Oh! Twitter pitching is a whole thing. I am relatively new to it, because I found out about it and dove into it last year.
But I wanted to offer my thoughts on it, because I cannot describe the awesomeness that is the writing and publishing communities helping other people online.
This month, June 2017, there has already been a round of #PitMad, there will be a round of #SFFPit and last I saw #70pit17 is happening. And, #QueryKombat is going on. More events are listed at Carissa Taylor’s Pitch Contest Calendar.
What are all these contests? Generally they involve some form of pitching your manuscript on Twitter. There are other components to different contests, (some which include help with queries and manuscripts), but I’ll focus on Twitter pitching here.
I thought it was a great challenge to get a pitch for my novel into 140 characters. I came up with several, actually. Then, because I was going to work on the day of the event, I tried to schedule my pitches to be posted for #PitMad on Tweetdeck, which I had never used for tweet-scheduling before. There was some technical difficulties, to say the least.
But it was worth it, and continuing my interactions and continuing to follow the communities and events has helped a lot.
The chance to reach agents and editors through Twitter is such a great motivator. It wasn’t until I’d been through several events that I finally figured out what my main (longer than 140 characters) elevator pitch should be.
When you’re forced to pare ideas down, it really makes you think what you stand to lose by deleting one detail over another.
Practice makes perfect.
And I am always grateful to the creators and moderators of these events for doing so. Can you imagine running a Twitter-sized event? I’ve been backstage in theater, libraries, charity events… I can’t imagine doing it all online.
Bonus: because of these events, I learned about #ownvoices. I’ve seen how it’s increasingly important to other people and myself that I’m writing about my own experience. How important it is to seek out opportunities where writers are representing themselves and being represented fairly. More on that later.
I’ve seen those, but I’ve never participated. Nor have I ever really looked at them closely. Sounds like something I should try eventually.
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They’re pretty fun, but it’s easy to get overwhelmed because of how many people are involved and how quickly Twitter moves. I just catch what I can and connect with people as it comes.
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