So as a Pitch Wars newbie, I admit that I began correctly with color-coded spreadsheets and folders and sub-folders to track my submissions.

And then it all fell apart. It fell apart because I was requesting fulls and reading fulls and sending queried and manuscripts to other mentors, hoping they’d fall in love with them. And it fell apart because I was being sent manuscripts from other mentors who hoped that I would fall in love with them.

So that’s a long-winded way of saying that these stats aren’t exact. But they will be mostly close.

I received somewhere in the range of 85 subs. A lot of them were exactly what I’d asked for: character-driven contemporary YA or character-driven paranormal. But some were heavy science fiction and high fantasy and genres I have very little experience with as a reader, much less as a writer.

If I’m fortunate enough to mentor again next year, expect a REALLY specific wishlist from me. One thing that’s been severely altered by my becoming a writer of fiction is that I’ve become a far more selective and judgmental reader. I love reading, but my time for it is now precious. For every free sample I download on my Kindle for a book I buy or borrow from the library, there are four that I delete – and these four are often HUGE sellers with starred reviews. So this has carried over to PW because I wanted to fall in love with a book and then help the author strengthen that book. That meant (1) I had to fall in love (not an easy thing) and (2) it had to be a book that didn’t need major plot revamping because that isn’t my particular specialty. I had to KNOW the characters and I had to want to spend time with them.

My process was this:

I read the query (not to see if it was well-written, but to get a feel for the plot) and I started the pages. If the query telegraphed a manuscript that was out of my genre, I was hoping that the pages would win me over. 99.9% of the time they didn’t. NOT because they weren’t well-written, but because I wasn’t interested in the story.
- I sorted the rest into yes/maybe/no folders

If the query intrigued me and I saw promise in the pages, I requested the full and a synopsis. Again, synopsis are difficult to write and I wasn’t concerned about quality. I just wanted to know if the story intrigued me. I wanted to see how it played out.

I started all of those fulls. (Near as I can tell, there were 12 – one of them at least came as a recommendation from another mentor). I skipped around in them to see if the writing held up.
- I again made yes / maybe /no folders. The MAYBE folder ended up being the folder I used when recommending to other mentors. There were some SERIOUSLY GOOD manuscripts here. A couple I considered, but realized that I simply wouldn’t be the right mentor for them simply because they weren’t the type of books I read or wrote and they and their authors would be better served by a different mentor. I’m THRILLED that some of them were picked up!Through this, I had what I thought was my first pick. I read and re-read and realized that two months is super short and the book just needed too much.
  - So I looked through my yes and maybe folders again. And there I found it. A manuscript I’d initially passed on because the voice was so unique and well-crafted, I was afraid I’d do it damage. It is a manuscript that was getting a lot of love from other mentors and I assumed that one of them would pick it up, but instead they were moving on to other projects and still shouting about how someone NEEDED TO TAKE THIS MANUSCRIPT BECAUSE IT WAS AWESOME AND DESERVES ALL THE LOVE.

I read the full and realized they were right. Not only that, I *knew* what it needed. And I am SO EXCITED to send the author my thoughts because this book is already beautiful and special and I think that the end result is going to shine even brighter.

I’m not sure if this post will help anyone in any way. Each mentor has their own process and I realize that mine might have been more chaotic than others.

I will send an edit letter to the author whose book was my first choice for so long should that book not be chosen. And I’ll happily give feedback to any writer who subbed to me and requests it, but there is a good chance, if I didn’t request your full, that response will be “it just wasn’t for me” which is about as helpful as a chocolate watch (as my Scottish husband would say).

If I DID request your full and you want feedback, let me know and please be patient!

Above all, what I take away from this process is that you are all talented and wonderful and I can’t think of a single community that is so self-supporting and loving. Seriously, serving alongside these other mentors has been nothing short of heart-warming. And you who subbed to us are brave and promising and have SO MUCH to look forward to in the future. Listen to your hearts. Listen to your CPs. Above all, keep going even when it seems hard and lonely and like the entire publishing industry is against you. Because it isn’t. We’re all still here standing beside you.