Saturday I attended the monthly meeting of Chesapeake Romance Writers. It was Valentine's Day. We even had a freelance reporter writing an article for the Virginian Pilot, a regional paper, about our group.
We were excited to get the publicity, especially since we will be hosting a writers' workshop, "Pages to Publication," in Williamsburg, VA, on March 14.
Our group has several published and self-published authors. Our most recent celebrations are a newly published novel by Mairi Norris and a reissue of a cute paranormal romance by Kristine Overbrook. I've read both these books and enjoyed them. (There are several more published authors, so I apologize if I missed anybody and will try to work more names and publications into future posts).
If you think our meeting was strictly a social event or all about love and romance, think again. Writing is a business. The focus of our meeting was on how to get the most out of writers' conferences, including the one coming up in Williamsburg. There were even ideas for authors who plan to attend the national RWA conference that will be held in New York City this year. Our most experienced authors said that the New York conference is the most expensive, but well worth it, because so many agents and editors are based in New York. We were told to study the editors and agents who will be present at a conference, decide which ones we most want to pitch to, and write up a cheat sheet on each one of these before we go. We should be prepared to pitch to them not only at formal events but at a chance meeting in a bar or restaurant, for example. The trick is to take advantage of opportunities like this without being rude or pushy.
Authors practiced writing "elevator pitches." These are one-sentence descriptions of our books that not only concisely summarize our novel but leave the potential editor or agent with questions--so they want to know more. Hopefully they will ask for a submission. Elevator pitches are used at those chance encounters described above.
With some help from a fellow author, I came up with a decent elevator pitch for the novel I'm working on. The group liked it. Other authors worked on the material that they would put on the back of the book or inside the jacket.
We also got some ideas of what to say during three-minute, formal pitches. The general advice was to introduce yourself and the genre of your book, its length in pages and number of words, whether it is complete-- preferably it is, even if it is still in the revision stage-- and a little bit about it. Editors will usually start asking questions that allow the writer to fill out the remaining time. Most are very nice people. Knowing something about the editor and the editor's interests is helpful in establishing a rapport with him or her.
I decided my novel, at 48,000 words, is not far along enough to justify the expense of a trip to New York City. Hopefully by this time next year I will be able to report that it is ready to submit to editors, agents, competitions, critiques, pitches at conferences, or other events. The RWA conference is held in NYC once every four years, so I'm a little sad to be missing this opportunity.
Which reminds me--it's time to work on my book!
We were excited to get the publicity, especially since we will be hosting a writers' workshop, "Pages to Publication," in Williamsburg, VA, on March 14.
Our group has several published and self-published authors. Our most recent celebrations are a newly published novel by Mairi Norris and a reissue of a cute paranormal romance by Kristine Overbrook. I've read both these books and enjoyed them. (There are several more published authors, so I apologize if I missed anybody and will try to work more names and publications into future posts).
If you think our meeting was strictly a social event or all about love and romance, think again. Writing is a business. The focus of our meeting was on how to get the most out of writers' conferences, including the one coming up in Williamsburg. There were even ideas for authors who plan to attend the national RWA conference that will be held in New York City this year. Our most experienced authors said that the New York conference is the most expensive, but well worth it, because so many agents and editors are based in New York. We were told to study the editors and agents who will be present at a conference, decide which ones we most want to pitch to, and write up a cheat sheet on each one of these before we go. We should be prepared to pitch to them not only at formal events but at a chance meeting in a bar or restaurant, for example. The trick is to take advantage of opportunities like this without being rude or pushy.
Authors practiced writing "elevator pitches." These are one-sentence descriptions of our books that not only concisely summarize our novel but leave the potential editor or agent with questions--so they want to know more. Hopefully they will ask for a submission. Elevator pitches are used at those chance encounters described above.
With some help from a fellow author, I came up with a decent elevator pitch for the novel I'm working on. The group liked it. Other authors worked on the material that they would put on the back of the book or inside the jacket.
We also got some ideas of what to say during three-minute, formal pitches. The general advice was to introduce yourself and the genre of your book, its length in pages and number of words, whether it is complete-- preferably it is, even if it is still in the revision stage-- and a little bit about it. Editors will usually start asking questions that allow the writer to fill out the remaining time. Most are very nice people. Knowing something about the editor and the editor's interests is helpful in establishing a rapport with him or her.
I decided my novel, at 48,000 words, is not far along enough to justify the expense of a trip to New York City. Hopefully by this time next year I will be able to report that it is ready to submit to editors, agents, competitions, critiques, pitches at conferences, or other events. The RWA conference is held in NYC once every four years, so I'm a little sad to be missing this opportunity.
Which reminds me--it's time to work on my book!
