Hi! Welcome to my blog for people submitting to Pitch Wars this year!
I know some of my friends and family read my blog, but if you’ve stumbled upon this article chances are pretty high that you found it by looking at the #PitchWars hashtag on Twitter, or through Google. Probably the Twitter thing. But anyway the point is, it’s pretty likely that you don’t know me. So a quick intro:
My name is C.J. Dotson. I write genre fiction, mostly horror and SFF. I have a handful of short stories published, and I participated in Pitch Wars 2020 with a horror novel called These Familiar Walls. My mentor was Rochelle Karina and she’s wonderful. I currently live in the Midwest, in a big, creepy old house, with my husband, my almost-93-year-old grandmother-in-law, my almost-16-year-old stepson, my 6-year-old son, and my 2-year-old daughter. Up until I was furloughed last year when everything shut down, I worked at a bookstore, and I really miss it. When I’m not writing or reading or spending time with my family (or cleaning up after them), I love painting and baking. I think that one of the absolute greatest pleasures in life is to eat food and read a book at the same time. From a purely aesthetic perspective I find images of the planet Jupiter super soothing and satisfying. I’m afraid of the dark and I have a hard time remembering to keep the volume of my voice below a shout and I have a poor memory. I’m six feet tall and often find myself overwhelmed and impatient in stores so I usually wind up wearing clothing that is not quite long enough for me. I like bowling and swimming and roller skating and skee-ball and miniature golf, though I’m not particularly good at any of them. I dream of someday owning a kayak. If I ever get really fit, it’ll be almost entirely in the service of trying to cosplay Sypha Belnades from the Castlevania anime. I’m bi, my pronouns are she/her. I’m on Twitter!
There, now you know me, right?
But if you’re here deciding whether you should submit to Pitch Wars or not, or to get a better idea about what that’s like, you’re probably looking for another piece of information about me. Do I have a literary agent? Has my novel been picked up by a publisher?
Not yet.
So, do I think you should do Pitch Wars anyway?
Absolutely.
Right around a year ago I was doing what you’re doing right now. I was reading blogs written by former Pitch Wars mentees and trying to figure out what to expect. I was also making a big mistake, which was cherry-picking the blogs I read. This person got a two-book deal? That person is in talks with Netflix? Another person got an agent within a day of the showcase? Those were the blogs and articles and posts I was focusing on, last year.
The blog posts all about how Pitch Wars didn’t mean instant success for everyone, the posts about how people don’t always get an agent but it’s still worth it, the voices on my screen assuring me that the best part of Pitch Wars is the community you get out of it, I didn’t want to see that. Part of that was wishful thinking, of course. I wanted to be one of the big flashy success stories. But also, the last lingering clouds of social anxiety that I’ve mostly-but-not-entirely overcome over the last sixteen years managed to cast just enough of a shadow over me to convince me that the friendships were for other people, people who were good at making friends and being personable, not for me. I think that attitude is evident in my team interview on the Pitch Wars blog, if you know to look for it. Meanwhile a few of the other mentees had made a discord server for us, and were building a community, and I hadn’t joined it at first, and I was missing out.
You, Pitch Wars hopeful browsing blogs and social media in the weeks leading up to submitting your material and awaiting the big announcement, you’ll see this a lot:
The community is everything.
I really lucked out, because in Rochelle I got a mentor who I vibe with really well, who I genuinely like a ton, and who didn’t just go above and beyond with my manuscript but also made it clear from the start that she was ready to be friends and to stay friends. (Seriously, if your book fits her wish list, submit to Rochelle).
My first few weeks of participating in Pitch Wars, I didn’t put a lot of effort into getting to know my fellow mentees. Most of this is because, like I said, I convinced myself I wouldn’t be good at getting to know them. But a smaller part of it is because the first few weeks of Pitch Wars coincided with some personal difficulties and some technical difficulties. A good friend passed away in November of 2020, and I have a hard time thinking about the early days of my Pitch Wars experience without also thinking about him. There were other things going on in my personal life that November, but that’s the one that matters. And it’s relevant to this post because there’s this fundamental thing that I think hopeful Pitch Wars applicants might not be paying enough attention to. If you get into Pitch Wars, the rest of your life doesn’t stop, and it can’t really be put on a back-burner.
It’s been pointed out elsewhere that Pitch Wars is a stressful experience. A great experience, but a stressful one. And others have said what I’ll say now, which is if you’re not mentally or emotionally capable of taking on stress and deadlines and expectations and intense work on your creative endeavor while maintaining your mental health right now, submitting to Pitch Wars is not a decision you should take lightly. All that being said, Pitch Wars vibes really well with the way I handle stress rather than causing more stress. Having a big project to sink into and a tight deadline to keep up with helped keep my head above water during that hard time.
Pitch Wars is starting for a lot of you, but it’s over now for me. I did the work and I waited with bated breath through the showcase and I queried agents afterwards. I’m still waiting to hear back from a few of the agents who requested my full manuscript in the showcase. I’m still writing, revising a new novel, but the hectic whirl of work is past, for now. But I did eventually get in touch with the other mentees and ask to join the mentee discord, and I’m so incredibly glad I did. There were over a hundred mentees in 2020, and not every single mentee joined the discord, and I am not close with every single one of those of us who did. But I haven’t seen any antagonistic relationships in there, any enmity. I haven’t seen any pettiness or unpleasantness. There are a bunch of my fellow mentees from 2020 who I’m glad to know, and there are a handful who I believe I will be friends with—great friends with—for the rest of my life. It’s support, sharing information, celebrating together, commiserating together, sharing pet pictures, reaching out in times of need, critique partners, zoom hangouts, chatting about our lives, it’s building a web of professional connections together. But the most important to me is that it’s genuine, solid, amazing friendship.
Pitch Wars leveled up my writing. Pitch Wars gave me the confidence to start my querying journey and the belief that I’ll make it eventually. Pitch Wars provided me with a goal and structure in a time when that was really good for my mental health. And Pitch Wars introduced me to some people who I believe will rank among the best friends I’ve ever had.
If you’re wondering whether you should submit to Pitch Wars, and you’re reading articles by people who didn’t get agents, and you’re thinking to yourself, “Well, is it still worth it, then?” Yes. I don’t yet have an agent, but I would do it all over again. And if you have any questions for me, please feel free to comment here, or hit me up on Twitter!
(That paragraph up there about how PW leveled up my writing, gave me confidence, and provided structure? I’ll write a whole separate blog post about that soon. I intended to get into that in this post, but the community aspect really has been so deeply important to me, it wound up needing its own whole post. So check back here in a week or two, when I’ll get more into the craft aspects of the experience. And in the meantime, here’s a great blog post on the subject by my fellow 2020 mentee, Erin Fulmer.)