Twitter Pitch Round Robin Workshop!

So this is not the post I intended to post today, but I'm still finishing up moving and getting home internet sorted out, so that will have to wait.  INSTEAD!  Feast your eyes on a couple of cool things!

Like Anita posting a plethora of awards on her blog here!  And much more awesome than the awards themselves (though as the recipient of one, I find them quite awesome all on their lonesome) is how easy it makes it to find a veritable cornucopia of wonderful blogs and bloggers to enjoy!  I shall be making my way down that list a little later, but first, on to the next order of business!


Contests!  Yay!

First, check out this one here!  The Next Big Author Contest, apparently it's kinda a big deal.  Who knew?  But it entails posting the first chapter of your Work In Progress and has the potential for great feedback and networking, so hooray, all you authors who don't have a complete MS yet and have had to sit out on many of these contests.  This one's for you!

And then back to form with a contest that DOES require a completed manuscript, but oh is it worth it:  a twitter pitch contest which opens this Friday with a deadline for midnight on Saturday!  Enter your logline of 140 characters (NO ABBREVIATIONS) and possibly win a critique of the first 30 pages of your manuscript from the amazing Sara Megibow, of the Nelson Literary Agency!  For those not in the know, Ms. Megibow has been on a hot streak lately, signing three new clients in the past couple weeks when she only signed a handful all last year.  Apparently, she's hungry for great concepts and awesome books at the moment, so strike now while the iron's hot and get your pitch 'pitch perfect!'

And so to that end, I'm hosting a Twitter Pitch Round Robin workshop!  It starts now and will extend until the deadline of the Twitter Pitch contest, at 11:59 pm, Saturday May 7th!

The rules are simple!  There's a character limit of 4,000 characters in the comments of my blog.  We have to get your pitches down to 140 characters.  So how it works is you start out by posting WHATEVER YOU WANT about your story in a comment on this post.  Whatever you think is integral to your story, whatever you ideally would want to include in your pitch.  But to post, you have to edit the comment ahead of yours, and your pitch and your edit of the pitch ahead of you both have to fit into your comment. 

Get your pitch ready, then before you post it, refresh the blog to find the most recent comment.  Read the pitch ahead of yours, and cut out a line or two, whatever strikes you as unnecessary to get to the heart of their pitch.  There's no character limit on how much you have to cut, just make a reasonable contribution to that person's edit, and make sure it fits in your comment along with your own pitch.   Then the person to comment after you will cut something from your pitch.

You can post your revised pitch multiple times, as in fact that's the whole point.  The more people who join in, the more often you comment and edit other people's pitches, the closer everybody's pitches will get to that fabled 140 character limit.  Just don't post several times in a row.  After your pitch has been edited, give a couple other people a chance to edit and pitch before you throw your revised pitch back into the mix.  I'm not setting a rule on how many comments need to be between yours, but use your best judgment.  Don't be afraid to post multiple times, but don't hog the critiques either.

This workshop is open to anyone, not just people entering the Twitter Pitch contest.  You can post your revised pitch multiple times to get it cut down further, or post pitches for multiple projects.  Just be willing to cut from other people's pitches and have a pitch you want shortened in turn, and that's all you need!

Don't worry if two people post at the same time and accidentally edit the same pitch - just worry about the comment directly ahead of yours, and I'll be jumping in to 'pinch hit/edit' any comments that get missed or overlooked.  Anyone else who wants to pinch edit can jump in as well.  I think it'll all work itself out on its own.

Here's my pitch for Dust to Dust to get things started off.  So again, first person to comment just needs to cut some stuff they consider unnecessary from mine and post their own pitch.  The person to comment after them then cuts from the first commenter and then posts their pitch, and so on and so on, going down the line.  Once you've commented and been critiqued, wait a few comments and then feel free to jump back in with your revised comment.  Once Saturday rolls around and we wrap it up, I'll be critiquing the last comment to bring things full circle.

Now enough jibber jabber!  Off we go!

Pitch for Dust to Dust:

Sixteen year old Micah is the youngest of nine children gifted with magic and cursed to kill each other on sight.  When his siblings tell him the curse was put on them by another magic family, they must fight both the curse and years of distrust to stand united against their enemies.

Who's next?