Bright Lights, Big City Pt. 3

Sunday morning was bittersweet. I had a couple more sessions to attend before hopping on my flight back to Charlotte, but was just getting the hang of things in NYC. The one hangup I'd had with the whole weekend was the fact that I felt like I was missing out on some of the sessions in order to do mundane things, like find lunch or check out, and so if I had the chance to do it again, I would schedule a buffer day in on each side of the trip. That way, I'd have had more time to get out and explore. Basically, once the conference started, I was locked in unless I wanted to skip.

That morning, I attended a session from DIY MFA about writing MG and YA. I started out initially as a YA author. I began writing as a young adult, and as a result, most of my characters are close to my age. I find it hard to stretch. While I had been pitching Momentum as New Adult, NA is very new (no pun intended) and has a murky, nebulous definition. I knew this session would be beneficial to me. One of the main takeaways of the lecture, aside from some fabulous ideas about working yourself out of plotting issues, was that writing MG and YA is super fun (which it is) and also that it is not lesser than other forms of literature. Yes, we want to write about teenagers, but teenagers are also very good at pointing out bullshit or when you're pandering to them. Writing like a teenager and about teenagers is hard. You have less room for error since your audience will dip out pretty quickly if they smell a rat.

I did skip a couple sessions to beat the aforementioned rush to check out at 11 and to have some time to wander the area surrounding the hotel for food. I was looking for a sandwich shop which ended up being across the street (I have a terrible sense of direction), but stumbled upon a street fair instead. I bought some costume jewelry and got a crepe!

It was supposed to be strawberry and Nutella, but whatever, banana works, too.

The closing keynote speaker was Kimberla Lawson Roby, creator of the Reverend Curtis Black series. She's about to publish her twenty-first novel! She began as a self-published author before selling 10,000 copies and being picked up by an agent. Her husband took out money from his 401K so they could print the first 3,000 copies of her debut novel, which she sold from her home.

She's an incredibly personable, intelligent, and funny woman. As Harlan Coben advised, "Don't be a douchebag." All these successful writers who had spoken to us, the unpublished authors scrambling our way to the top, had been the kindest, most engaging, and interesting people. They fielded our questions with grace and patience and made us laugh, almost moved us to tears.

That's how I'd felt the entire conference. I'd been surrounded by these veritable writing juggernauts, where I should have been intimidated and completely awestruck by their success, but instead, I found myself emphasizing with them, nodding my head as each of them spoke. For the first time, I was beginning to feel as if I belonged, as if I were a writer.

Once the conference ended, I had the hotel hold my bags since my flight wasn't until seven. I took the subway ALL BY MYSELF (thankyouverymuch) to Bri's lovely apartment, kicking myself that I hadn't remembered that she lived in NYC so I didn't have to waste money on a hotel. But whatever, I'm not bitter about it. There, she and her girlfriend Rebecca made me their classic breakfast sandwich, complete with a latte, watermelon, and fresh orange juice. Like, shut up. I should have stayed here and saved myself the cash. Anyway, check out the views:

Just look at that sautéed kale goodness. 

Broadway Street

These little tufts of green are Central Park. 

Panorama! 

Couldn't resist a mirror selfie. 

They had to run off, but the apartment was close to Central Park. I had to do ONE touristy thing, so I trekked over and took some pics/selfies. Does anyone else get that gut omg-do-I-really-look-like-that reaction whenever they hit the camera reverse button on their phone? Nope? Just me?

It's tourist season in the city! 

This made me think of a million movies. 

When I can't seem to take a good picture, I just ruin it by making a face. We all win. 

I finished Eleanor & Park while sitting on the runway at LaGuardia, somewhat sad that this journey had ended. However, I planned the trip strategically. I quit my job the day before, jetted off to NYC where I made some fabulous contacts to follow up with about Momentum, and now I was flying back to begin the journey to Wilmington for graduate school.

The fan art inside the cover of Eleanor & Park is just fantastic. 

It's a strange life, full of twists and turns, but as my dad has informed me, I tend to thrive on the chaos.

Bright Lights, Big City Pt. 2

Saturday morning, I was feeling much more refreshed and spent the majority of the early hours (I wake up with the sun) revising my pitch and getting my time down to ninety seconds.

Early morning excitement! This is what happens when I have too much caffeine. 

Ten minutes to nine, I rushed to the elevator so I'd have plenty of time to get to the Fifty Shades of Publishing session in the Vanderbilt room on the second floor. Because many attendees were staying at the hotel and going to and from sessions at the same time, finding an elevator with enough room to ride had become a Herculean task. As I raced to the elevator, I spotted a woman walking toward me, her lanyard bouncing off her chest. Dang it! I had forgotten mine. I dashed to my room and back to the elevator. The woman was kind enough to hold the elevator for me, and we shared a laugh at how disheveled I was.

She told me she was a literary agent, and in effort to drive the conversation away from pitching (because it would be kind of expected that I'd pitch her if she represented my genre), I started babbling about the obvious.

"Are you going to the Fifty Shades of Publishing session?" I said.

She showed me her badge. "Yes, I'm the speaker!"

And then I died a little inside. I should probably know or at least recognize the names of the people I'm about to watch speak.

Anyway, her session gave me a lot of insight into the world of publishing as it stands today. There used to only be traditional publishing (through an agent and the Big Five) and self publishing, but there are now so many different options. While there, I met a woman from Wise Ink, which is an indie publisher out of Minneapolis. There's this whole new wave of publishing coming around called partner publishing, which uses crowd funding companies like Pubslush to help raise the overhead costs of printing. Then the partner publisher helps the author build a grass roots effort to cultivate an audience and bring their book to the masses. It offers another opportunity and some hand holding for new writers in a way that's begun to disappear from traditional publishing. I didn't even realize that was possible until attending this session. Some food for thought.

Finally, my pitch rolled around. In years past, the Pitch Slam was one large three hour session where you formed lines in front of the agents you wanted to pitch and waited. I'd read several blog posts about the experience and made the rough estimate that I'd get to pitch 2-3 agents. I had my list of five to work with. This year, the session was split into three 1 hour blocks with 1/3 as many people. And boy, did it work!

Lines were much shorter than I anticipated. I pitched to six agents and received business cards from all SIX requesting material! I even had a request for the full manuscript. My strategy was pitch the #1 on my list and work my way down. I thought it would be like ripping a bandaid off, in that I would be  relieved and laid back after pitching my first agent.

No! Not at all. My anxiety just got worse. Halfway through, I was sweating and fanning myself with my schedule. As I accumulated more and more cards, I worried about finally getting a "no." With several minutes to go, I found myself standing in the center of this room frantically reading through my pamphlet to find agents looking for New Adult, thriller, or suspense. At six minutes to go, I decided to call it a day (a great one, at that--pitching was a total success) and head out.

Then I was floating on cloud nine. I had a stack of business cards bouncing around in a pocket of my shoulder bag. I had people, who were in no way related to me or friends of mine, who might actually want to read this thing I'd been working on for years. WHAT.  The rest of the afternoon blurred by until Harlan Coben's keynote speech.

In the grand ballroom waiting for Mr. Coben to arrive.

Now in all my years of reading, I've never read a Harlan Coben book! He's published twenty-six of them, by the way, and sold over sixty million copies worldwide. So he's kind of a big deal. He's also incredibly tall and super funny. He shared all the horrific covers his publisher came up with for his first few books, one of which included a bloody football.

They seemed to like bleeding sport equipment? IDK. 

He'd shown up a bit discombobulated, claiming he'd forgotten the subject of his speech, and had written some basic do's and don't's of writing to share with us while in his cab. After his speech, I tweeted him that it's nice to know you can be a bit of a mess, but still successful. He favorited my tweet! So I'm basically famous now.

After the keynote, there was a cocktail reception with free booze (huzzah!), and the air buzzed with an almost summer camp/college orientation vibe. Everyone was interested in hearing what genre you were pitching, how your pitching went, what your background was, and how you were working toward publishing. I met some cool writer friends, even one from my hometown of Raleigh, NC!

Oh hey, Grand Central! 

That night, I met my freshman college roommate and her girlfriend out for a fancy pants dinner in Tribeca. They met me in the lobby of the hotel and showed me the ins and outs of riding the subway in NYC. After dinner, we had drinks at a swanky dark bar. You know the type, the one where the bartenders are mixologists and wear suspenders. We have a lot of those in Asheville.

I don't know which building that is, but it looks great! 

Fun Facts:

1. My hotel was down the street from Grand Central station.

Ew, tourists. 

2. If your bartender has to open another bottle in the middle of pouring your glass of wine (and tells you that you would be smart to drink some of what you're already got while he's preoccupied), do it.
3. Fluke Crudo means raw fish. And it's delicious.

The restaurant where we had dinner: Telepan Local

4. Eye contact goes a long way when pitching an agent. Don't read from a card.
5. Everyone else is as nervous, if not more, about explaining their book to a stranger.

So that was my Saturday in NYC. Stay tuned to hear about the rest of the conference and my NYC adventures on Sunday!

Bright Lights, Big City Pt.1

(^^^borrowing a little Gary Clark, Jr. for some inspiration there)

Well, hey y'all! I'm back!

I know. It's been a long, long time, and you probably thought I fell off the face of the planet. In blogging terms, yes, yes I did. However, I now have some wonderful experiences to report back.

This past weekend, I flew up to NYC for the Writer's Digest Annual Conference. You see, back in April when I thought graduate school was not going to happen, my lovely roommate and best friend Sara convinced me that I needed to get out there and try to go to one of these conferences. After all, that's where Veronica Roth met her agent. A Cinderella story after all!

So I signed up for this madness called Pitch Slam at the conference. In a nutshell, this was speed dating with agents. I had three minutes of face-to-face time with an agent representing my genre of work, ninety seconds of which I could pitch my novel. Then I had to do it again and again and again. FOR AN HOUR.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

My new friend Shadow at my cousin's house. She didn't want me to leave.

Friday, I flew out of Charlotte early in the morning and arrived at the lovely Roosevelt Hotel in midtown Manhattan around 11, a feat which seemed to me, really awesome. 1.) I haven't been to NYC since 2001 and 2.) I've never taken a trip completely alone before, and that's what I was doing. While I was very excited for the conference, I was also as anxious as a cat. I hadn't slept the night before and spent all week trying to perfect my pitch while drinking too much wine.

Some light reading for the plane. Also, ELEANOR & PARK ruined me. Go read it. It's fantastic. Rainbow Rowell is amazing. The end. 

OMG, I'm official. 

I wasn't pitching until Saturday after lunch, so that meant I had plenty of time to psyche myself out about what was coming.

That afternoon, I was most excited to see Chuck Sambuchino speak during the Pitch Perfect Session about what to expect the next day. After listening to everyone's questions, I realized no one else had any clue what they were doing either. In fact, they seemed more confused that I was. Chuck schooled us on the elements of a solid pitch:

A log line: one concise sentence that describes your book. 

The details: your title, genre, and word count 

The Pitch: 

1. Introduce your main character. 

2. Tell us something interesting about him and tell us what he wants. 

3. Introduce the inciting incident (what's driving the story--why did you start where you did?)

4. What's the main conflict? (Basically repeating the log line.) 

5. What are the complications? 

6. Give an unclear wrap up. 

7. Make sure to include the stakes throughout: if the main character fails, what is at stake? 

And bam! There's your pitch. I was relieved that much of mine already had that. You can read what I pitched over on my Works page. It's the same thing.

The lobby of my amazing hotel. 

I'm so fancy. 

After the Pitch Perfect session, I stuck around for a panel on Ask the Editors and Ask the Agents. Some interesting notes here: Don't use a Q&A as a way to pitch your novel and/or badger the agents/editors as to why you haven't been published before. It's in poor form. There was one highlight though: the 70 year-old woman asking the senior editor of Harlequin how much erotic content was too much. If you have to ask, then it's probably too much. 

My swanky hotel room

By the time the keynote speaker began that night, I had a headache like a bulldozer and was so hungry I wanted to gnaw my arm off. I hadn't eaten most of the day because of said nerves. The fantastic Dani Shapiro gave a wonderful speech about facing the blank page and giving yourself permission to call yourself a writer, something I have most definitely struggled with. Now I basically want to read everything this woman has ever written. The combination of her beautiful words and my low blood sugar nearly had me in tears. I went up to my room, ordered a $35 cheeseburger, took a shower, and passed out for seven hours straight.

My pitch revision would have to come the next morning.

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I've split this post into three parts which I'll be publishing throughout the week because it's simply too long.