So, What’s Your Book About?

Last Saturday our Six Great Books (SGB) writing group spent the day at the 31^stAnnual American Independent Writers' (AIW) Conference in Washington, DC. It was a great day of panels, fiction and nonfiction round-tables, craft sessions and the all important pitch sessions with literary agents. While I benefited greatly from all of the sessions and the speakers (Chuck Sambuchino of Writer's Digest Books and Jill McCorkle of North Carolina State University's Creative Writing MFA Program were spectacular) the conference was my first opportunity to pitch my recently completed novel.

The first question everybody at a writer's conference asks is, "So, what's your book about." If you attend a pitch session with a literary agent it's, Hi my name is (big time literary agent) – what's your book about? You have ten minutes starting now. Go!

Before Saturday's conference, my book and I had been sequestered in the safe environs of my study or my writing group. After nearly two years of work and countless critiques by the other generous writers in our SBG group, it was time to take my show on the road.  In order to interest anyone in my fiction I would have to be able to tell them about it compellingly and succinctly.

It is no easy task to take your characters, their story and the passion you've poured into 300 pages and distill it into a couple of sentences that make a perfect stranger say, "Wow, tell me more." It actually seemed easier to write the 300 pages than a two sentence elevator pitch and a short paragraph synopsis.  But I wrote countless drafts and revisions, researched potential audiences for my book, found out what previously published books were similar to mine, re-wrote my bio so that it credibly supported my ability to write this book, role played with my writing group and put in more than a little face-time with the bathroom mirror practicing my pitch.  I was as ready as I would ever be to stand and deliver.

At the conference – I told anyone who asked (and some who didn't) what my book was about – tentatively at first but soon the words came easily. The more I talked about my work the more emboldened I became.  I saw the same in other writers when I listened to them talk about their work.  By the end of the day it was clear who was committed to the process of being an author and who was still playing with the idea. 

In agent pitch sessions I sold my story and myself well enough to be asked to send the first chapters of my book - I even had an agent comment on how well prepared I was.  Both my book and I are now out there, vying for what I've wanted since I was in single digits, to be a published author. 

The AIW was my first writer's conference - it will not be my last.  The conference helped me confirm that writing is a practice, something you do repeatedly in order to improve, and that when you talk about your work you aren't just pitching a manuscript, you're pitching you.  Like any other profession, people respond to your commitment, passion, determination and your talent and the way you communicate them determines whether you will be taken seriously in the practice of your chosen craft.  

Now, if you ask me about my book, I will tell you compellingly and succinctly about the story I have written - but be sure to understand the subtext of being a writer because that is what my book is about too.