Bitchin’ about Pitchin’

 I hate to pitch. Hate it. And it’s not just because, by definition, it involves stripping out all the subtle nuances and clever wordplay and devious twists. And it’s not because the pitch is the earliest and most blatant instance of turning a creative endeavor into “product” (that doesn’t bother me at all). No, I hate to pitch because I’m so bad at it.

 

I recently had a talk with my agent about my next big project, a thriller called DRIFT. I’m very excited about it, and when I told him a little bit about it, he was excited, too. I told him it was completely outlined and ready to go. Then he asked me to e-mail him with a little more about it.

 

The process went south from there. He got back to me and politely said …maybe not. He pointed out some of the specifics that he didn’t like, and that the idea as a whole didn’t grab him.

 

I couldn’t believe it. It was a great idea, a great premise, and soon, I hoped, a very good book. The idea of bagging it and moving on made me feel sick.

Now, I was already well aware of my lame-ass pitch writing skills. One of the best things for me about getting an agent was that I could stop pitching agents (and in my experience, no, agents will not take your word for it when you tell them that you write real good, just not pitches). So I asked my friend and fellow Liars’ Club member Jonathan Maberry to take a look at what I had sent my agent. Jonathan, in addition to being an excellent writer and student of both the craft and the industry, is also a great teacher. One of his classes is on how to write a pitch.

 

He read mine, making an effort to keep the shudders and head-shakes to a minimum. Then he looked up and said kindly, “Well, you write a hell of a novel.” The pitch, however, was dreadful.

 

We talked about what goes into a pitch, and he helped me tweak this one (i.e., throw it out and start all over). A lot of what Jonathan told me, I already knew, but hadn’t applied. Some of it was new to me.

 

The main thing I realized was that my biggest shortcoming in the writing of the pitch is my obsession with relatively minor plot points. I’m a plot geek, I admit it. When I’m structuring a plot, I get a big kick out of the minor bits of plot hardware that make the whole thing work, or the clever twists that make everything logical. The ones I think are cool. And god help me, I put them in the pitch.

 

That’s not what you do when you’re trying to sell an idea. You don’t see ads for watch companies that say, “Rolex: We use .5 mm Z-toothed micro-cogs.”

Looking back at what my agent had said about the pitch, I realized he was probably right about the specific points he mentioned. So I went in and changed them. Then I rewrote the pitch, from the point of view of an agent trying to sell it, or an editor trying to convince a marketing department, or a reader trying to decide if they want to read it. And not from the point of view of a technician geeking out over the details.

 

I did change the story and the outline, but I changed the pitch even more. My agent read the pitch and liked it. Then we talked for a while about the idea, and he liked it even more. By the time we were done, I think he was as excited about it as I am.

 

To be honest, my pitches are probably still kind of lame, but they’re getting better. Now, if I could only write a decent synopsis….

Great Googly Moogly

I like Google. It makes my life easier and gives me cool and useful tools, like Google Earth. Every now and then, Google does something vaguely icky, like censoring search results for repressive regimes, but my overall impression of Google is mostly positive. I was a little leery about Google’s “search history” feature, although not enough to deactivate it or delete the results (what can I say.. it’s handy). But, I’m always looking forward to their next big thing.

Now, though, it seems Google’s newest big thing, Google Chrome, comes with an End Use License Agreement (EULA) giving Google a claim to your soul that the devil himself would envy. (in case you don’t know, a EULA is that thing you click “I Accept” without reading when you load software.)

While graciously allowing that “You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services,” the agreement goes on to state that “By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services.”

Yikes.

Kind of makes Microsoft seem warm and fuzzy.

Google is backing off a bit, now, saying it was a mistake and they will reword their End Use License Agreement, but I think I’ll be just fine without Chrome in my software arsenal. What really worries me is what I’ve agreed to with all these other “I accept” buttons I’ve been clicking without reading.

Labor Day

Labor Day has always been a bittersweet holiday for me. On the one hand, I love autumn, and I’m always ready to say good bye to the dog days of summer and hello to a crisp snap in the air. But I love the tempo of life in the summer, especially with a kid. Summer means more time to hang out with my son, to spend time with him in the morning without struggling to get him ready for school and to play catch in the afternoon without having to bug him about doing his homework.

 

The impending school year also brings anxiety about what new things he will face. I was one of those kids, by the end of August, I was ready to go back to school. But not my son. He likes his school, but he dreads going back, dreads the newness of a new grade. I feel his anxiety, too, in a way I didn’t feel when I was a kid (not that I didn’t have plenty of other anxieties).

 

In my writing life, the change of season is important, too. All that extra downtime has to come from somewhere, and I guess a lot of it comes from my writing. I always expect to accomplish more in the summer than what I end up doing. This summer, I wrote a short story and a couple other small projects, I caught up on some reading and posted a few blogs (which take me way longer than they should). I also spent a lot of time working on an outline. Looking back, I had hoped to accomplish more.

 

Now that September is here, however, I am ready to go.

 

I don’t think it is purely coincidence that the outline I’ve been working on is just about finished, and just when it’s back-to-school time, I’m starting to write the first draft.

 

So tomorrow, we’ll chill out a bit, maybe cook out, maybe go to the pool. But then it’s back to late nights and extra coffee, bags under the eyes and a steadily growing stack of pages.

 

I’m so excited, I can hardly sleep. Maybe I’ll just stay up and write, instead.