I will desist from writing a travel narrative after this, but I found the celebration of the Day of the Dead at my daugher's agency Union Settlement in East Harlem so interesting I had to share. These little babies, and they are tiny, are sculpted from sugar and last indefinitely. The celebration also included a mariachi band, an altar with a skeleton, flowers, candles and incense, dancers. poetry and speeches. Whole families turned out to participate. If I had kept up my Spanish, I could have followed it more closely.On a darker note, I'm supposed to be writing five things for the Pitch workshop I am attending on Monday night. 1)Why did I write the book? 2)What's the book about? 3)Who's the audience 4 How does it stand out from other books? 5)Three important things to convey to an agent about it. All of the advice is about how to not be too smartass or gliv or immodest. Is that the way people are because my impulse is to put my head down on the desk and sigh. Why the hell did I write this book?
9 comments:
Ack! I guess this is why one preps for pitches. Otherwise, I can picture myself saying: "Just because," "This guy," "Other bored people," and "It doesn't completely suck, I'm not a psycho, and I do plan on writing other stuff just not necessarily in the same genre or connected in any other useful marketing manner to the manuscript you're now contemplating."
I've written that all down and plan to use it come Monday. It strikes just the right note to me.
Also: "It seemed like a good idea at the time." Worked for Vonnegut.
It did seem like a good idea-a summer project. Now it seems strange and I feel unable to defend its oddity.
I guess this is something new. I've been writing for forty years and I've never heard of anyone having to pitch a novel to an agent or anyone else. That's what screenwriters do. I've always been so glad that I didn't have to do anything like that.
Tell me what this is all about?
Serves me right for waiting this long to try it.
This all seems like a trap for the newbie to me, as well, as an outsider who virtually rubs shoulders with long-established pros. The only folks I've heard of who've had to audition for agents were tyros being mulcted. Likewise, the notion that even a veteran short story writer as you've become getting an agent first before selling a novel...well, perhaps no novels sell over the transom any longer, but not a few years ago, you'd be very fortunate to get a real, good agent to represent your novels as someone who hadn't yet sold one, as opposed to a time-wasting amateur or someone looking for something for their agency interns of fee-criticism scammers to do.
that should be "or fee-criticism scammers." I know of at least two writers, one of whom went on to a successful career, who've wasted time and precious funds on the kind of scam I describe.
I think there are a few places that will read a novel without an agent but not many. And agents are so overwhelmed with queries, many won't even look at a one page query letter. Some of their sites almost threaten legal action should you try. So we have followed the Hollywood example and become pitch artists.
We are all writers now. Just have to find some readers.
Post a Comment