I’m a veteran Pitmadder now (with some side notes about Amy Poehler)

I’m a veteran Pitmadder now, which doesn’t mean a thing. What I mean by that is it doesn’t mean I’m going to land an agent through the pitch contest or catch my big break or even have the best pitch in town. But having ridden the pitch party roller coaster a few times has given me some insight, and it does change how I react to the contest.

My heartrate isn’t going above 85 over this. And that’s not just due to the 50mg of metoprolol I’m now taking (things we say now– have you seen Wine Country yet? With Amy Poehler? She’s my imaginary celebrity best friend and if you haven’t seen it drop everything and go watch it because I love her and it’s one of the few things I can do for her in our imaginary friendship.) But no, I’m not going to stress because most of the time nobody gets “likes” from agents or editors. All the “likes” we get are from friendly Twitter people who don’t know there’s a pitch party going on. They just legit like your pitch, which is nice, too. It’s nerve-wracking when you see that little heart and get your hopes up for nothing, but… still, nice.

My pitches are good. I know how to do them now, so if I don’t get any “likes” this go, it’s not because I don’t know how to write a pitch. It’s likely because my premise is crap or nobody’s interested in my genre right now or other problems that are harder to fix than a crappy pitch. Oh, did you think this was going to be an uplifting post? Ha ha ha. If you need help with your pitch there’s plenty of advice on the Pitmad hashtag. Take it.

I’ll get a lot of retweets, so there’s that. Yeah, after years of trying to get traditionally published, I have made some writer friends and they are awesome and they’ll retweet my pitch for me, making me look cooler than I am, which is what friends are for. (Amy doesn’t need my help with that, but I’m always using her GIFs anyway– again, one of the tiny ways I contribute to our imaginary friendship.)Thank you to all my writer Tweeps who loyally retweet my pitches, sometimes even with comments that make me feel all ooey gooey inside. God, I love those guys.

There’s always Pitch Wars! Yes, so if #Pitmad winds up being a flaming pile of no thank you, Pitch Wars is right on its heels, and I have a manuscript ready for that. So there’s always something to get your heartrate up over, and if not, just throw some queries out there into the void so you can get rejections in your email 147 days later and feel like a Real Author. By the way, with Covid-19, 147 days is the new 47 days. Cherish the journey, people!