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NEWS FLASH: We received a partial request from one of the participating editors in Pitch to Publication!
The request did not, alas, come from the editor who had previously short-listed me. So there is a bit of disappointment there. This request came quite out of the blue, from one of the other editors we had submitted to. So it was rather heart-stopping to see that e-mail in my inbox.
I had been following all of the editors participating in #PitchtoPublication, because many of them periodically tweeted comments about the queries they had been given, and such hints are very tantalizing:
Is that tweet about us? Ours is funny, right? How many middle grade fantasies can she have received?
It’s torture, but you can’t not look. Of the five editors we had submitted to for this contest, only three of them were tweeting about it, and our partial request came from one of those who had not said a word. So, PLOP! that shoe just dropped into our lap out of nowhere. So we sent off our shiny new first 50 pages — newly rewritten and revised based on the amazing feedback we’ve been getting from our summer workshop.
What all of this really means is the rewrites are working. We got noticed by two readers in a contest when we had never gotten noticed before. So even if we do not make it through in this highly competitive and subjective contest, we know our sample pages and first 250 words are working now, and can query with confidence.
Watch this space; the third shoe will drop next Monday, the 20th, and we’ll know if our editor chose our manuscript. I’ll announce the results here.
Am I Doing This Right? 
I was shortlisted twice (for one editor I made it into the top 30, and for another into the top 32), but not picked by any of my five editors. I’m not sure what to make of this, so I thought I’d ask: if you were in my situation, how would this make you feel? Confident or not confident in your writing? Just like you, I had just revised my query and pages.
Thanks!
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I think that is encouraging. Have you been querying agents, and gotten any feedback or requests? How have you fared in other contests? What was encouraging to me personally was the fact that I got any attention at all after never getting any in any previous contest.
These contests are very subjective, and more fiercely competitive than straight querying. In this case it is the job of the editor to pick only one. They HAVE to find reasons to reject the rest. Those reasons may not reflect what an agent might think when going through a slush pile. As several of the editors in PTP have remarked, they wished they could have chosen many more than they were forced to. I wouldn’t equate not getting chosen with rejection. Even agents might reject a perfectly good submission simply because he or she already signed a book very similar to yours, or it is simply not tot their personal liking.
Keep Calm and Query On!
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Thank you so much for your reply 🙂 This was my first contest, so I’m trying to compare it to querying, which is probably why I’m finding it difficult to draw conclusions. I need to send this version of my query out to more agents to know, I guess.
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I’m pulling for you, John! Looking forward to hearing good news in your next post. All the best, Sandra
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[…] Waiting for the Other Shoe July 14, 2015 […]
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