Nestpitch 2015

Well, since the Nestpich blog has already posted a list of teams for the Nestpitch contest this year, I figured it was time to kick my lazy carcass into gear and list the information for anyone interested. That's right, this year I'm participating as a slushie. Last year I was able to sign with my literary agent, Cate Hart with Corvisiero Literary Agency, because of Nestpitch, Yup. I'm a success story from Nestpitch, proof that contests like these really work.

So, to kick things off, here are a few of the rules. Don't worry, a full list of dates, rules and conditions will be posted on the 23^rd / 24^th of March. For now just mark March 23^rd /24^th and April 1^st(submission date).

The submission consists of:

(1)                 35-word pitch

(2)               Answer to this question: If your MC was an Easter Egg, what flavor would s/he be? (no more than 15 words please)

(3)             1^st 300-words of your manuscript*

*1^st 300 = if you have a prologue, then your 1^st 300 starts from your prologue. If you don’t think your prologue is strong enough then perhaps you need to rethink your prologue.

Finish at the end of a sentence. This is 300-word MAX, so your last word is 300-words. If your sentence finishes on 292-words, submit that. If your sentences run into 30 or more words, then rethink the length of your sentence(s). Broken sentences do no one favors.

This year we will not be accepting PB’s – I hear there is something different in the works for PB, but I don't know much about it so you'll have to follow the Nestpitch blog.

Two things to add/note:

(1)               A condition of entry is any MS #pitch submitted to previous #pitches, which resulted in being selected, in the twelve months prior to April 2015, is ineligible.   The only sub-clause to this is #PitchSlam. Please let us know if  you have the same MS in #PitchSlam & #Nestpitch, and again if you’ve been selected. I have spoken to the Host of PitchSlam & we’ve agreed to work closely on this one.

(2)               This year there will be less final selection featured pitches. (Expecting final number to be around 40). With each Team concentrating on fewer submissions, we can be more hands-on with feedback and mentoring. By doing this, not only will the pitch + 300-words be stronger, but so will the entire MS. This year there will be rounds.

a.      Round #1: Last year I gave everyone the benefit of the doubt when errors were made in following guidelines. That will not be the case this year, aside from formatting issues (which happen). To get past #1 the author’s must be able to follow guidelines.

b.      Round #2: This year each Team will select an initial 5-8 submissions and then request more pages/material. Based on the additional pages/material, each Team will drill their selection down to between 4-5 to go to the next round

c.      Round #3: On having picked their final 4-5, each Team will then critique the first 2,500-words and ‘get to know’ the author(s). This is a 3-fold process. Being selected does not necessarily mean being featured. Teams will want to know the author(s) are willing to accept feedback etc.  The Teams will work with their author’s for 3 weeks, offering feedback, sharpening pitches, & suggesting improvements. After this, the author’s have a full week to re-read their MS in full & make any final changes; before the agent round.

And now for the teams. If you want full bios, check out the Nestpitch blog.

SC_Author - Mentor (#OneBasket)

Twitter: https://twitter.com/SC_Author

            Laura Heffernan – Slushie - https://twitter.com/LH_Writes

            Heather Murphy Capps – Slushie - https://twitter.com/HeatherMC66

Louise Gornall - Mentor (#SugarCrush)

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Rock_andor_roll

            Sarah Carlson – Slushie https://twitter.com/sarahjoydrop

            Kate Foster – Slushie -  https://twitter.com/winellroad

Sharon Bayliss - Mentor (#TeamUnbreakable)

Twitter: https://twitter.com/SharonBayliss

            Katy Upperman – Slushie –  https://twitter.com/KatyUpperman

            Jessika Fleck – Slushie –https://twitter.com/jessikafleck

Stacey Nash - Mentor

Twitter: https://twitter.com/staceynash

            Kathy Palm – Slushie - https://twitter.com/KathleenPalm

            Liv Rancourt – Slushie – https://twitter.com/LivRancourt

Sharon Johnston - Mentor

Twitter: https://twitter.com/S_M_Johnston

Emma Wicker – Slushie  - https://twitter.com/ELWicker

            JC (Jason) Nelson – slushie -

Amanda Foody - Mentor

Twitter: https://twitter.com/AmandaFoody

Blog: http://www.amandafoody.blogspot.com.au/

Niki Cluff – Slushie -  https://twitter.com/nikimcluff

Jena duBois – Slushie  

Brooke Powell -Mentor

Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheCakeNovelist

Heather Bryant – Slushie – https://twitter.com/heather_b88

            Kristy Shen – Slushie - https://twitter.com/KristyShen

Lauren McKellar - Mentor

Twitter: https://twitter.com/LaurenKMcKellar

            Tracy Joyce – Slushie 

            Karen McCoy – Slushie - @WriterLibrarian

NikolaVukoja - Mentor (#Team2Beat)

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Nik_Vukoja

Jadah McCoy – Slushie - https://twitter.com/theQueryFaerie

            Kimberly Ito – Slushie – https://twitter.com/KimberlyIto

Can't wait to read all of your submissions!

My Writing Process (Blog Tour)

Welcome to your next stop on the Writing Process Blog Tour!

I'm Niki, your host for this post. Feel free to drink all the sarsaparilla you like and put your feet up. Just remember to remove your shoes before stepping onto the carpet. (Hubby doesn't like stains.)

Normally when I post on my blog, it has to do with the various contests I'm participating in, or things I've found while reading slush for the literary agent I'm interning for. Today will be different because an amazingly talented, newly found friend, Jennie Davenport asked me to participate in the Writing Process blog tour. A blog tour is definitely a new endeavor for me, so don't mind me if I'm giddily typing, off in the corner.

Along with being hilarious on twitter, Jennie Davenport is an author of modern fairy tales and the paranormal. Wife. Mother. Represented by Beth Campbell of BookEnds, LLC. Her first published novel, HEMLOCK VEILS, will be released by Swoon Romance this fall! Lover of words, to-do lists, nature, music, movies, theater, books (duh), and anything that moves me to real emotion. Sometimes (most times) she can survive only because of caffeine. She hates anything crafty, only because she's terrible at crafts. Her idea of an ideal getaway? Solitude, so she can write uninterrupted.

What I'm working on?

While my YA Magical Realism manuscript SUMMONER BATTLES is with an agent, I've started a couple of ideas that came to me while driving around, in the middle of the night, on my paper route. I love YA and am getting into New Adult. At church I work with young women ages 12-18 and feel like I never really outgrew that age myself. I tend to be one of those authors where I constantly have a stream of ideas and it becomes difficult to not stop whatever I'm working on to start something new that sounds absolutely amazing. If you could see my file of ideas, you'd see roughly thirty in there, sitting around, waiting for attention.

The first is a completed manuscript that is going to a CP and is with an agent right now. It's a YA Magical Realism along the lines of Night Circus and The Phantom of the Opera (book not musical). The main character is a seventeen year old boy who loves trading cards, video game and anime. While trying to escape an abusive step father, and a bully at school, he finds a comicon styled circus that appears randomly and stays however long it's needed, but the circus has a hidden agenda. The Ringmaster is stealing the souls of the patrons for her own purposes.

The second is one I recently started. It actually came from a dream I had after watching the first two seasons of Once Upon A Time (I had to catch up once the season 3 finale happened last Sunday). The manuscript is about a nineteen year old girl who lives on her own because all other people have disappeared. She's spent three years alone, but finds herself transported to a new land where people exists during her dreams. As she falls in love, the boy wants to come back to her world, but when she sees her family beyond the veil, she'll do anything to become part of their world, or bring the back. It's similar to the Stravaganza series by Mary Hoffman and American McGee's Alice with a touch of the Left Behind series.

So, that's what I'm working on at the moment. Once I have more information, I'll post it, so watch for new posts!

How does my work differ from others in the genre?

That's a good question. It's difficult to pin point one thing that makes my writing different from others. I've been told that I'm not a normal girl. I love action adventure movies. I prefer video games and books that center around Lord of the Rings styled worlds. I listen to movie soundtracks instead of popular artists. A lot of that comes across in my writing.

Japanese anime has played a big role in my writing style. My characters tend to be video gamers and cosplayers (When Heroes of Cosplay begins again, you'll see a lot of twitter posts). Not cheerleaders or jocks, book nerds or bad boys. The girl doesn't always end up with the bad boy. The boys aren't always tough and fighters. My writing tends to infuse a bit of my LDS (for those of you who don't know what that means, it means I belong to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints or Mormon) upbringing. I like to write with the values I've grown up with in mind. Of course, I have my faults and I like to write about the darker side of the world as well. My writing, like my mind, tends to be very open.

Why do I write what I do?

I began writing fan fiction in sixth grade, in a notebook that my best friend and I would take turns adding to. I've always loved YA fantasy and paranormal. It was pretty much all I read as a child. When I began writing Sailor Moon and Harry Potter fan fiction, it was because I didn't want those stories to end. I didn't want to leave the worlds I'd grown so fond of. I had a church leader, when I was a teenager, that encouraged me to write. She wrote several LDS novels herself, all of them adult fiction. I'd always been afraid to write what I wanted to instead of adding onto something someone else had written. I was afraid the stories wouldn't be good enough.

And then I had an idea that changed my mind.

I wanted to give teen's books that I love to read myself. I want to add to the genre, giving it a different flavor. I wanted to write new twists on old classics, introduce people to the anime, comics, video games and other things I love. I wanted my characters to be different.

That's why I write YA books.

How does my writing process work?

Like I mentioned before, my writing generally starts in the car. Driving around in the middle of the night, throwing papers out the window. I don't think as well during the winter, when the windows are down for an hour and a half, and snow flutters into the cab drenching me to the bone, but when I do have that burst of an idea, it's something I spend days pondering. I like to day dream as I drive (safely of course. I don't let my mind wander too far off the road), envision the characters, seeing the world, and wondering what the story will be like. That's where it all begins.

I've never been much of one for writing outlines. I've tried writing a few outlines, but my stories tend to stray. My characters do what they want, so I don't outline much. I start my manuscript from whatever I started envisioning in the car. Once I've got that down, I go to the beginning and work my way through. With three kids of my own, and several that I baby sit during the day, I find that I do my best writing after everyone is in bed, late at night. Usually after I read through a few queries.

I don't edit at all while I'm writing the first draft. If I did, I would never finish a manuscript. I see the rough draft as the skeleton of the story and like to flesh it out with my edits once the skeleton is finished. I have a horrible habit of writing has been or have been. I go through and try to eliminate all of those and restructure my sentences to get rid of filler words. While I'm doing that I send it out to my critique partners and start working on any edits they suggest.

And that's my process!

Look for the next writers in the Writing Process Blog Tour, who will be posting their process next week (May 26th):

Janet Wrenn- Along with being my critique partner, and an amazing friend, Janet is a wife to Michael, mother to Elissa and aspiring author to many. Originally from Cudahy, WI she moved to Houston, TX in October of 2000 for love. By day she slings medical insurance to the masses, by night she attempts to scribe the life, love and mystical encounters of the paranormal. When not entertaining family, clients or fans she can be found lost in the enchanted world of Renaissance Faires. Keep an eye out for her debut novel, Lies Witch Bind, coming Spring 2014.

and:

Missy LaRae- A new friend I made during the last The Writer's Voice contest, Missy spends the majority of her time working as a web designer at her company Pretty Wycked Designs, and running her busines development company, Titan Development Group. In addition to her work, and her volunteer activities, she's also a full time mom to two sons and her fur baby, Buddy.           

 

She began writing her first novel in 2009. It was an adult book written with the concepts of the Syren series books, but it just wasn't working, and it wasn't until December of 2011 that my imaginary world opened up and she was able to really begin writing on a daily basis without it feeling like shoving a square peg into a round hole.

 

She is optimistic for the future and would love to have her books take off and do well, which is the hope of any writer, but more than that she's happy she can share her world, imagination, and love of writing with her sons, friends, family, and with you.

Writing Competitons, or In which rejection isn't as bad as it seems

With my time in The Writer's Voice at a close, I felt it time to write a normal blog post. Okay, so I'm not the best blogger in the world. I tend to forget, or don't feel comfortable enough to write blogs often, but these last couple of contests have bothered me. Not because of the contests themselves, I love the contests and the opportunity they present, but how people are feeling after they get rejected. The posts from people who don't make it break my heart. Not getting picked for these contests doesn't mean you aren't good enough. I'm bothered that a lot of people seem to feel this way.

You're asking what I know about the rejection and contests, right?

I've entered seven or eight contests in the last year since discovering twitter and my first pitch contest back in October. It was a fluke that I happened to find it. I stumbled across a blog post that led me to Brenda Drake and some of the contests that she puts on. I got rejected my first time. At first I was bothered. What did it mean? Was I not good enough? Did I not follow all of the directions? Why did I fail? Then Hubby pointed something out to me. Being a numbers guy, he saw it for what it was. There were over 150 entries. I had a 32 in 150+ chance of getting picked because there were four mentors or so and they had to pick so many entries per team. My odds really weren't all that good.

In seven or eight contest entries, I've only made it into one contest.

I know that doesn't sound like a lot, but that doesn't include all the twitter pitch parties I've participated in and not received anything from agents. All in all, there has been a lot of rejection. At first I wondered why. It hurt that I couldn't seem to get my writing right. There was something that I was failing at and no one would tell me what, but good things also came from these contests. I met one of my CPs, Janet Wrenn, through twitter and pitch parties. I got my internship with the literary agent I read slush for through twitter pitch parties. She wrote a tweet looking for someone to slush read. I answered the tweet and have been reading for her since.

It also means I get to see all sides of rejection, objectively. I've been rejected. I started seriously writing five years ago. Back then I wrote fan fiction for fun, because I was too afraid to try getting published. I was afraid to get rejected. So I posted to fanfiction.net and never gave thought to the many ideas of my own that were floating around. I already knew what would happen once I did. I'd get rejected and everyone would give me a big fat I told you so.

And then we had a family crisis. I was forced to move myself, my hubby and my two younger kids into my parents home and we lived in a small bedroom in the back of the house for six months. Halfway through Hubby had to leave and I moved into a three bedroom house with a three year old and a three month old, on my own. While living with my parents I witnessed something that changed how I thought. I got married at nineteen and had my son three days before I turned 21. I always assumed that one day, after the kids were grown and no longer needing mommy, I'd have time to go to school, get a degree and start a career. Ha! Funny, right? Because:
1. You never stop being Mom. The kids may move away and start families of their own, but they will still call with their problems and stop by and visit whenever. It's fact.

And 2. Lets face it. I'm lazy. I would never go back to school. I'd find myself too old and too afraid to return. Helping the Oldest with his homework brought that thought home. I can't even keep up with his homework.

At the same time, while I was living with my parents again, I watched my mom lose everything she'd known. My three siblings and I were moving out and moving on and Mom didn't know who she was outside of Mom. She'd spent years caring for us, putting our needs before her own, taking us to games and practices, band camps and various other things. Now, she didn't have that. What was she outside of Mom? I'm not convinced she knows, even after five years. I don't want that to be my future. I began to write with the intent of getting published. As a result, I've received a lot of rejections. Lots of query letter rejections.

At the same time, I also give rejections. Sorting through slush means I have that ability. I know the agent's tastes. I know what she's looking for. I've been tested and tried and found worthy. So, I get to send the rejections. It's hard. Sometimes I hate doing it, but it's necessary. Some things just aren't the agent's tastes.

Let me repeat that: Some things are just not this particular agent's tastes.

Why is that important to remember? Because these contests are the same as sending a query letter, in a way. The mentors have their own tastes. They also have the tastes of the playing agents in mind. It wouldn't do anyone any good if they picked a manuscript just to pick a manuscript just so it could get rejected. That wastes your time and the agent's.

Everyone always says the same thing about these rejections. It's all subjective and it is. Let my give you a non-writing example.

See that female twig of a human being? That's my sister. She's always looked that way while I looked like I popped out of the pear shaping mold. She's never had to worry about what she eats and I'm pretty sure she's thinner now, after 2 kids, than she was in high school. Meanwhile, I've always struggled with my weight, watched what I ate, and will never see my high school body again.

 

Why am I telling you about her?

 

When I was fifteen or sixteen, a modeling agency came to my tiny home town and held tryouts of a sort. My sister, being eleven and a half months younger than me, decided that is what she wanted to do with her life. As a result, Mom drug both of us to the try outs. Modeling really isn't my thing. I'm no where near tall enough, nor do I have the body shape for modeling and I love food.

My sister, on the other hand, couldn't wait for the opportunity. So, we went. She'd dressed up in her nicest outfit, fixed her hair until it was perfect and made sure her makeup was just so. At the same time I threw on a t-shirt, pink and purple polka-dotted skirt and flip flops, pulled my hair into a pony tail, ran some eyeliner and mascara over my eyes and followed along behind.

 

My sister did everything perfectly. She walked the America's Next Top Model walk, answered the questions honestly and seemed flawless. I didn't. I walked normally. I sighed while waiting in line. When asked how long I've wanted to model, I gave my best Marilyn Monroe impression as I breathily answered All my life. It wasn't something I really wanted to do, and as a result, I didn't care what their answer would be. Somehow, I managed a call back. My sister didn't.

 

This happened a few times before I told my Mom I wasn't interested.

 

My point in this story is everything in this life really is subjective. My sister did everything perfectly and I got picked. My parents really didn't like my husband when we were dating, but they adored my sister's fiancé. She's been divorced once and I'm going on nine years of marriage to a man they've had to apologize to. I've seen a few manuscripts that I would have loved to read more of that the agent I work for didn't agree with.

 

We're all different. We all have differing opinions on what's right and what's wrong. What's good and what isn't. A rejection doesn't necessarily mean that you aren't good enough. It means you aren't right for those particular people. It's frustrating to get rejected. I know. I'm still looking for that one person who will say yes, but it doesn't mean your aren't good at your craft. It means try harder, research more, and stay strong. 

The journey for me is just starting. The road goes ever on an on, out from the door where it began. I'm being chased by wraiths who are telling me no at every turn.

 

I've made it to the safety of Rivendell where I'm being guided and directed. I'm learning. I'm growing. I've found my flaws and have been told where I need to go from here.



  I have a long journey ahead of me. I have to find the Fellowship that will follow me into the depths of Mount Doom. These contests are just another trail in the road. A test until I get there. The same is for everyone. There may be people further in the process, but they're still struggling with rejection, whether it be from their editor, agent or readers. It's easy to forget that they're getting rejected too.

My journey isn't over just because I got rejected from this last contest. My precious hasn't made it to its journeys end and that's okay. There is still a long road ahead.

 

(Sorry. I had a Hobbit/Lord of the Rings marathon.)