat backs are in the upright position and that your tray tables are locked.”

Mary and I fly Southwest Airlines. The attendants are friendly (if just a little loud), it’s efficient, and it’s cheap. We are not frequent travelers but we just got back from a family reunion in Corolla on North Carolina’s Outer Banks. It seems that whoever delivers the safety orientation has a voice amplified to a volume that is capable of cutting steel. Jamming fingers in the ears barely lowers the volume. I’ve run quieter chainsaws.

The gauntlet that one has to run to get jammed into a seat only a crash dummy would not complain about. Security is a haphazard affair. On the way east out of Smurf International (AKA SMF-Sacramento), the fine folks of the Transportation Safety Administration had backed up the morning flyers a couple hundred yards (mind you we had arrived two hours in advance of our flight). These people make Mack Sennett‘s Keystone Cops seem organized. Apparently, someone eventually realized that if they scanned each bag for five minutes 95% of the passengers would miss their flights and they (the TSA people not the passengers) would lose their phony-baloney jobs. So a conveyor belt that had looked like it was being run by an arthritic supermarket checker roared into hyperdrive. Our bags shot out the scanner’s opening like particles from the super-collider. We’d forgotten to take out the liquids and I’d left my pen knife in my backpack. No matter. They weren’t noticing anything besides Uzis and light artillery.

On the return trip to Smurf International, the TSA person at Baltimore had me adjust my driver’s license in my wallet (while also trying to hold my shoes, liquids, and laptop) in order to check the expiration date. Good to know that they’re now enforcing traffic laws, though what the expiration date has to do with confirming my identity eludes me. Terrorists can’t create a fake ID with a valid date? I’m not the person in the picture on the day after my license expires?

Forestacean

I don’t know what these crabs represent—other than the Chesapeake—or why they’re around what are called the inner banks of North Carolina (abbreviated IBX—Outer Banks is OBX).

I do know that Santa Rosa (northern California) did something similar with Charlie Brown figures—Charles Schultz lived in Santa Rosa until his death. People, shops, and companies decorated fiberglass Charlie Browns and then these were displayed all over town.

I liked this one—painted by Weyerhauser—it is called “Forestacean.” Close to a Timber Beast’s heart.

Sleepus interruptus

First off, congratulations to Colleen and Brian on tying the knot. May the wind always be at your back or something like that. Lucky 7s are a good way to start the new life.

Now, I need to say that this will sound unpatriotic of me. I hate the 4th of July. I hate 4ths of July that happen on Wednesdays most of all—with a passion. While I like the rocket’s red glare and all, it’s the idjuts that drive me bananas. Mary and I decided to get out of dodge for Independence Day on the lake this year. We headed for our condo in Vancouver, Washington; thinking that it would be mellower, fewer high powered firearms, fewer jet skis.

Aside from fewer jet skis, we struck out on every other front. Exploding stuff interrupts my sleep in two ways. First, by being loud, bright, and concussive. Second, those bright loud concussive things upset Peaches for hours after the idjuts have passed out drunk. There’s nothing quite like a terrified doggie pacing and whining to spoil a few zzz’s. This happened on Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday nights.

Thinking that the fireworks shows were finally finished, we came back Thursday night and slept soundly only to have Friday provide another fireworkian extravaganza at Konocti Resort about a mile away. Peaches whined, paced, whimpered, trembled, and such in a way generally not conducive to getting a good night’s rest until the wee hours of the morning.

Happy 4th of July? Bah. Humbug.

Dana's here

The Dana wireless by Alphasmart showed up yesterday. It is way cool. It found my Powerbook G4 with no problem. I’ll be able to do my work on it and send the text to the Apple for editing. Now if it would only write a universally beloved novel for me, I’d be a happy guy.

Mary and I drove 600 miles from Vancouver, WA to home yesterday and the Dana was waiting for us. I had been tracking it for several days and hoped that it would arrive just about the same time we returned from Washington, which it did. What a warm day it was for travel—at one point the thermometer peaked at 116 (that’s fooking hot for my UK readers) near Shasta Lake. Hooray for air conditioning.

During our trip south, Mary read to me two stories assigned by YouWriteOn.com. One with fluid language but no discernible plot. The other (a putative thriller) with little discernible plot, overwrought language, maddening head hopping, and an unsympathetic protagonist.

Mary recorded our impressions on the (older) Alphasmart 2000 as we drove. I’ve already transferred the text to a Word file and will write up my full review sometime today.

This Dana is a sweet little gizmo. I’m going to use it mostly for writing but supposedly I could check email. I’m not sure I need to do much more than work up responses which I can do with the little word-processing program.

Dana’s here

Mary recorded our impressions on the (older) Alphasmart 2000 as we drove. I’ve already transferred the text to a Word file and will write up my full review sometime today.