And now the wait...

Last Saturday was the much anticipated Seattle Writer's Workshop. When I originally signed up, it was before COVID-19 ruled our lives. As cases of the virus climbed in the U.S., the coordinators made the decision to go virtual. My intentions for the conference were strictly to take advantage of the opportunity to pitch directly to literary agents and editors and I had signed up for two pitches. However, going virtual with the conference opened up many more agents. At the last minute I signed up for three more... so five total.

I was a mad woman the entire week prior trying to make everything as crisp and sharp as possible - including launching this blog platform. There were moments of high stress and moments of feeling pretty damn accomplished. In total, I went through ALL my beta readers feedback and edits and made sure to polish my manuscript as much as possible, I created my website and blog, I opened social media accounts and connected them properly, I squared away my synopsis and I practiced my pitch with everyone.

When the day finally arrived, I actually felt prepared and as it progressed I felt more and more confident with my questions and explanations. Out of the five people I spoke with, four were agents and one an editor.

Of those five, four were extremely nice, helpful and professional. Only one agent was rude and, in my opinion, very unprofessional. After I finished my pitch to that one agent, they simply said 'There's a lot of that on the market right now... have a good day.' Our time didn't even span five minutes. I'm fine with being rejected and I'm fine if an agent simply doesn't see us being a good fit. But the situation was I had paid for ten minutes of time and even though they didn't like my book, I would have used the remaining five minutes asking them questions on how I could improve my pitch, what can I do to be more presentable and so on. But, c'est la vie. I can always email them when I make it big and say 'well there was room for my book on the market...have a nice day.'

Repeating myself, the other four were great. Three of them asked for the first three chapters and the fourth asked for the whole manuscript. I was able to answer all of their questions, ask them questions and ultimately felt good about the day.

And now the wait. I hope to hear back from the agents and editor in about two weeks and hopefully one agent will say 'You're exactly what I've been looking for!' and the editor will say 'This is great, let's work to get it to excellent!' and we all lived happily ever after... But reality, conversations with other published authors and common sense says I won't hear those drool-worthy words and I'll start the query process.

All in all, I learned a lot about the business, I sharpened my own skills for self-promoting and I received some much needed validation. This entire process, all the way from deciding to write Helen's story up to this point, has been long, tedious, daunting and expensive. To have four out of five show interest gave me validation and motivation.

Going through this journey also gave me some ideas for this very blog. I've learned so much and continue to learn and I want to share some of those processes, strategies and information. So from here out I'm going to be sharing what I do know, what's worked for me and what I learn along the way.