I thought I’d do a bit of a breakdown of my Pitchwars inbox,
for those who like numbers and stuff. (I’m generally allergic to numbers,
though I’ve always found query stats interesting, so I thought this might
interest a few.)
I got 84 submissions.
Of those, NONE were for the wrong age category. Well done, my applicants! A few
were in genres I mentioned as not being my favorite, but I think I sounded
fairly open minded in my wish-list, so I didn’t auto-reject for that. (That
said, it wasn’t a huge surprise that I didn’t end up selecting any sci-fi or
high fantasy. Next year I think I’ll sound less open-minded in my wish-list. I
hate to rule out a whole genre when occasionally I love a book from it, but I
also want to be honest about what I’m most drawn to.)
I asked for more
pages from 17 people, and there were several I thought were quite strong
but did not request pages from. (Mainly because I just didn’t feel the
connection from the opening chapter, but I felt certain someone else would –
which is sooo frustrating, I understand, because I heard it a lot while
querying.)
I could have very happily
worked with at least 8 of my submissions.
10 of the people who
submitted to me were chosen as a mentee or alternate.
At least 4 that I
thought were quite strong did not get chosen at all (but I cheer them on as
they query, from one writer who was never chosen for contests to another!).
I’ve gotten 49 email thank
you’s (and more on Twitter). This is not expected – don’t feel like you
should thank me or other mentors if you haven’t already. But the graciousness
of the responses was really overwhelming. Even if you’re a very evolved person,
it’s difficult to not be chosen for something. It’s difficult to thank someone
who didn’t choose you. But I have only one response, of those 49, that was not
completely and utterly awesome.
(Though I really appreciated the gracious response, do note
that you should not thank agents for their responses to queries. You can thank
them if they’ve responded to requested materials, but otherwise they’ve just
got enough to deal with in their inbox. And if you thank them, do not ask
follow up questions. This did not happen to me – again, well done! – but some
other mentors had people asking if they could give feedback on a revised query,
etc. Do not do this with agents.)
I chose 2 MG
contemporaries. One of the writers has been working on her book for three years. The other has written
and queried four previous manuscripts.
They are in this for the long haul. I will do another upcoming post introducing
you to them and their marvelous manuscripts.
For now, thank you so much for gracing me with your
submission. I was blown away by the quality, and feel like I understand more
and more what agents mean when they say they loved something but just not enough, or that they didn’t love it
but are sure someone else will, or that they didn’t quite connect though the
writing was strong.
So many of you are so very close. I hope you all will stick
with it. And if you haven’t gotten an agent by the time Pitchwars rolls around
again next year – though I hope for your sake that you have – I hope you will
share your work with me again.
