Robins Aren't the Only Thing Tweeting in the Slush

So, I’ve entered a pitch contest.

For those of you who may not know, in a typical pitch contest, hundreds of people submit pitches of their novels (usually consisting of a very short synopsis and/or the first page or so), and a small number are chosen and posted for a group of literary agents to compete over. They’re pretty cool even if you don’t get picked, because you get to meet other writers and find out what they’re working on. It gives you a real appreciation for how much talent is out there.

Of course, sometimes the talent of others can be hard to appreciate.

But once you beat your ego into submission, it’s a great experience.

One interesting sideshow that comes with many pitch contests is a very cool phenomenon called slush tweeting, in which the readers who choose the finalist entries make cryptic tweets about their selection process before the finalists are announced. Naturally, everyone who entered the contest stays glued to this feed like lab mice waiting for the next pellet.

Sometimes, the tweets can give you irrational confidence about your own chances.

Other times, the tweets can crush your hope like a VW Bug under the heel of a giant mutant sea lizard.

They can also engender the perverse urge to troll the judges with your next contest entry.

Eventually, trying to figure out whether any of the tweets are about your book leads to complete loss of sanity.

The smart thing to do might be to walk away from the Twitter feed. But the readers often post really good advice and pithy observations that can be useful to anyone. So it may be torture — but it’s worthwhile torture.

Or at least, it beats working.

And what have we learned today?

Wait, what’s wrong with a YA dystopian vampire Harry Potter novel?