Remember all those black-eyed peas I ate on New Year’s day
for luck? Well, now I’m hoping to cash in. I’m gathering my courage and
entering Recalculating Route into the Amazon breakthrough novel award tomorrow.
The first round is based entirely on the pitch. That means
that out of 10,000 entrees, 8,000 of them will be cut without a judge ever
seeing the book. Anyone who has ever tried to boil down a complete novel into a
couple of paragraphs of sales copy will tell you it's extremely difficult. I’ve
been frequenting the pitch thread and polishing mine for several weeks now.
Sometimes I think it’s perfect and other times far from it, but it's certainly
better than it was at the beginning. I’m impressed with the generosity of so
many posters over on the thread who spend huge amounts of time helping with
pitches. They’ve taken some real messes, and with subtle suggestions and
questions, helped the writers turn them into something great. And remember,
these are their competition.
So, good luck to all the hopeful writers out there, and
thank you to everyone who helped me with my pitch. Even if we don’t make it
through the first round, it was great spending time with you. I’m looking
forward to seeing many of those familiar titles when they announce the next
round on March 18th.
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