Twitter Pitch Practice (TPP)

Hey queriers...
Congratulations in The Writers Voice contest to Team Krista for winning narrowly over Team MonicaBW!
Krista commented on my contest entry (blog post below) that I was on her "Short short list" which made me feel a lot better about not making a team.
Awww, shucks.


So.  Moving on...
Did everyone hear about The Writers' Voice Pitch contest on Twitter? It will be held May 24 from 12-6 pm EDT.

(At first, I kept thinking, why is it WVTP? All I can see is in WVTP Writers Voice Toilet Paper.

Duh!)

I'm going to post my pitches, if you have any ideas how I might improve, please let me know in the comments.

Anyone who wants feedback on theirs, put it in the comments and I'll reply what I think.

Here is a blog post by Becca Weston to give you tips how to get started writing your pitch.  Here is another post by Michelle Mason where you can also share your pitches.  Even if you're not querying now, but you have a finished ms, writing a pitch a good exercise.


My 2 are below:  


#WVTP MG fantasy: Eve finds a time-travelling diary, meets Jane from 1872, finds out Jane will board a doomed ship, and has to save her.


#WVTP MG fantasy: Having a secret friend who lives in 1872 is the best, until Eve finds out Jane's planning to board a ship...that's doomed.


Good luck!

Word Snob

I have been working on a short list of words.  They are words bug me because they are over-used, others because they are just stupid words. 
(My blog, my opinions.)


Over-used Words:
You will find these on blogger and twitter profiles.  
Amazing, as in "I am represented by the amazing xx of xx Literary!"
Fabulous, as in "I am represented by the fabulous xx of xx Literary!"
See how many people are represented by "amazing" or "fabulous" agents.
Seriously? Writers, of all people, should have more than two positive adjectives at their disposal.


Awful, Hideous words:
Newbie.  Sorry if you just used it the other day.  It sounds saccharine to me.  Perhaps if you were using it to say: a puppy is a "newbie dog," or a baby is a "newbie person."  But if you're using it to describe an adult human being who just started a worthy, new endeavor, it makes me cringe.


Squee.  I will not ever squee.  Not if I get a book deal, not if I win the Nobel Prize.  Pigs squee.  
Enough said.  


This is a hilarious article by a guy with a similar concern.  


Anyone want to add any? I couldn't be the only one with word peeves.

Extra Love Today

This morning, when I was watching Peter get on the bus, I did what I always do with my adorable six year old.  I kissed his little blonde head, shooed him on the bus, and stood on the sidewalk, waving.  He smiled at me, his face right next to the big #17 sign taped to the window.


Today, though, another little boy was standing (yes, standing up from his seat--they do that) right behind Peter.  He was watching me wave, and he is only six too.  He hasn't figured out yet that if someone you don't know is waving to you, they might be waving to someone near you.  


He waved back.  So I waved to Peter, then I waved to the boy.


We waved while everyone got on the bus, the three of us.


As the bus pulled away, I did what I always do.  I blew Peter a kiss.


Lucky me today; I got two kisses back.


LOVE first graders.

Writer's Voice Contest! (Because I can't really sing.)

I'm participating in The Writer's Voice Contest!

SILVER POOL OF LIGHT is a MG fantasy, 48,000 words

Query:

            Eve Tilton is the kind of eleven-year-old you would expect to be much more interested in shopping for her next celebrity gala than anything that happened a hundred years ago.  But Eve is captivated by Jane Mayhew, who lives in the same house Eve is visiting on Martha’s Vineyard, but in 1872, because Jane writes to her.  In an old diary, through time.  From 1872. 

            Jane’s letters are not dull and proper as Eve might’ve expected from a Victorian farm girl; in fact, Eve thinks Jane is a hoot.  Their letter-writing and eventual friendship across a century is so, so much better than shopping for party dresses, even for a girl on the fringe of celebrity.

            Eve and Jane share a love of lemonade and cats and a bewilderment of boys; they both lost their mothers in boating accidents and they both suffer attentive, industrious fathers.  The only awkwardness is that Jane, who barely remembers her mother, has a passionate desire to sail the seven seas while Eve, who was with her mother when she drowned, has a passionate fear of the ocean.  Since they live 140 years apart and communicate through letters, it doesn’t seem to be a problem until Jane is invited to go on a whaling voyage around the world, and Eve finds out, to her horror, that the ship is doomed.

            Eve’s focus on saving Jane is splintered when she is suddenly invited deeper into the polished world of her famous friends.  The best friend Eve’s ever had is about to die, and every choice she makes seems to lead Jane to a horrible, watery fate.

First 250 words of SILVER POOL OF LIGHT:

Not all attics are full of shadows, spider webs, and ugly hatboxes dotted with evidence of unwelcome creatures.  Those are the kind of attics where children get locked away.  Some attics are tidy and fresh-smelling, free of interlopers, and if the right child should be present, full of undiscovered treasures and possibility.

In Aunt Tibby’s grime-free attic, there were treasures everywhere, and most of them were diaries.  Crooked, almost toppling stacks of old diaries covered the wooden floorboards and wide shelves, because the museum had run out of room and Aunt Tibby wasn’t about to throw them away.  Heavens no.

Somewhere, in one of the piles of antique leather and cloth-covered books was a particular diary that Eve, Aunt Tibby’s grand-niece, couldn’t wait to find.  It was the key to her questions, because now that she was eleven she had questions, about her mother.  So for months, every time Eve visited Martha’s Vineyard she hunted for this diary. 

Eve’s mama had named her after the girl who wrote it, Aunt Tibby said, because that Eve was courageous, strong, and funny, just like she had wanted her little girl to be.  But Mama got in a sailboat accident and sunk under the cold, blue water, which, for a long time, made Eve feel absolutely not courageous or strong.

And lately, not terribly funny either. 

She needed to find the diary and read about girls who were courageous and strong.  Because what Eve wanted most in the world was to have her father say, “You would have made your mother proud.”

Authentic (Greek?) Voice

 My thirteen year old daughter is doing a unit on ancient Greece in her social studies class.  This weekend's assignment was to "Write a conversation between representatives from Sparta and Athens."

She did.  You know that tricky writer thing, VOICE?  She nailed it.  However, the voice she nailed was the 13 year old sarcastic girl voice, not necessarily the Spartan and Athenian leaders' voices.  I submit to you this worthy example:

Epicurus: Well, I guess we could be a little more gentle and merciful, and since your warriors will all probably die of plague when they get back home anyway…

Simmias: Really optimistic of you.

A true classic.

Not DIVERGENT Enough

Last week my kids were on spring break.  We did not travel, because remember?  We built a castle last fall?  Yeah.  Turrets are expensive.  Don't even go there with the drawbridge.  


Anyway, I told them I wanted to read something fun, and of all the books we've bought lately, they gave me Divergent.


Okay.  Good vacation read...which I really needed because I was in the middle of Tinkers.


Keep in mind, it was their idea.


NOW they're getting all mad when there's a hornet in the bathroom and Bridget refuses to go anywhere near it, and I say, "Can we be a little more dauntless here?  'Fussy' is not a faction."


Or when I say to Rebecca while I'm tidying the kitchen, "In my fear landscape, I keep missing trash day."


I get very big eye rolls.  They heave agonized sighs.


Sometimes it is exhausting to have tween daughters in your house.  


I find those times, so far at least, balance nicely with the times when I am getting back at them and they don't even know it!

Baseball story on NPR (starring a certain children's book writer)

Last week I wrote about how my Fenway Park story was chosen to be on the radio.  It aired yesterday.  I keep getting e-mails and even a tweet or two with people saying, "Did I just hear you on the radio???"


CLICK HERE for the direct link to the story:


I love all this attention.
*a-hem*
I mean, I find this very fulfilling as a writer.