Adara VS April 2022
In today’s video I look back over April, including: the agonizing wait for contest results, twitter pitching, my author website, a bus ride, and sending my first query! It’s a bit of a ramble, so feel free to put this on in the background, or enjoy spring footage.
Note: as well as the conventional rules for pitch competitions that I’ve mentioned, there are some variations. For example, the retweet function is reserved for publishers, but supports can quote retweet. It’s always worth double checking the specifics with the organisers.
Footage in the video shows bare trees sprouting buds that grow, blooming flowers, a plant pot with sunflower seedlings, and a photograph of me in my wheelchair under a cherry blossom tree.
Transcript
Welcome to The Canopy; a place to write my story one day at a time.
Hello and welcome to The Canopy!
In today's video: Adara versus April 2022
At the end of March I was preparing to enter the Write Mentor Summer Programme; a program aimed at children's writers that would help to develop your novel in four months before pitching it in an agent's showcase in April.
I'd finished my third round of edits and began April by writing my first ever attempt at a query. I also needed to submit a synopsis, but thankfully mine only needed a little bit of tweaking. I took part in the Write Mentor Chat on Twitter, where I could hear from the mentors, and ask them questions in an attempt to only pick three to apply to, which was incredibly tough! But the hardest part of the application was the 'why are you applying' question. I hate open-ended questions. Then, one week into April, the entries opened and I clicked send.
Then began the wait until April the 28th. Like I said in my previous video this month we planted sunflowers in the garden. This set the tone of the month. The work had been done, the bed was made, now I had to sit back and watch it grow.
I said I wouldn't touch my manuscript during April while I waited. I wanted distance so I had a reader's head-on the next time I went through it, so instead I sent it off to three beta readers, and tried to move on. At first, it felt like I was drifting without a focus, but I quickly honed in on a potential sequel idea, spending about a week coming up with the characters, plot points, and exploring them with creative writing exercises. I like to get my characters to tell me their backgrounds in their own words so I can get a feel for their voice. I also make my characters go and order a drink from a pub, bar or similar, both before and after the story. This gives me an idea of how the character arc I want to write is going to look, and what I should be aiming for to help them transform from that beginning to that after. This is something I'm hoping to explore further in May.
During May I also plan on setting up my box of ideas again. This is a box (a cardboard box) with a slotted lid, where if ever I have an idea or word I'd like to explore, I write it on a piece of card, put it in and forget about it. Then after about four or five weeks, I open it, sit on the floor, and rearrange my ideas in an attempt to come up with a story. I have a few ideas already from my week of character exploration, so they'll be the first thing going in. This may or may not turn into a sequel. It depends what I can pull together and ultimately where this novel ends up. Working on potential sequels isn't exactly the same thing as working on my current manuscript (even though it's in the same world), so I think I found a bit of a loophole there to work with.
I also watched a bit more of R.L. Stein's MasterClass - R.L. stein being the person who wrote the Goosebumps series - and the most fascinating thing that jumped out to me is his use of cliffhangers, almost constantly. That, and how he always knows that he has to have a happy end for his audience, but he adds in some sort of weird twist as well.
I also took the time to work out how to use Canva to make YouTube short videos, which I may or may not do more of in the future.
And the biggest thing I did during my wait was research author websites. A big thank you to everyone who responded to my call out, and shared theirs on Twitter. I'd originally only planned to purchase the domain name, but my payment was rejected multiple times, and I ended up jumping ship and ended up purchasing it alongside a website builder, in my case SquareSpace, using a discount from another YouTube sponsor. In this case Molly Burke: who is a blind fashionista who I would recommend to anyone. Did the ad work? Yes, even if it was my Plan B.
So after researching websites I dove into learning about the platform, and I being autistic, had my hyper focus kick in, and the next thing I know www.adaraspence.com exists, fully within 24 hours. It was the right next step for me to take in my career. I was starting to show my work to professionals, and I had already had a brand going that I'd started on Twitter and already expanded to YouTube. My website says a bit about me, my work in progress, and there's a special Canopy section for these roundup videos, where I'll be posting transcripts to in a kind of blog format.
So time continued to tick by, and the closer we got to April 28th, the more agitated I became, until Mr Spence was telling me I was climbing up the walls. As an outlet, I let myself do some physical challenges. I restarted my Pilates-based physiotherapy; and I was able to use a bus in my wheelchair to go a record-breaking three stops to my hospital appointment. That was massive! I also got out to a local park to see the cherry blossoms in bloom with my family. It was a brilliant hour out.
My saving grace though came with Write Mentor, who reminded people for their mental health's sake that the reality is that not every applicant will be chosen as a mentee. So as a rebound, they were going to launch a Twitter pitch competition the day after.
A brief summary of twitter pitch competitions. You write a short elevator pitch for your novel that fits in a tweet, along with the hashtag of the competition and the age range and genre.
Conventional rules are that you can pitch the same novel up to three times but with different pitches. Agents and editors who are currently seeking to expand their client lists, will then scour the competition hashtag for the pitches they like the sound of. Pressing the actual 'like' button on a pitch is reserved for agents and editors as an invitation to the writer to query or submit their novel.
Obviously they're incredibly popular, and most people will aim their pitches for the morning, lunch or evening, hoping that's when agents will be looking. The risk here is that your tweet gets lost in the surge of other pitches. The key to this is to be sociable, and team up. But don't worry! You don't need to formally arrange anything beforehand. First, make sure to pin your pitch to your profile. Second, retweet pitches in your age range or genre. Retweeting a pitch brings it back up into the timeline for visibility, and the more engagement the tweet gets the more the Twitter algorithm will promote it and bump it up to the top of the pile. By retweeting someone else's pitch, they're more likely to go to your profile, check you out, see your pinned pitch and return the favour.
Note: you may want to remind your followers the competition is happening beforehand, letting them know that you're about to spam their feeds, giving them time to mute the hashtag or even mute your retweets for the time being.
If you're busy, you can schedule your tweets in advance to appear at certain times. I've never done that before, but on every hour I definitely saw a mini influx. Then people returned to them later on to see how they were doing.
There were two pitch competitions taking place: Children's Books North for children's writers living in the North of England and Scotland on the 28th, then Write Mentor's on the 29th.
Plan A: get a mentor for the summer with a Write Mentor, then showcase my work in front of agents in September in a private showcase event. But as the date got closer to the results and I got feedback from my beta readers, I started to wonder if I needed an intense summer of work. I reopened my manuscript early and made a few quick fixes, especially mindful of the world state. I cut my opening four chapters into three, fixed my grammar and typos, then wrote three pitches ready for Plan B.
Then at 9am on Thursday the 28th of April I received my answer. I wasn't chosen as a mentee. But congratulations to everyone who did get a mentor. You've got a tough but fun summer ahead! But for me at this point, I hope my rejection was because someone else's novel could have been improved more by the input of a mentor than mine. Mind set, I rolled up my sleeves and launched myself into Plan B.
It was scary. I'll be the first to admit that. It was my first time sharing my idea with the world, in a space where people can take ideas and run. But ultimately I know most plot lines have already been used out there, and no one can carry out my take on it. My comps were big, bold, cross-generational, and blended two hugely different genres. It didn't take long for imposter syndrome to set in. Was I delivering what I was selling? I chose ambitious author comps for my work. All I could do was take a deep breath, calm, and trust in the writing process which I'd been doing for the last three years on my novel.
Was it worth it? A resounding yes! In the end I received a like from an agent in day one's Children Books North contest, and a like from an acquisitions editor during the Write Mentor contest the day after. I was thankful I'd studied elevator pictures before taking part to help me write mine, and thrilled with my results.
And then I sent my first ever query.
Yes, there's certainly some debate to be had about how saturated Twitter has become with these competitions, and well-established agents could make better use of their time working with the authors they already have. But it's still good for agents looking to build their lists, or searching for someone that they think could fill a gap in the market.
It also introduced me to a lot more YA authors. I'd like to thank everyone who retweeted my pitch for their support. Some of the pictures there were incredible, and the range was truly outstanding with amazing comps.
On reflection, waiting for query responses is less stressful than waiting for the Write Mentor Summer Programme results. Maybe because I can't fix myself on a certain place or time...?
Now, pitching my novel and having a website isn't where I thought April would lead, but sometimes change happens so slowly you don't even notice it.
In other celebratory news, my Wordle streak reached 100 this month! It's minor, but gives me a small sense of accomplishment first thing in the day.
As for reading (not counting manga or fanfictions which are endless) I read three novels this month and DNF'd one. I almost gave up on one because it was one of those situations where you're just sitting silently screaming that 'if only the characters just talk to one another then the entire thing would be solved!' Or maybe that's the point? It made me get so upset and emotional about it, so maybe it was really good?
I'm proud of what I achieved this month, even if it wasn't my original plan. Feel free to check out www.AdaraSpence.com if you haven't and let me know your thoughts, and if your April went to plan.
This hasn't been my usual roundup where I count my time and give myself stars, because it was a month in flux, but I'll be back at it next month, tracking my time plotting and in the query trenches. My tariff: for every 20 minutes worked I'll reward myself with one gold star. For every 10 gold stars, I'll have earned the right to buy myself a new book. This will no longer be tracking manuscript related time, so I'll have to make sure I don't get carried away with doing other things that don't really feel like work, like more research based tasks.
The Twitter pitches really did take it out of me, and I didn't sleep as well during the run up to the competition results, and I was enormously tired afterwards. But I had planned in advance. I knew the drop was coming, and ultimately I can rest, and the cycle will eventually start again when I build myself up.
So that's it from me today. I have to go now as I have some research to do for querying, and a synopsis to shorten (again), as I continue to write my story...
...one day at a time.
Credits:
Thumbnail and ending image created free using canva.com
Video footage: Adara Spence
Music credit 1: opening and ending theme – Adara Spence
Music credit 2: Soon We'll Fly by Ghostrifter Official https://bit.ly/ghostrifter-sc
Creative Commons — Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported — CC BY-SA 3.0
Free Download / Stream: https://bit.ly/35reep7
Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/q2vomZqSJuE Music
Credit 3: Beloved - Sakura Girl https://soundcloud.com/sakuragirl_off...
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Free Download / Stream: https://bit.ly/3ji1zZc
Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/omTgn4GQcKA Music
Credit 4 Fall Asleep by Tokyo Music Walker https://soundcloud.com/user-356546060
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Free Download / Stream: https://bit.ly/3L7LwJf
Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/fG7Nq8pdLoY
