The blog of Luther M. Siler, teacher, author and local curmudgeon
Getting the bathroom tile done if it kills me.
Getting the query letter for PITCH WARS written if it kills me.
Getting the house cleaned if it kills me.
Obviously, this will be my last post ever and I’ll miss all of you. Do what you want with my body.
Aaight y’all.
It’s Monday morning, on the week before school starts.
You may not know this: this is the busiest week of the year for teachers. No doubt, no comparison, no nothing. The first week of school doesn’t come close to comparing to the business of the week before school starts. It’s like a vacation after that shit.
Now, as you know, I am not actually teaching this year. I will not be in a classroom. But my new position has placed demands on me in such a fashion that I think this week might be worse than the average week-before-school-starts, because in some ways I’m responsible for the entire building. You may recall me hiring Sven last year. I will be hiring Sven and seven of his older, meaner brothers this year. And giving them halberds.
In addition, the 24-hour submission window for Pitch Wars is August 18th, and I have a shitton of work to get done before then for that, and oh by the way I’ve written like a thousand words on Benevolence Archives 8 in the last two or three weeks and if I don’t get back to that really soon it’s going to die on the goddamn page and I absolutely cannot let that happen.
What I am saying is this:
I will be back up for air in early September, I think, but holygod the next couple of weeks are gonna be a madhouse.
This means that I have, uh, ten days to complete Pitch Wars Stages two through four, which are: 2) Winnow this list down to four; 3) Write a query letter for those four; 4) Take another look at the first chapter of Click, potentially beating it into shape to be submitted to these fine folk.
It was already going to be an insane ten days. School, by the way, starts in twelve.
I can do this.
Sure.
Anyway, just for shits ‘n’ giggles, here’s the shortlist of mentors I’m looking at:
I am, at the moment, calling my reading comprehension into question– because this contest is fairly heavily tilted toward YA/middle grade authors, a lot of the 75 mentors aren’t looking for books for the adult market. I thought I had done a decent job, like, noticing that while going through and creating the shortlist, but I just had to delete three people who very clearly say “only YA” or “Only MG” in their profiles. So, uh, I don’t know what happened there.
Hopefully I’ll have picks by the end of the weekend.
If you write YA or adult genre novels, particularly if you have a manuscript lying around that you haven’t done anything with yet, you probably ought to be checking Pitch Wars out. I have at least four other things I ought to be doing right now but I’m going through their mentor list right now, and I’m not sure I’m making a bad decision in it either.
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