Curtis Brown Pitch

     As part of my pledge to myself to be more proactive, I decided to enter the second of Curtis Brown's last-Friday-of-the-month pitch competitions on August 28th. The idea is that you pitch your book in a Tweet and if one of their or Conville & Walsh's agents favourite it, then you can send in a synopsis and first three chapters to that particular agent.

     I hate writing pitches, synopses, query letters etc and it was good practice to get it down to those pithy 140 characters. One important writing tip I picked up from a writing class, is to ask yourself if you are using Latinate words. Don't! In my case there is always a simpler and more direct way of saying something and it's taken me a while to realise this.

     I was quite pleased with the finished product: `Rebecca tries to uncover the secret which stole her voice. Is there a link between the past & the violence escalating around her? #PitchCB'

     And then I waited! Within a minute Rebecca Ritchie had favourited it, then there was nothing. It was only towards the end of the afternoon, when I'd given up hope, that Susan Armstrong at Conville & Walsh also favourited it.

      I was heartened to learn that the basic plot appeals. I read that at the first event at the end of July there were around 2,000 pitches and only 100 got favourited. So emboldened was I that I pitched my second book late afternoon: `London. A Japanese boy is trafficked, an Egyptian man dies in a kinky brothel, an Oxford Student is poisoned. How are they linked?'

     Nothing happened! I felt so discouraged, until about 24 hours later Gordon Wise favourited it and I could hope again! How powerful these agents are...

     Going up to the Festival of Writing in York tomorrow, so I will definitely need one of these:

Followed by a big one of these: