Open Anthology, Conference Tidbits & Pitch News

Hello! It feels strange to not have to post daily and not have something I'm required to post. I've been recovering from the wonderful (albeit exhausting) conference weekend and figured I should get back to work.

Quickly, my goal is to blog at least every Tuesday and Thursday. I may post more frequently, but Tuesday and Thursday are minimum posting days. Assuming I'm not posting every day, I will put notifications out on Facebook when I make a post.

Before I talk about conference, I wanted to post this site that is taking submissions of flash fiction for an anthology: Sunday Snaps. I made my first attempt at flash fiction and submitted it a week or so ago. There are some great photos on there to inspire a story. If you don't want to use it for flash fiction, it might be a good place to go for general prompts for whatever type of writing you want to do. Submissions are accepted through June 6, 2011.

I also wanted to post a reminder that J.A. Kazimer is taking submissions for The New Never News. A new month has started, so you can sign up for a giveaway for the month of May on that blog, as well. Check it out!

If you were around way back at the beginning of the A to Z Challenge, I posted about business cards for writers. It had been recommended that I get business cards to exchange with other writers. This sounded odd to me, but when I took an in-person poll of those writers at Rico's, the majority had cards. I came home and made some via Vista Print so I would have them in time for the conference, at least. I felt a bit silly, but I ended up being asked for my card twice in the first workshop I attended. Ultimately, I ended up keeping business cards in my name tag so they were easy to get to, because people frequently asked for them. The point in all this being that it doesn't hurt to have business cards with your website, blog, email, phone number, address, name and the title "writer." You can leave out anything you don't have or don't want going to anyone (my address isn't on mine). I have a stack of other people's business cards I need to go through now, as well, and I met some great people at this conference.

This is already getting a tad long, so the last thing I'll mention is that I did end up getting a pitch session at the conference. I put my name on the waiting list and was one of only a couple people who got one of the agents/editors they had requested. This means someone must have either canceled or switched to someone else. I received this news at 5pm on Friday evening. The pitch was for 2:40pm the next day, right after lunch, so I went home after that day's conference ended (about 9pm) and frantically worked on a pitch based on what I had learned that day. I won't say who I pitched to, but I did get a request to send a synopsis and the first three chapters of the book. Even if this goes nowhere, I consider this a small victory on the road to publication.

In honor of having made my pitch, I will talk about what I learned at the conference about loglines and pitches. I went to one session on pitching and one on figuring out your second logline on Friday, and it really helped get me through the pitch, despite being horrendously nervous. I'm pretty sure the editor I pitched to could feel me quaking through the table! Look for information and pointers On Thursday!

Happy Writing!