Thursday, December 19, 2013

An Open Letter to all PitchWars Mentors and Mentees (from a Mentee)

For the past few years Brenda Drake has run a crazy level contest (over 2,700 submissions/675 entrants)  on her blog called PitchWars. Let me just steal some words from her description:
Pitch Wars is a contest where published/agented authors, editors, or interns choose one writer each, read their entire manuscript, and offer suggestions to shine it up for agents. The mentors also critique the writer’s pitch to get it ready for the agent round. Writers send applications (query and first page of manuscript) to the four mentors that best fit their work. The mentors then read all their applications and choose the writer they want to mentor for the next five weeks. Then we hold an agent round with over a dozen agents making requests.
Sounds pretty awesome doesn't it? Well, as someone who was cherry-picked by a ninja-Mentor this year (the AMAZING Renee Ahdieh) with CROW'S BLOOD, I can confirm that it most definitely is. I'm hard at work based on her editorial/critique notes. It's keeping me quite busy.

Here's the thing: I've seen a LOT of Mentors tweeting and commenting that they hope their Mentees don't hate them for being too harsh or nit-picky with their notes. I have a single word response to that: Impossible!

So, Mentors:

First: Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! I say that from the bottom of my heart. Even if you're not my Mentor and we're technically competing against each other: Thank you! You're awesome, amazing, and wonderful people to be doing what you're doing.

Now, onto the rest of it.

Don't pull your punches! We understand that they're thrown with the best intentions (ok, so maybe that's not the greatest metaphor). Keep giving it to us straight and professional, we can handle it. We're not made of fine gossamer glass.

You have to trust that we know our work isn't perfect, or we wouldn't have entered PitchWars in the first place. Moreover we know that you know our work isn't perfect. You got a look at it before you picked us. In many cases you saw more than the 5-page sample from the original submission.

You're giving your time and effort, not to mention expertise and insider knowledge to help us get our work into the best shape possible in a limited window of time. There isn't time to pussy-foot around playing nice. We need to get the job done.

On the flip-side: Mentees:

First: Congratulations, you were selected by a Mentor as either a primary or an alternate. That means you've got some chops. Take a few moments, pat yourself on the back, and inflate your ego.

Done? Good. There's a lot of work to do.

There's a certain level of trust every Mentee should be bringing to the table. Trust that we're in good hands and that every note that comes across that table is an effort by our Mentor to improve our work.

That said, the bulk of the hard work should fall on our shoulders. It's our book. This is our shot. We can't afford to miss it. Every last one of us should be taking this opportunity and holding on to it, squeezing it for all it's worth to get at the soft golden centre.

If your mentor gives you some hard truths that's a good thing, they're paying attention. We all have our natural talents, those bits of writing that just flow, those aspects of the work that we could sink ourselves into for days (plotting, dialog, world building, description, etc.). But we all have our weaknesses that we can only compensate for with craft (Shatner Commas, making that character that we know inside and out feel real, punctuation in general >.<).

Craft = Work. In many cases Craft = Hard Work. That hard work is why you're here. If your writing was perfect you wouldn't need a Mentor. So if your Mentor shines a light on the rust and broken bits of your story, don't complain.

Roll up your sleeves. It's time to get to work.

-Alex

P.S. Renee has been fantastically professional, if the other Mentors are half as good as she is there's going to be one hell of a fine showing at the Agent round.

P.P.S. I'm aware I could use the word protege, but Mentee is a word, regardless of what my browser, word processor, or operating system say. There are many reputable sources.

P.P.P.S. At some point we need to have a long talk about split infinitives.

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