Obligatory PitchWars Post

It's the most wonderful time of year... Ding! Dong!

No! Not that... Hey everyone, it's PitchWars! The awesome competition run by writers, for writers. Run by Brenda Drake to be precise, who has got together a pretty awesome list of Mentors to look through our (us writer's) manuscripts and pick one to polish and champion to the equally impressive list of Agents.


Now that's out of the way, I've been scanning through the list of Mentors and trying to select the Famous Five that I want to submit my manuscript of Alexandra Frost and the Dragons of Overearth to. Boy, it's been tough! The first selection was easy, narrow down 105 to just those accepting Middle Grade. Done! The section part was easy too, remove all those who are definitely not accepting fantasy (in particular High fantasy).

After parts one and two were complete, I was left with a list of ten or so Mentors who could have been a fit. So now I've been reading through their blogs, twitter posts, eking out reactions on twitter and just generally trying to find out who loves dragons the most! Ten became 7, became 6 and now, I need to make one final cut. This is the hardest part of all, everyone in my final 6 seems open to fantasy and dragons and so I could be cutting the one Mentor who would have chosen my manuscript!






I will just have to bite the bullet, go with my gut, and many more clichés, hoping that one of the five loves my manuscript as much as some of my beta readers and critique partners!

There are hundreds of other writers out there, competing for spots. So the likelihood of getting one is very low, but I feel like I've now given my manuscript the best possible ass-kicking to ensure it stands the best chance yet of making through the slush. If you're reading this and you're a hopeful mentee... Good Luck! If you're reading this and you're a Mentor... PICK ME!! I promise you, you won't regret it :)

Monday 17th August is the submission date, so I'll be working on finishing touches to openings, query letter and synopsis before then... as well as stalking Mentors on twitter. Here's hoping!

Finally, I thought it would be fine to meet some new folks through PitchWars so I set up a linky bloghop. Enter your blog below and visit the other links. The community works by helping each other out, so pay it forward :)

Plot changes and Editing

Having very nearly given up on Alex Frost, I decided on one (or two) last hurrah!'s.

#PitchSlam and #NestPitch - two contests that I thought would be a great opportunity to have one last go on getting noticed and before shelving the project. #PitchSlam was the first catalyst, two more were to follow.

The first phase of #PitchSlam is a critique on a 35-word pitch, provided by 6 of the judges of the competition. The feedback was constructive and led me to rethink a few things. This in turn made me realise something, the structure of the book was such that explaining the plot in few words always confused the reader.

I needed change. I liaised with a couple of my Critique Partners who agreed that the changes seemed positive for the manuscript. I was left with a conundrum: do i start improving the script and pull out of the two competitions or leave it as is and try my luck.

I knew the story needed some fixing up, so I decided to press on with changes and pull out of the competitions.

Changes were written and reviewed and, again, feedback was positive. And then catalysts numbered two and three arrived.

I received glowing feedback from a beta-reader in my target audience (9+ year old readers). After all the rejections, critiques, discussions, negative thoughts, the level of response from a reader in my target bracket brought everything in crystal clarity. This is the person whose imagination I am trying to capture. Who i am trying to bring the joy of reading back into their lives - away from computers, iPads, TV and countless other distractions.

And then, moments later, further strong positive feedback from a beta-reader who has just got through my initial revamp - pre-most recent changes.

Spurred on, I decided that I needed to finish the re-write and get some professional help. In steps freelance editor and literary agent Jessica Schmeidler (The Write Shadow).  Jessica will be working with me on an initial manuscript review to help me polish this story until it more than shines. I will post some more info on my experience with the review process and (if I push on) the editing phase too.

Onwards and Upwards!

Le Grand Réécrire!

It seems like many, many years ago now, that I first embarked on the marathon task of writing my first full length middle grade novel. In actuality, back then I hadn't really encountered the term 'middle grade'. All I really knew was that I had an interesting concept for a story. So let's back track slightly...

In or around 2006, I decided that I wanted to try my hand at writing a book. I had spent the majority of my youth being creative, either in music or drama. I had played in bands, to varying degrees of success, written songs for my bands, to varying degrees of success, and performed in many plays, to varying... well, I think you get the idea!

I decided it was time to try something different and started on writing. My first idea was a simple premise. I had an initial scene, a hole ridden plot, and a character (loosely based on my younger self) that I thought would be fun to write. 'Argyle' was born. It is a science-fiction adult humour short(ish) story, which was never really completed. Argyle is a space-archaeologist who has a terrible run of luck, goes out on the lash with his best mate and wakes up 1,000 years in the future. He must then use his skills to unearth his own mysterious period of incubation, accompanied by his best mate, who was also frozen in time, and his great²⁶-granddaughter. Suffice to say, it was fun to write, but it was severely lacking in structure.

So effort number two. I dreamt up a great idea in my other favoured genre of fantasy stories. Through some planning and luck, it transpired that the main character would end up being a 10/11 year old girl. I began writing the book and completed it in relatively short order. Then I got busy at work and everything was put on hold.

Years later, I revisited the story, finished things off and tried my hand at self-publishing. It wasn't for me, the market was saturated with slush and it felt that I was just throwing another book into the pile that no one would ever get around to reading. So I back tracked, withdrew the book and began a significant revision (number 3). The revision has now been finished and the word count has been increased from around 27,000 to 50,000+ in just under a month.

And so the real work begins. 50,000 words of 'idea' have been put down in writing and now I have to sort them out into some sort of sense. Improve the dialogue. Make sure that the characters actually develop. Make sure that the world is real, the rules are real. Basically, give the story the best chance I can to being a worthwhile read.

Thankfully I have been helped along the way by some readers on sites such as WriteWords, Scribophile and Twitter (see a review of revision 2 on searchingforharry.com by @breezymarie7). And I have just made contact with a few critique partners to get this edit underway.

The next few blogs will focus on my editing experience as this is the first time I have done this and with no formal training I hope my experiences can help others in my position. Eh bien, mes amis, allez! Wish me luck and I hope to be back soon with an update!