Today is the first day of the Pitch Wars Party for the mentees of 2021.
Writers introduced themselves and their book with vision boards, artwork, and author photos.
In 280 characters or less, mentees are showing us their voice, their genre, and their overall aesthetic. Going through the hashtag, you'll find tons of fun and interesting writers who crafted unique angles to their introduction.
Seeing everyone's beautifully crafted and curated posts makes me excited to get to the point that I am ready to participate in Pitch Wars myself. My goal is to be ready by next year's submission opening.
It's an attainable goal if I'm willing to really kneed my manuscripts, and finally shift gears to only working on one. Even if I don't get chosen as a mentee, it would be great to have my 280-character pitch, vision board, cover direction, self introduction... oh, and have my general genre and target audience figured out?
The best way I can describe my genre is 'speculative fiction'. I enjoy reading and writing most genres that fall under this umbrella term. Extraterrestrial stuff? Love it. Creature features? Yes please. Paranormal stuff? You know it. Dystopian? For sure.
Narrowing down my genre any more than that, at this point, makes me hesitate at the risk of excluding any other possible paths.
Can you tell I have commitment and decision-making issues?
I know there are mixed feelings about whether or not working cross-genre works for a career, and I don't completely protest narrowing it down, but until I decide which path makes sense to walk down, I'm going to explore all of them.
To quote the author of my most-recent reads:
“You can't find your voice if you don't use it.” — Austin Kleon
I’m exploring the #PWParty21 hashtag on Twitter today and the rest of the week for creative inspiration, and to hype up the mentees & fellow participants!
If you’re like me, I invite you to get curious with me about what you like about particular posts (aesthetic? voice? something else?) Try to observe and explore what draws your attention and why!
I also recommend adding such inspiration ideas to your Swipe File, a digital or analog that serves as a home for anything and everything you can creatively 'steal' from (I adopted this practice from Austin Kleon’s book Steal Like an Artist , which I strongly recommend adding to your creative library if you haven’t yet!).
REMEMBER: It's wonderful to be inspired by people, but there's a major difference between 'stealing like an artist' (using inspirations from others to create your own work) and plagiarism (taking credit for and/or using someone else's work without their permission). Always do the former, never do the ladder!
Just because you’re not ready to participate in Pitch Wars yet, doesn’t mean you can’t participate. Doing the research and learning from the existing community is one of the most important steps to be prepared!
Rather than wait until I'm where they are, I'm sharing my growth with you and this tribe.
Hopefully, we'll learn something together.