But if wishes were horses...also, no news is good news.

If you're not sure what I'm talking about, I was solicited for the entire manuscript of my 5-minutes-in-the-future detective thriller based on a Twitter pitch from #IWSGPit and subsequent outline. It was very exciting since this particular publisher doesn't accept unsolicited materials. I'm anxiously waiting to hear back. I'll let you know...

Keep Writing and Edit On.
I Write, I Edit, I Write Again. Witness!
We're Making Better Words, All of Them, Better Words.
I Write to Burn Off the Crazy.
A Good Day Writing is a Day Writing.
It Puts the Words on the Page or it Gets the Hose Again.
Just keep writing...just keep writing...writing, writing, writing!
Writing is Magic.
The First Rule of Write Club is You Talk About Write Club.
If You Aren't Writing, You Aren't a Writer

The Insecure Writers Support Group or IWSG is hosting a pitch party on Thursday, July 19th, 2018 from 8am to 8pm EST. The #IWSGPit Twitter pitch party is very similar to #PitMad and other Twitter pitch parties, but unlike other more limited pitch parties, you may send out 1 tweeted pitch every hour per manuscript you are pitching. More tweets equals more opportunities for publishers to spot your pitch, and more opportunities for you to find the perfect pitch for your work!

I'll be participating this year for the first time, maybe even with two novels if I can get myself organized. Good luck! Hope to see you there!

For an example of one of my Twitter Pitches:
Tweeting Your Pitches

Keep Writing and Edit On.
I Write, I Edit, I Write Again. Witness!
We're Making Better Words, All of Them, Better Words.
I Write to Burn Off the Crazy.
A Good Day Writing is a Day Writing.
It Puts the Words on the Page or it Gets the Hose Again.
Just keep writing...just keep writing...writing, writing, writing!
Writing is Magic.
The First Rule of Write Club is You Talk About Write Club.

So, I participated in my first #Pitmad Twitter pitch party on Thursday and it was pretty interesting. Thousands of pitches were flying over the feed, so at first I was pretty pessimistic about my pitch standing out, but I must have done something right because I got a couple of nibbles. I'll let you know if any of those nibbles become actual bites. In the meantime, don't fret if you missed the March #PitMad event because there is another coming up on June 8. For more information, check out ​http://www.brenda-drake.com/pitmad/.

Twitter Pitch Example: Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Lovely. Snowy. Deadly? An accident, an isolated cabin, 2 college guys, and 2 mysterious women. #PitMad #NA #P
(The #NA = New Adult, #P = paranormal)

And that funny thing was I just entered a pitch party called Pitch Madness. It is going on until midnight EST, so you still have almost 4 hours to enter...stop reading and go enter!!!

Okay, now that you've entered let me briefly tell you what I know about Pitch Madness and pitch parties in general. Pitch Madness is where you send out a 35 word pitch for your novel and the first 250 words of the manuscript (must be finished and polished and ready to be read in full), and several "teams" go through and pick their top 60 entries. These finalists then go on to the agent round where they are introduced to an agent.

As I said before, Pitch Madness is a thing known as a pitch party. It is an event where people throw out their pitches to agents in a flurry and may be able to get to then query an interested agent. These are pretty magical, fairy things in my opinion because they remove the need to painstakingly research agents and send out query letters to agents just not looking for what you're currently writing. They are like elevator pitches without the elevator!

If you are reading this blog post Friday, February 24th, 2017 at midnight, then do not fret. There will be another form of Pitch Madness happening on Twitter (#PitMad) on March 23rd: 12 hours (8am - 8pm), 140 characters, 3 pitches. Also, I guess these pitch parties are pretty common, so do some Googling and I'm sure you'll turn up some others.

Now seriously, stop reading and go attend a pitch party! ;)

Keep Writing and Edit On.
I Write, I Edit, I Write Again. Witness!
We're Making Better Words, All of Them, Better Words.
I Write to Burn Off the Crazy.
A Good Day Writing is a Day Writing.
It Puts the Words on the Page or it Gets the Hose Again.
Just Keep Writing, Just Keep Writing; Writing, Writing, Writing...