I didn’t get as much time to work on my work-in-progress this week as I would have liked, but I have no regrets. I stumbled over a Yahoo group, created and moderated by Dorothy Thompson, that brings in bestselling authors to answer questions about publishing, success, writing, you name it. But this week was something different. This week literary agent Kristin Nelson of The Nelson Literary Agency was the guest, and she spent the week on the loop, answering all kinds of questions.

That, in and of itself, was extremely valuable, but then on Friday, she agreed to do a ‘Pitch Slam’, such that any of us who wanted to could offer up our pitches and she would respond with feedback. My current manuscript wans’t really ready to pitch (not being complete), but what a great opportunity! I decided to give it a shot.

So I spent my allotted writing time on Thursday and Friday working up my pitch, getting feedback from other authors on the loop, and offering them feedback of my own. Then on Friday, fingers crossed for ourselves and each other, we let loose all the pitches. ‘Agent Kristin’ was inundated with seventy pitches! Her email crashed, and she postponed all feedback until the weekend. Finally, on Sunday night, after checking back on the Yahoo message board ten or twenty times over the weekend, I saw her response to my query.

I’m happy to say, it was positive. True, I wasn’t one of the lucky authors of whom she requested thirty pages, but then, I wasn’t really ready to offer them up if she had. I tried to keep the pitch brief, with minimal details, but evidently she wanted to see more and thought I was too fuzzy on too many plot points—something to take note of for the future. Still, she said my pitch was ‘promising’ and my premise was ‘cute’…

Now all that’s left to do is make sure my writing lives up to its premise…

The experience was invaluable: reading the many and varied pitches from a talented, generous group of authors, sharing constructive criticism, learning a bit about how one very well-respected agent thinks and what specifically she is looking for… Now I just need to get back to writing until the next guest appearance on the loop.

But it’s Sunday night…I’m just gonna relax and read some more of The Second Summer of the Sisterhood.

Well, I managed to get over my mixed-message contest scores just in time to get my first brutal review. I just stumbled over it on Amazon, and I’m rather proud to say that it didn’t upset me in the least. Sure it is slightly disappointing to get that first one… So I guess to clarify, I just wasn’t particularly concerned about the specifics.

The part I found a little amusing was where she expounded upon all the ‘coincidences’ in the book (most of which I didn’t consider the least bit coincidental), and she said something to the effect that she could almost see the author pulling the strings. Isn’t that kind of the author’s job??? I mean, if she doesn’t do it, who will? There’s not much story without a little behind the scenes work.

I will say that the reviewer was open-minded enough to include a smidge of praise. And she condescended to say that she might just give me another chance. What more could I ask for?

Now that that’s off my chest…

I’ve just finished a fabulous book. I picked up And Only to Deceive? By Tasha Alexander simply because I read a review of it that said ‘Had Jane Austen written The Da Vinci Code, she may well have come up with this elegant novel. How intriguing is that? I must say, I was not disappointed. The writing was elegant, the plot intriguing, the suspense gripping, and the ending…perfect. All that, with just a touch of romance. I will very much be looking forward to her next book.

Onward and upward!

I am so FRUSTRATED! I don’t even know why I entered a writing contest. I entered a few RWA chapter contests a few years back, and was equally as frustrated then. I was dreading this but hoping for the best. Today I got my scorecards and critiques back, and I’m simply at a loss as to how interpret them.

I had three average scores from unpublished judges and one near-perfect (99/100) score from an award-winning author published in romance and non-romance. What am I to think? Who am I to believe? The judge that said to hurry up and finish and get it out to an agent/editor, the one that said the story was going nowhere, or the one that said there wasn’t enough action??????

I am so frustrated I can’t even write right now. I know the ‘rules’ of romance, but this book doesn’t follow the rules. And I think that’s part of the problem I have with contests. The judges want, and in a way need, you to follow the rules. The book does open when the heroine’s life changes, but it doesn’t change with guns blazing, it changes in a way that requires some inner reflection and decision making.

I think sometimes judges are category readers and expect things to happen quickly. Sort of a get-in/get-out philosophy. Well that doesn’t always work for single-title. It doesn’t work for me.

This is going to take some long, hard INNER REFLECTION (imagine that). I’m going to have to figure out whether to make some significant changes to my WIP or leave it as it is.

Darn contests! I should know better.