Pitch Success

A month ago I participated in an online pitch with Entangled Publishing, pitching for their upcoming line Bliss (launching in August). The pitch required a 3-5 sentence pitch and the first 100 words of the manuscript.

I'm totally thrilled because they requested my full.

Now more waiting...

Goals

For me, the main purpose of my blog is to chat about my goals and how I'm going with them. Making them public is really good incentive to actually meet them.

So it's about time I shared with you my revised goals, the ones that should see me through until the middle of 2010.

1. Sub partial
2. Finish revised ms
3. Enter High 5
4. Enter Emerald
5. Apply 5DI
6. Enter First Kiss
7. Write next ms
8. Enter VPA with 2 mss
9. Enter an American contest
10. Attend and pitch at conference

So, how am I going with these goals?
I'm pleased to say I managed to get my entry into High 5. And, surprising even myself, I have already entered an American contest, the Silicon Valley Gotcha! contest. The next goal to achieve is entry in the Emerald. This needs to be sent quite soon, and it's not quite ready, so will have my work cut out getting it done. But I will!

It's exciting having goals. While it can be stressful trying to meet them, the satisfaction you get from ticking each one off is great.

My Blog's 1st Birthday

I can't believe it. It's been a whole year since I started my blog.

When I started I didn't really have a goal, but after I did Susan Meier's goal setting workshops I decided I would blog once a week on my writing experiences and how I was meeting my goals.

I haven't done too badly, having blogged 51 times already this year. Some weeks slide by without a posting, while for others I keep my blog quite busy.

So how are my goals going? Well, I can tick the boxes for the following:
- enter First Kiss competition
- enter Valerie Parv Awards
- attend RWA conference
- pitch at conference
- enter High 5 competition

It's very rewarding knowing I met my goals for the first 9 months of the year.

The last few months of the year are a different story. I was lucky enough to have a successful pitch, and get a request for a partial - with the added requirement of starting the story further on. So my focus has been on rewriting and editing my submission, getting it to shine. So it's not so much I won't meet my goals, more the goal posts have just shifted


So this is my new list for the downhill run to Christmas:
- enter Emerald competition
- submit partial to Mills and Boon

I can't wait to see what the next year brings - and don't worry, you'll read all about it on my blog.

Missing in Action

I've been a little quiet on my blog of late. Of course I have an excuse, but I think it is quite a good one.

Back in August I e-pitched to Harlequin as part of RWA's national conference. Seriously, while I desperately wanted a positive outcome, that litle red devil in my head didn't think I stood a chance. I was thrilled when the request came back for a partial + synopsis. The only catch was I needed to start the story further along.

Oh my gosh!!! I reread the request a good half a dozen times looking for the catch, or the word I'd misread. Once I'd convinced myself it was real, it hit me. Start the story further along. Ummmm, where? I struggled with that decision. I thought of 3 or 4 places I could re-start it. I didn't want to screw the opportunity up, so I took a while analysing and thinking, and finally made my decision.

As a result, my hero and heroine meet in a totally new way, and quite important elements have been changed as a result. But I think it is a much better story for it.

So I have been rewriting my first 3 chapters, and am now well on the way to having them shining. Will let you know once they have been sent off, but for now I need to pick up that polishing cloth and get back to work.

Karma

Must be Karma.

Within a few hours of posting my last blog I received an email outlining the requirements for my e-mail pitch to Harlequin London. So now I have a smidge over a week to put together a killer pitch and tweek my first chapter before submitting.

My WooHoo's of excitement have since been replaced with groans of terror - how to write a pitch? Is my first chapter really polished? Can I really write at all?

And the little squeals of hope hiding behind them all. What if...?

Not sure how it will go, but fingers crossed.

Conference Pitch... or Not

Finish writing my M&B Sweet and pitch it at the RWAust August conference. Goal #1.

One of my two writing goals for the year. For those of you who have been following my blog you might remember I have 2 major goals for 2009 - plus 8 other goals that are really a mini-action plan to help me achieve my 2 big goals.

But, a spanner in the works. Harlequin aren't actually attending RWAust's annual conference (a scenario that hadn't even occurred to me, duh). This makes it hard to meet my first goal. Or does it?

Well, the fabulous organising committee for the conference is trying to organise to get our mss in front of an editor for assessment. Gulp. With no details what does this mean? And will I need to have my ms ready before August? I have a mental timetable to have my ms polished in time... and of course the timeline fits in with the August conference.

So. This is how I've decided to look at it. If my ms gets assessed by an editor, I've still achieved essentially what pitching would have achieved. With no pitch to stress over in August, I can kick up my heels from the get go and truly enjoy my first conference.

There is always a silver lining.

Conference Workshops + The Pitch

Workshops
Now I imagine that to portray a professional image at the conference workshops the dress code would be office wear.

But what defines office wear these days?
Checking out the websites of a number of different retailers I found that in many cases their office wear lines included denim jeans. Are these now considered aprropriate for the office? Are jeans dressier then they used to be? Or have office standards dropped?

Ok, to be honest, I don't really care why, just please tell me they'll be ok to wear. Yep, you guessed it - I have jeans!

The outfits depicted here are the ones in the latest catalogues from Myer, David Jones, Katies and Suzanne Grae.

The Pitch
Hmmm. The Pitch. Just the words alone are enough to make me tremble in my boots. Let alone worrying about what to wear!

The image I want to project: professional, competent, organised, relaxed - as I will probably be none of these things (think nervous, sweating, fumbling and bumbling) I need my clothing to try and portray the image for me.

My gosh. What hope do I have at successfully pitching?

Again I have consulted the online catalogues of many of my local fashion stores and gained an insight into what's hot and what's not. You'll never guess where I fit in!

Below are just a sample of some of the models I viewed dressed in what any up and coming author whould be wearing to The Pitch.











What are you wearing?

Loglines

Got the link to this blog from Query Shark. It has a fantastic method to write your logline - which leads to your pitch. Definitely worth a read.

Link