After working for a year on platform by creating the radio show Conscious Voices for WCRS, I'm back to novels and brushing up a final final version of Novel 3 to sell in New York. The International Women Writer's Guild (IWWG) holds a pitch session this weekend. Sunday there is a meet-the-authors open house, a book fair, and then a meet-the-agents open house. The blurb promises that past events have "yielded wonderful matches between authors and agents."
A friend and I are travelling up together on a 4am flight, (OMG - that's before my rooster is even up) and we plan to practice-pitch to our local IWWG chapter the day before.
Why is it taking so long to get novel 3 out the door? Last year at the Columbus Writer's Conference I had a session with editor Sally Kim, and she encouraged me to get in touch with several agents. But after listening to editors and agents talk about their needs, I felt that I had to back up and construct more of a platform. I dove into creating a radio show for WCRS fm. Twenty-two episodes later felt I'd earned a break, and that it was overdue time to get that novel once again into position for an agent.
A girl can only do so much!
When it's my turn to sit in front of an agent, I'll tell her that Sally did want to see my book, when I'd found someone who could talk to her. (Some editors in the big publishing houses can't talk to writers unless the writer has an agent.)
The trainer at the gym had the nicest thing to say to me when I told her I'd be going to New York. "I wish you luck - you deserve it. You work so hard at it."
Maybe that's why I feel so calm going into this. I've done the hoofwork. The novel's been combed through 13 times. I've had a professional editor comment on the manuscript, and taken her advice to heart in the subsequent redrafts. I've taken time to build the platform and labored over designs for the final website. Is it worth it? Has it been worth it? Yes.
When the conference is over, when my plane touches ground back in Columbus, if I don't find a match at IWWG I'll start contacting agents one by one until I find that right someone. In the meantime, I'll begin novel 4. I'll record a show. I'll be starting on the promotion for the NFSH Healing in America training courses in Ohio in March 2009. And it will all come together eventually, and it will all be good.
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