This year, SNHU’s MFA program began offering a Pitch Weekend. While my novel isn’t perfectly polished, I am moving through my heavy revisions at a fantastic rate, and I feel confident and comfortable participating in this event.
I’m not expecting much of anything to come from this event. There are some fantastic agents involved with the Pitch Weekend. I’m excited and grateful for the opportunity. But this will be my first time pitching anything, so I’m working on keeping my expectations realistic and valuing this time as a great way to learn and connect with an authority in the business side of the writing industry.
With that being said, I also don’t want to sell myself short.
Because I am totally putting on my batman t-shirt!
I believe in this manuscript and these characters, and I am confident that I will be able to find the right person to create collaborate with who has an honest passion for the story. Whether I find that person on Saturday or five years from now, what matters most to me is finding the right person that I can build a strong relationship with.
(Pst… I lied. It’s a Hanson t-shirt. I’m doing it with the confidence of three grown men singing MMMBop and loving every minute of the success the song brought them!)
Each student who signed up is given a single session with an agent of their choice that can last up to ten minutes at the discretion of the agent. It’s a very quick process, and I have to admit, an intimidating one!
One thing that SNHU does right with their MFA program is encouraging students to build a supportive writing community that includes reaching out to our instructors. My thesis instructor was–it’s so weird to use past tense after being in school full-time since 2012! But anyways, it was Marisa Cleveland, and I couldn’t have asked for a better instructor to reach out to. I emailed her and asked for her advice on pitching as a first timer, and she didn’t hesitate to set up a Zoom call for me to practice. Marisa offered great information about how I should approach agents and helped guide me as I fumbled through my first attempts at talking about my writing in a professional setting. And because of her guidance, I feel comfortable and confident heading into Saturday’s pitch.
Marisa also helped me see pitching from the agent’s perspective by sharing what the workload is like, especially after NaNoWriMo, when they are typically flooded with queries. Our conversation about that really changed how I view agents, and while I’m still intimated, she made them just people again, the same as me.
So I’m excited. I’m still nervous–I’m an anxious person on the best of days–but I feel great about my manuscript’s potential. And can I stop and take a minute to remind myself that I wrote an entire book? I mean, look at this…
A whole book. An entire freaking book. And I did that. I wrote that.
She is a chunk, and I created that. I’ve been working on this manuscript for a little over a year, and to see how it’s evolved into this rich story boggles the mind at times. I did that.
No matter what happens on Saturday, I have done something that I can be incredibly proud of. And I am proud of it and the influence that writing this beast has had on my children. I have two beautiful girls that came in and asked me about my book after they got home from school, and seeing their faces light up when I showed them that manuscript…goodness, I’m tearing up just thinking about it again.
I’ve made my children proud, and I’ve made them believe in their own writing. We made each of them a planning binder full of writing resources. Elodie carries hers everywhere and is a lawful planner with character sheets that detail everything down to the character’s favorite socks. She writes short stories in different, flawless points of view. Eowyn drew and wrote an entire comic book called Dragon Gods and continues to be obsessed with anything and all things related to writing about dragons. And they learned to love writing by watching me write. Seeing how proud and happy they are for me is more than I could ever wish for.
And don’t get me started on my partner, Craig. It’s hard to top those kids and their support, but he comes pretty damn close. From reading my chapters to listening to me ramble about my magic system and discussing character motivations to plot holes, he has been there through every single moment of this journey.
When I was a senior in high school, my health spiraled out of control. I missed so much school for testing and treatments. I had to drop AP English and history because I traveled six hours round trip three days a week to go through pelvic floor physical therapy and to learn how to take care of my health and medication needs from home. That time of my life was confusing and traumatizing.
And I remember when I dropped those courses, my AP history teacher told me how disappointed she was in seeing me waste my potential. That same week, my guidance counselor called me into the principal’s office, where my principal lectured me on what it was like for people who were “really disabled” and told me I would “fail at life.” I was seventeen at the time and had maxed out on treatments for my disease that year. I would eventually find out I had a genetic connective tissue disorder that was exacerbating my declining health and would go on to have my bladder removed after the organ died and I began to head into the early stages of kidney failure. When I tell you how those words from each of them haunted me for so long…
Writing The Daughter of the Veil and helping Erissa find freedom, purpose, and identity has helped me to find my own. We have grown alongside each other. The more I found myself in Erissa, the more those voices faded. And as I ready myself for Saturday, they are completely silent.
No matter what happens on Saturday or in the next year, or even if my book never sees the light of day, that unconditional love and support from my family and learning how to give the same to myself is worth more than anything. It’s enough… it is absolutely everything.