Posted on - 2 Comments on So you’ve pitched successfully — now what? Part VIII: Help! I’m feeling disoriented. What if an agent is ready to say I do, and I can’t?

So you’ve pitched successfully — now what? Part VIII: Help! I’m feeling disoriented. What if an agent is ready to say I do, and I can’t?


When we left off last time, we were in the throes of discussing the options open to the pitcher or querier so successful in presenting her book concept that an agent says, “By gum, I not only want to see this manuscript — because, contrary to surprisingly pervasive belief amongst writers’ conference attendees, no agent in his right mind would agree to represent a book project by a non-celebrity without first reading some of that writer’s prose — but I want to be the only agent considering representing it.” While the standard first response to this is, as one might imagine, to jump for joy, caper in the streets, and rush to send off the requested materials before the agent could possibly change his mind, the third of those initial impulses is not always in the writer’s best interest.

How so, you ask mid-caper? Well, most requests for exclusive peeks at manuscripts or book proposals do not come with a time limit. The agent simply specifies that he would like not to be competing with other agents to represent the project, and that’s it. And because this is, let’s face it, a flattering request, it doesn’t occur to most writers to say, “That’s fine — for six months,” rather than some stripe of “YES! Whatever you want! I want to kiss the hem of your garment for paying this much attention to my work! May I name my firstborn child/next beloved pet/a small tropical island after you, as an appropriate token of my gratitude?”

It always gives me joy to see a talented writer this happy, but having heard the latter response issuing from aspiring writers’ gullets hundreds, if not thousands, of times in recent years, I feel compelled to tell you that this is usually not the best strategic response to such a request. Oh, you can dance little jigs and alarm your neighbors with shrieks of joy with my blessing. Just be aware that granting an open-ended exclusive presents the submitter with the fewest follow-up options.

If all goes well, that might not be an issue, but remember, an agent in the habit of asking for exclusives may well do so habitually. It may be agency policy, in fact. Even if it isn’t, the request does not constitute a guarantee that the submission will be moved up to the front of the agency’s reading queue.

So I ask you to stop tap-dancing on that coffee table long enough to consider: how many weeks, months, or years would it take before you, cavorting submitter, would come to regard having granted that exclusive to be an actual liability? And what if — brace yourselves — you never heard back from the exclusive-requesting agent at all?

That immense, sky-shattering moan you just heard emitted from the mouths of those that found this post in the archives after a frantic search once they realized that the exclusive they granted some weeks/months/years ago did not in fact come with an expiration date. Those that looked up this post after having granted an open-ended exclusive, then received a materials request from another agent, probably contented themselves with punching the nearest wall.

To help those tortured souls feel better, as well as to edify of those of you that have not yet fallen into either of these categories, let me hasten to add that most of the time, writers find themselves in these predicaments through no fault of their own. They may not have thought through the implications of the exclusive before they granted it, or, more commonly, simply were not aware that there could be negative fall-out from something as inherently wonderful as professional interest in their writing.

In fact, under ordinary circumstances, giving multiple pitches at a conference or organizing query timing to maximize the probability that more than one agent will want to be reading all or part of one’s manuscript at any given time is quite sensible. Ideally, an agent-seeking writer should want to have several agents interested simultaneously; it’s always nice to be able to choose between competing offers.

It can happen, but it doesn’t happen all by itself. The writer has to plan for it.

I speak from personal experience here: I had three offers on the table and manuscripts out with four more agents when I decided to go with my agency. Admittedly, my memoir had just won a major contest at a writers’ conference that at the time habitually made a point of rounding up the winners in its top categories and herding them into a room stuffed to the gills with agents, but even so, I was the only winner that year who ended up garnering an offer of representation from one of those agents, much less several. (Word to the wise: it’s not all that uncommon for even agents who attend many conferences not to pick up new clients at any given conference. Before you plunk down the sometimes hefty conference registration fee, you might want to ask point-blank how many of last year’s attending agents actually signed a writer met that that conference.)

That wasn’t accidental: I had been fortunate enough to have friends who had won that contest in previous years, and mirabile dictu, I had even listened to their advice. I already knew not to grant an exclusive to anyone; that would have tied my hands and meant, effectively, that if the first agent who asked for an exclusive (and several did) made an offer, I wouldn’t be able to sound out the others before saying yes or no.

I’m sensing some bewilderment amongst those of you who walked in halfway through this discussion, am I not? “Wait just a jealousy-inducing minute, Anne!” some of you cry. “Why precisely would granting an exclusive to the first agent that tackled you after you accepted your award have been a bad thing? If that agent said yes, you’d have an agent!”

I see where you’re going with this: it would in fact have saved some effort on my part. Let’s tease out the logic: an exclusive is an arrangement whereby a writer allows an agent to read a particular manuscript while no other agent will be reviewing it. The agent requests an exclusive because she would prefer not to compete with other agents over the manuscript; the writer agrees, presumably, because if this agent says yes, he will neither need nor want to approach other agents.

That’s dandy — if the exclusive-requester happens to be the agent of one’s dreams. But, frankly, there were a lot of agents at that conference that had great track records for selling memoir. Because I pitched to all of them and had not hung all of my hopes on conference pitching, I woke up the following Monday with sixteen requests to read the book proposal.

Did responding to all of those requests simultaneously constitute a heck of a lot of work for me? Of course, but remember, the goal is just to get any agent to say yes; it’s to track down the best agent for the project. While it’s certainly possible to listen carefully to what the agents to whom you are planning to pitch say on the conference dais about how they handle book projects in general, a writer doesn’t usually have the opportunity to hear how a specific agent would handle her book until after an offer of representation is already on the table.

Half of you zoned out while reading that last paragraph, didn’t you? “Sixteen requests for pages? How on earth did that happen?”

Ah, but it didn’t just happen. Because I had seen past contest winners stand around and wait for agents to seek them out, a hopeful passivity that tended to leave them walking out of the awards ceremony with no requests for pages at all, I knew that if the win were to do me any good — and not all contest wins do, even major ones — I would need not only to speak with every agent at that conference, but follow up with a blizzard of submissions. I also knew that while I was making it show manuscript pages at some agencies, I should be continuing to query others. Just in case.

Once this multi-pronged strategy paid off in the form of offers, though, I realized I had a dilemma: each of the three agents professing eagerness to represent my work was equally qualified to do it. Oh, they had different styles, as well as different tastes, but their connections were more or less identical. So I had to ask myself: what do I want out of the writer-agent relationship other than the agent’s having the connection, energy, and will to sell my books?

Hadn’t thought about that, had you? Almost no aspiring writer does. Or about the logical follow-up questions: what factors would make an agent the right one for my writing, other than a desire to represent it? When you get right down to it, what makes one agent different from another?

The vast majority of pitchers and queriers do not give serious thought to this question, interestingly, until they find themselves faced with multiple submission requests. Oh, the ones who do their homework ponder what various agents represent, as well as their track record for selling the work of first-time authors (usually quite a bit more difficult than convincing an editor to acquire a book by someone who already has a demonstrable audience; that’s why many agents choose to represent only the previously-published). But let’s face it, these examinations are really geared to the question how likely is this agent to want to represent me? rather than is this the best conceivable agent to represent my writing?

Let that bee buzz around your bonnet for a while. The resulting synaptic activity will be useful in pondering the implications of the rest of this post — and, for those of you that will dig this post out of the archives because you’re frantic to find out how to handle conflicting requests from agents, help you figure out what your next step should be.

Typically, writers don’t give serious thought to the what do I want from an agent, other than willingness to represent me? conundrum unless they find themselves in one of three situations. First, our questioner from last week, unsure what to do because she had already agreed to let one agent sneak an exclusive peek at her manuscript, but another agent had asked afterward to see it non-exclusively. Second, someone like me, the aggressive multiple pitcher/querier/submitter who hears back positively from several agents. Third, an already-agented writer who finds herself in the unenviable position of having to find a new agent.

Oh, should I have warned you to sit down before I brought up that last one? “Oh, ye Muses!” pitchers and queriers everywhere shout, breathing skittishly into paper bags in an attempt to cease hyperventilating. “You mean that it’s possible that I might have to go through this hideous process more than once?”

Actually, if you are a career writer, it’s fairly probable. I don’t want to frighten you, but in the current extraordinarily tight literary market, agents have been known to change specialties. They occasionally decide to leave the biz. Agencies do go under, or merge. And as much as I would support any really good agent’s application to Olympus for immortality, they do occasionally shuffle off this mortal coil. Under any of these conditions, an agented writer might well need to seek out new representation.

If your breathing has returned to normal, though, may I add that sometimes representation relationships just don’t work out? It’s quite simply harder to sell books than it used to be; inevitably, that’s going to cause some writer-agent relationships to fray. Than, too, people’s interests change over time: what constituted a great fit five years ago might very well not be five years hence.

See why I want you to start thinking about qualities you want in an agent before you’re fielding offers?

Since an already-agented writer’s plunging back into the pitching and querying phrase is an extremely complicated kettle of worms, let’s stick for now with the dilemma facing the writer in one of the other two situations. What’s an (extremely fortunate, by any standard) writer — let’s call her Hortense — to do if other agents want to take a peek at a manuscript that Agent #1 has asked to see exclusively?

Well, the first thing Hortense should do is scour the actual wording of the request for exclusivity. What honoring it means vis-à-vis approaching other agents really depends upon the terms of the exclusivity agreement. Unless that exclusivity agreement was open-ended — as in the agent has until the end of time to make up her mind about whether to represent the book in question — the writer has every right to start sending out her work to other agents the instant the exclusive expires.

But let’s assume for the moment that Hortense was one of the tap-dancing many that acted upon an open-ended exclusive request, no questions asked. It has now been three months, and she has other requests for manuscript pages in hand. Should she

(a) Silently abide by her commitment to Agent #1 for the duration of the agreed-upon period of exclusivity, even if that means waiting forever, because ethically, she can do nothing else?

(b) Abide by her commitment to Agent #1, but since a reasonable period of time has passed, send a polite reminder after a reasonable period, saying that because other agents are clamoring to see the manuscript, she would really, really like to hear back soon?

(c) Abide by her commitment to Agent #1, but send a series of increasingly vehement protests over how long Agent #1 has had the manuscript?

(d) Follow tactic (c), but begin sending those protests three weeks after the exclusive began?

(e) Abide by her commitment to Agent #1 as long as nobody else expresses interest, but instantly e-mail him the moment she hears from Agent #2, asking #1 if it’s okay to disregard their exclusivity agreement, since the situation has changed?

(f) E-mail Agent #1 as soon as Agent #2′s request arrives, informing #1 that she’s sending the manuscript to somebody else, as if the exclusivity agreement did not exist?

(g) Follow the essential outlines of (f), but embrace this missive as an opportunity to inform Agent #1 that he’s a slowpoke, dream-assassin, or worse?

(h) Send out the requested materials to Agents #2, #3, #4, as they come in, without telling Agent #1, because unless one of them offers to represent her, she’d never have to confess what she has done?

(i) Wait another two or three months, then pursue tactic (h)?

(j) Wait as long as she can possibly stand it, then send a formal, dignified e-mail to Agent #1, thanking him for his interest, but saying that she’s terminating the exclusive?

Oh, you may laugh at some of those options, but I assure you, submitters facing this conundrum routinely engage in all of them. And you or someone you know may well have engaged in one or more of them. If Hortense chose

(a) and are still in the midst of waiting indefinitely, she has good manners. Her mother and I are proud — but it hasn’t really solved Hortense’s problem, has it?

(b) and informed Agent #1 that you would like to hear back, Hortense still has pretty good manners. Provided, of course, that she waited a few months before she pursued this option, and engaged in it only once.

(c) and kept her word not to send out her work, but sent out querulous complaints about it, well, Hortense is like most exclusive-granters. Ultimata almost never work, but it probably made her feel better.

But confidentially to those of you that followed Hortense down this ill-advised path: after the first one or two messages, you stopped hearing back, right? Is it a better use of your energy to pick a fight with someone you want to be on your side, or to move on?

(d) and began sending those protests three weeks after the exclusive began, Hortense’s submission was probably pulled out of consideration on that basis alone. She should consider the submission dead and move on with no further comment.

(e) and instantly e-mailed Agent #1 to ask if it was okay to disregard her exclusivity agreement, since the situation had changed, Hortense doesn’t have a clear understanding of how exclusives work. #1 would be within his rights not only to say no, but to be a trifle insulted.

Why? Chant it with me now, campers: what an exclusive means in practice is that the writer guarantees that nobody else will be in the running while the requesting agent is pondering the pages. Essentially, the pursuant of (e) is saying, “You didn’t REALLY mean that, did you? How could you have, when it’s not in my best interest that you did?”

Not going to fly, I’m afraid. By definition, once Hortense has granted an exclusive, she must abide by its terms. So she really has no excuse for

(f) e-mailing Agent #1 as soon as Agent #2′s request arrived, informing #1 that she’s sending the manuscript to somebody else. Again, Hortense would be displaying that she just doesn’t get the whole exclusivity thing. And if she compounded the problem by

(g) following the essential outlines of (f), but embrace this missive as an opportunity to inform Agent #1 that he’s a slowpoke, dream-assassin, or worse, was she raised by wolves? Apart from the inherent rudeness of such an approach — which, among other things, demonstrates an expectation that #1 would have dropped all of his other duties to pay attention to her submission — in what imaginable scenario would #1 respond positively to such an accusation?

If Hortense is the strong, silent type, she could pursue (h), and send out the requested materials to Agents #2, #3, #4, as they come in, without telling Agent #1, but that would be unethical. Even if she honestly didn’t understand what an exclusivity agreement meant when she said yes to it, it isn’t fair to any of the agents involved. However, if she

(i) waited another two or three months, then pursued tactic (h), it would at least be understandable. But she would have to write off Agent #1 at that point, anyway, so why not

(j) send a formal, dignified e-mail to Agent #1, thanking him for his interest, but saying that since it’s been six months, she’s terminating the exclusive.

I see some of you shaking your heads. “But Anne, I’m confused. It seems as though this is a no-win situation for Hortense. She can ask for an update, but if the agent’s too busy to respond or works at an agency that simply doesn’t tell submitters when they’ve been rejected, her hands are tied by his silent, aren’t they? So is her only winning move not to play the exclusive game at all?”

Not necessarily; if she would sign with Agent #1 with no hesitation if he offered representation and he prefers to read exclusively, saying yes might well make sense. But she cannot ethically retract that agreement after the fact, except to pull her submission out of consideration at #1′s agency. Until she does that — or enough silent time has passed that she has good reason to consider the submission dead — she cannot legitimately send that manuscript elsewhere.

That means — and this seems to come as a surprise to many submitters — that she also cannot ethically grant an exclusive request if any other agents have the manuscript. Because that point is so widely misunderstood, let me state it as an aphorism: by definition, a writer cannot grant an exclusive if any agent is currently reading any part of the manuscript in question; in order to comply with a request for an exclusive, the writer must wait until all of the agents reading it at the time the exclusivity request arrived have informed him of their decisions.

But let’s get back to Hortense’s underlying problem: what happens if an agent who asked for an exclusive doesn’t get back to the writer within a reasonable amount of time? Is the writer still bound by the exclusivity agreement? Or is there some point at which it’s safe to assume that silence equals thanks, but we’re not interested rather than hold your proverbial horses — we haven’t gotten around to reading it yet?

The short answers to each of those last three questions, in the order asked: it depends on the terms of the original agreement; it depends on the terms of the original agreement; it depends on the terms of the original agreement.

Why? Shout it along with me now, campers: how a writer can ethically respond to any of these situations rests entirely upon whether he had the foresight to set an end date for the exclusive when she first agreed to it. If an exclusive is open-ended, the writer cannot ethically send out requested materials to other agents until one of two things happens: the exclusive-requester informs the writer that she has rejected the manuscript, or so many months have passed without word from the agent that it’s safe to assume that the answer is no.

Even then — say, six months — I’d still advise Hortense to send an e-mail, asking if Agent #1is finished with the manuscript. It’s only polite.

Or she could have avoided this dilemma entirely by hedging her bets from the get-go. Hortense could have granted the exclusive, but send the manuscript along with a cover letter that mentions how delighted she was to agree to a three-month exclusive. Agent #1 could always have come back with a request for more time, but at least poor Hortense wouldn’t be left wondering six months hence whether she would offend #1 by moving on.

Being ethical is a tough row to hoe, in short. “But Anne!” exclaim aspiring writers who want there to be more options than there actually are. “Why should I borrow trouble? Surely, you don’t expect me to run the risk of offending an agent by implying that he’s not going to get back to me in a timely manner?”

Hey, I don’t expect anything; do as you think best. I’m just the person that aspiring writers keep asking — on average, about 23 times per month — how to get out of an exclusive that hasn’t panned out as they had hoped.

To help you weigh the relevant risks, let’s look at the phenomenon from the other side of the agreement. Generally speaking, agents will request exclusives for only one of three reasons: they fear that there will be significant competition over who will represent the project, they don’t like to be rushed while reading, or it is simply the agency’s policy not to compete with outside agencies, ever.

Do I feel some of you out there getting tense over that third possibility, doing the math on just how many years (if not decades) it could take to make it through your list of dream agents if you had to submit to them one at a time? Relax, campers: requests for exclusives are actually fairly rare.

Why rare? Well, the first kind of exclusive request I mentioned last time, the one Agent A might use to prevent Agents B-R from poaching your talents before A has had a chance to read your manuscript (hey, A’s desk is already chin-deep in paper), tends to be reserved for writers with more than just a good book to offer. Those that happen to be celebrities, for instance, or won a major contest fifteen minutes ago.

Basically, the agent is hoping to snap up the hot new writer before anybody else does. Or before the HNW realizes that s/he might potentially be in the enviable position of being able to choose amongst several offers of representation.

Which brings me back to those knotty questions I asked earlier in this post: what do you want from your future agent, over and above the ability and willingness to sell your books for you? Since pretty much every respectable agency offers the same service, such choices are often made on the basis of connections, how well-established the agency is, or even how well the writer and the agent happen to hit it off.

Agents, as it happens, are aware of all that. If an agent fears that the other contenders might be able to offer a rosier prospect (or, in a conference situation, just have more engaging personalities), it might well be worth his while to buttonhole the HNW and get her to commit to an exclusive before anyone else can get near enough to ask.

So if you suddenly find yourself the winner of a well-respected literary contest or on the cover of People, remember this: just because an agent asks for an exclusive does not mean you are under any obligation to grant it. Because the writer owns the manuscript, she, not the agent, is technically in control of an exclusivity agreement.

I know, I know: aspiring writers are seldom used to thinking of the submission process this way, but the agent is only allowed to read your manuscript because you say it is okay, right? While Hortense would not have been in a position to set conditions on a submission if there were no question of an exclusive peek (indeed, the average agency reviews far too many manuscripts for any given submitter to be in a position to bargain at that point), she was the person in the best position to determine whether granting an exclusive was in her manuscript’s best interest.

Which means, of course, that you are. Yes, even if the alternative is not allowing the exclusive-seeking agent to see it at all.

It doesn’t always make sense to say yes to a request for an exclusive. If several agents are already interested in your work, it might not be. The implicit understanding in an exclusive-read situation is that if the agent makes an offer, the writer will say yes immediately. The question, then, you should ask yourself before you grant an exclusive is not “Is this an agent?” but “Is this the best agent for my work?”

If you would like to be in a position to compare and contrast offers from different agents, you should be hesitant to grant exclusives. Or to say yes to them before you’ve heard back from another agent whom you feel would be a better fit for your manuscript.

Does that loud choking sound I just heard mean that some of you weren’t aware that a writer doesn’t need to drop everything and respond to a request for an exclusive immediately? It’s not as though the request is going to expire five days hence; unless an agent actually asked you to overnight your manuscript (rare), she’s probably not expecting it right away. In the first heat of excitement, it’s tempting to get pages out the door that very day, but again, it might not be in your book’s best interest.

Besides, if you attach your manuscript as a Word attachment to your same-hour reply to that nice e-mail from Millicent, when will you have time to review your submission IN ITS ENTIRETY, IN HARD COPY, and OUT LOUD, to catch any previously-missed typos or rejection triggers?

Like it or not, timing submissions is a matter of strategy. If you are already murmuring, “Yes, by Jove: I want to query and submit in a manner that maximizes the probability to be fielding several offers at once!”, then I suggest you consider two issues very carefully before you decide which agents to approach first. Fair warning — before you can answer either, you’re going to need to do a little research.

(1) If an agency has an exclusives-only policy, should it be near the top of my query list, potentially forcing me to stop my submission process cold until they get back to me? Or are there agents who permit simultaneous submissions that I could approach all at once before I queried the exclusive-only agency?

(2) Is there an agent on this list to whom I would be OVERJOYED to grant an exclusive, should she happen to request it after seeing my query or hearing my pitch, or would I be equally happy with any of these agents? If it’s the former, should I approach that agent right off the bat, before sending out queries to any exclusives-only agents on the list?

And the disgruntled murmur afresh: “Okay, Anne, I get it: an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. But where does this leave Hortense and the many, many other writers out there who have granted exclusives to the first agent who asked, only to find themselves chafing under the agreement down the line, when other agents asked to see the manuscript? Can’t you dole out just a few ounces of cure?”

Again, it depends: why did the agent asked for the exclusive in the first place, and how long it has been since the writer granted it?

I know, I know: I’m asking a lot of questions, but there’s a lot to consider here. That’s why I’m hoping that most of you are reading this before you find yourself in Hortense’s position. Resting uncomfortably within the horns of a dilemma is seldom conducive to thoughtful pondering. Keep up the good work!

Posted on - No Comments on Surviving a writers’ conference with your dreams, sanity, and energy in one piece, or, if a stone can muster a smile, so can you

Surviving a writers’ conference with your dreams, sanity, and energy in one piece, or, if a stone can muster a smile, so can you

I hope that those of you attending the PNWA’s annual shindig this weekend will pardon my delaying the promised final post on writing conferences — after the tragic events of Thursday night and Friday morning, I felt that we could all use a bit of a breather from stark reality. Besides, I thought my online time would be better used responding to individual questions: I’ve heard from about a dozen conference attendees who have apparently been taking breaks between sessions to nip back to their respective hotel rooms, log onto the Internet, and shoot me a question about pitching. Or look up a how-to in the Author! Author! archives. Or just to remind themselves that, contrary to what eager aspiring writers often hear from the dais at writers’ conferences, the outlook for publishing is not all gloom and doom.

We try to be upbeat here at Author! Author! Which is why what I’m about to tell those of you who have just successfully pitched your work to an agent or editor may come as something of a surprise: no matter how excited you are about receiving a request for pages, do not even consider sending your manuscript to that agent or editor right away. Take the time to re-read it yourself first.

Half of you just turned pale with dread, right? “But Anne,” post-pitch writers everywhere exclaim, “that will take hours, or maybe even days! I want to get this out the door!”

Of course you do; it’s tremendously exciting when a real, live agent or editor wants to read your work. If you’re like most conference pitchers, you’re probably thinking that it would be a good idea to get it under his or her nose as soon as humanly possible, while s/he is still excited about it. Or, to put it more cynically, while s/he still remembers your pitch.

That’s an understandable impulse, but relax — pitch-hearers typically take good notes; they also often hear dozens of pitches at any given conference. That means, in practice, that you don’t need to rely upon that agent or editor’s memory of your pitch to guarantee a warm reception for the requested pages. All you have to do is include a cover letter thanking the agent or editor for asking for your manuscript.

And, realistically, yours is not going to be the only manuscript that agent or editor has requested over the last six months. That means, to get cynical again for a moment, that no matter how excited that agent or editor seemed to be about your book concept, it’s not standard practice for them to clear their schedules immediately after returning from a writers’ conference in order to read all of the requested materials super-eager writers will have e-mailed within hours of the pitch meeting. Nor do they tend to stand by the incoming mail chute, fretting about why that writer has not yet mailed that manuscript. Why, it’s been a whole week!

Trust me, that’s not going to happen. Contrary to what you may have heard on the conference rumor mill or read on the Internet, there’s no ambient expectation that a writer will send requested materials the day she receives the request, or even within a few weeks. Nor will cranking out pages instantly win a pitcher Brownie points at most agencies. Especially if, as is so often and so unfortunately the case with super-swift submissions, the manuscript is not either professionally formatted or what the pros call clean: free of typos, spelling gaffes, missing words, grammar problems, or any other writing faux pas that might detract — and distract — from the quality of the writing.

Translation: you not only have time to make sure that every word in those pages creates precisely the impression you want; it’s very much in your best interest to make the time to do it. You have time to spell-check; you have time to grammar-check; you have time to fine-tune characterization. That being the case, and knowing that any well-established agent receives enough well-written, book category-appropriate, perfectly clean manuscripts in any given year to fill the agency’s new client requirements many times over, why would a savvy writer not be willing to take the time to make sure that his work will make the best possible impression?

That question is not entirely rhetorical, by the way. Our old pal, Millicent the agency screener, mutters it above promising-but-flawed submissions pretty much every day of conference season.

See why I was a trifle reluctant to dump that much hard reality upon everyone when the national news was already depressing? Don’t worry; the rest of this post will be much more upbeat. It will, however, be stuffed to the gills with practical advice about handling yourself professionally in a pitching situation — and after the fact.

But first, let’s cheer ourselves up by contemplating the photo at the top of this post. That’s an actual stone in my yard, believe it or not, one that apparently went out of its way to anthropomorphize itself for my illustrative pleasure. If rocks can be that helpful and friendly, it gives me great hope for human beings.

It also reminds me of a friendly hillside that featured prominently in one of the UNCLE WIGGLY books, but that’s not why I like to run this photograph every year when I talk about pitching. I post it to remind all of you writers brave enough to sit down in front of an agent or editor and make an argument for your book that getting into print is often a long haul, even for the most beautifully-written manuscript or most trenchant book proposal.

You’re going to want to pace yourself.

Part of pacing your efforts involves — and you may well have seen this coming — not becoming so excited about a successful pitch or query that you submit your writing to professional scrutiny before it’s sufficiently polished. As we discussed last time, no matter how well you and the agent or editor to whom you pitched your book seemed to hit it off, no professional reader in his right mind would take on a manuscript simply because she liked the writer, or even because the pitch sounded good. Unless you happen to be a celebrity, a pro’s decision about whether to take on a manuscript is based primarily upon — wait for it — the manuscript.

Or, as agents and editors like to say, “It all depends on the writing.”

That often comes as a gigantic surprise to writers riding the heady adrenaline rush of having given a successful conference pitch. It also, unfortunately, also tends to come as a huge surprise to writers whose pitches were greeted with, “No, thanks,” as well as the many, many conference-attending writers that do not work up the nerve to pitch at all.

There’s a pretty good reason for that, actually: the overwhelming majority of writers’ conferences that feature pitching imply in their literature that if a pitch is good enough, the agent or editor hearing it will sign the writer on the spot. Since that simply does not happen — chant it with me now: no agent in her right mind would take on a manuscript or book proposal without reading it — it’s not altogether astonishing that writers that walk into conferences with this expectation often walk out of even the most successful pitch feeling somewhat let down.

Equally understandably, given such unrealistic expectations, they often walk into their pitch meetings believing that presentation is more important than substance. First-time pitchers often harbor fears of inadvertently making a poor impression upon an agent or editor in a social situation, thereby nullifying their chances of being able to wow ‘em with a pitch in a formal meeting.

I wish I could say that this is an unfounded fear, but actually, it’s pretty reasonable: one doesn’t have to spend much time hanging around that bar that’s never more than 100 yards from any writers’ conference in North America to hear a few horror stories about jaw-droppingly rude writers. And I don’t know about you, but one of my more dubious gifts as a human being is an uncanny ability to find the most institutionally powerful person in the room and catch him in a misstatement or crack a joke that skewers his ego, generally before I know who he is.

Hard to imagine how this particular trait would have provided my ancestors with enough of a survival advantage to justify its being passed down the evolutionary line, but I do seem to have been born with it. Many are the family stories about the toddler critiquing the pediatrician’s sartorial choices.

Honestly, does anybody look good in those tacky white polyester coats?

Before any of my fellow compulsive truth-tellers begin to panic, let me hasten to add that agents’ and editors’ anecdotes are almost invariably about genuinely outrageous approach attempts, not minor faux pas. And that’s not just because “You’re not going to believe this, but a pitcher just forgot to tell me whether is book is fiction or nonfiction” isn’t nearly as likely to garner sympathetic murmurs from fellow bar denizens as “This insane writer just grabbed my arm as I was rushing into the bathroom and refused to stop talking for 20 minutes.”

For one thing, the former is too common a phenomenon to excite much of a response from other agents. Unhappily, though, the latter happens often enough that some agents turn against hallway pitching for life. As, indeed, many a product of the post-conference rumor mill can attest.

However — and this is a big however — in my experience, the aspiring writers who sit around and fret about being the objects of such anecdotes are virtually never the folks that ought to be worrying about it. These are not the kind of gaffes that your garden-variety well-mannered person is likely to commit.

The result: polite people end up tiptoeing around conferences, terrified of doing the wrong thing, while the rude stomp around like Godzilla with P.M.S. And then, once an agent who has been smashed into by one Godzilla too many complains on a blog or in an interview about how impolite writers are, the naturally courteous cringe, while the rude remain unfazed. Thus are the polite rendered more and more fearful of running afoul of an unspoken rule or two.

Case in point: a technologically-savvy reader wrote in a couple of years back to ask if it was considered appropriate to take notes on a laptop, iPad, or phone during conference seminars. It’s still not very common (surprising, given how computer-bound most of us are these days) but yes, it is acceptable, under two conditions.

First, if you do not sit in a very prominent space in the audience — and not solely because of the tap-tap-tap sound you’ll be making. Believe it or not, it’s actually rather demoralizing for a lecturer to look out at a sea of faces that are all staring at their laps. Are these people bored out of their minds, the worried speaker wonders, or merely taking notes very intensely?

Don’t believe me? The next time you attend a lecture of any sort, keep your eyes on the speaker’s face, rather than on your notes, your Blackberry, or that Octavia Butler novel you’ve hidden in your lap because you can’t believe that your boss is making you sit through a talk on the importance of conserving paper clips for the third time this year.

I guarantee that within two minutes, the speaker will be addressing half of his comments directly to you; consistent, animated-faced attention is THAT unusual in a lecture environment. The bigger the audience, the more quickly she will focus upon the one member visibly interested in what he is saying.

Heck, at the university where I used to teach, active listening was so rare that occasionally, one or another of my colleagues would get so carried away with appreciation that he would marry a particularly attentive student. One trembles to think what these men would have done had they been gripping enough lecturers to animate an entire room.

Back to the iPad issue. It’s also considered, well, considerate to ask the speaker before the class if it is all right to use any electronic device during the seminar, be it computer, iPhone, or tape recorder.

Why? Think about it: if your head happens to be apparently focused upon your screen, how is the speaker to know that you’re not just checking your e-mail? If you grin suddenly, how can the speaker be sure that it was at the one-liner she just tossed off, and not at some friend’s quip on Facebook? Also, in these decadent days, when the antics of unwary pets and clumsy humans often go viral, how may a speaker be sure that you are not recording her with an eye to posting her speech beneath unflattering lighting on YouTube?

Enough about the presenters’ problems; let’s move on to yours. Do be aware that attending a conference, particularly your first, can be a bit overwhelming. You’re going to want to– and this should sound familiar by now — pace yourself.

“But Anne!” conference brochure-clutching writers everywhere pipe up. “The schedule is jam-packed with offerings, many of which overlap temporally! I don’t want to miss a thing!”?

Yes, it’s tempting to take every single class and listen to every speaker, but frankly, you’re going to be a better pitcher if you allow yourself to take occasional breaks. Cut yourself some slack; don’t book yourself for the entire time.

Why? Well, let me ask you this: would you rather be babbling incoherently during the last seminar of the weekend, or raising your hand to ask a coherent question?

Before you answer that, allow me to add: since most attendees’ brains are mush by the end of the conference, it’s generally easier to get close to an agent or editor who teaches a class on the final day. Fewer lines, less competition.

Do make a point of doing something other than lingering in the conference center for three or four days straight. Go walk around the block. Sit in the sun. Grab a cup of coffee with that fabulous literary fiction writer you just met. Hang out in the bar that’s never more than 100 yards from any writers’ conference; that tends to be where the already-agented and already-published hang out, anyway.

And don’t you dare feel guilty about doing any of these things. Skipping the occasional seminar does not constitute being lax about pursuing professional opportunities: it is smart strategy, to make sure you’re fresh for your pitches. If you can’t tear yourself away, take a few moments to close your eyes and take a few deep breaths, to reset your internal pace from PANIC! to I’m-Doing-Fine.

I know that I sound like an over-eager Lamaze coach on this point, but I can’t overemphasize the importance of reminding yourself to keep breathing throughout the conference. A particularly good time for a nice lung-filling is immediately after you sit down in front of an agent or editor.

Trust me: your brain could use the oxygen right around then. It will help you calm down so you can make your most effective pitch.

And at the risk of sounding like the proverbial broken record, please, please, PLEASE don’t expect a conference miracle. Writing almost never sells on pitches alone, no matter how many times you have heard that apocryphal story about THE HORSE WHISPERER. You are not going to really know what an agent thinks about your work until she has read some of it.

Wait — haven’t I heard something like that before?

Seriously, it’s almost unheard-of for an agent to sign up a client during a conference — and it’s been practically unheard-of since roughly the advent of the personal computer. So I have no idea why so many conference-organizers blithely hand out feedback forms asking if you found an agent at the event. Even the most successful conference pitchers generally don’t receive an offer for weeks, if not months.

See how having realistic expectations can help improve the conference experience, even in retrospect? Remember, your goal here is not to be discovered on the spot, but to get the industry pro in front of you to ask to read your writing. Period.

Yes, I know: I’ve said this before. Repeatedly. And I’m going to keep saying it as long as there are aspiring writers out there who walk into pitch meetings expecting to hear the agent cry, “My God, that’s the best premise since OLIVER TWIST! Here’s a representation contract — and look, here’s my favorite editor now. Let’s see if he’s interested. I want this book sold by midnight!”?

Then, of course, the editor falls equally in love with it, offers an advance large enough to cover New Hampshire in $20 bills, and the book is out by Christmas. As an Oprah’s Book Club selection, naturally, even though neither the Oprah show nor her book club exist anymore.

Long-time readers, chant along with me now: this is not how the publishing industry works. This is not how the publishing industry works. This is not how the publishing industry works…

Did I say that you could stop repeating it?

The key to being a happy conference-goer — and, even more importantly, a happy post-conference writer — is not only to realize that the popular conception of how books move from manuscript to publication is dead wrong, but to believe it. Having to make a significant effort in order to get an agent to read your manuscript is normal.

Thus the appeal of conference pitching: done well, it will allow you to skip the querying stage and pass directly to the submission stage. So being asked to send pages is a terrific outcome for this situation, not a distant second place to an imaginary reality.

Admittedly, though, that is easy to forget in the throes of a pitch meeting. Almost as easy as forgetting that a request to submit is not a promise to represent or publish. Out comes the broken record again:

Whatever an agent or editor says to you in a conference situation is just a conversation at a conference, not the Sermon on the Mount or testimony in front of a Congressional committee. There is no such thing as an implied offer of representation or publication; there are only concrete offers and preliminary conversations. Everything is provisional until some paper has changed hands.

This is equally true, incidentally, whether your conference experience includes an agent who actually starts drooling visibly with greed while you were pitching or an editor in a terrible mood who raves for 15 minutes about how the public isn’t buying books anymore. (Not true, incidentally.) Until you sign a mutually-binding contract, no promises — or condemnation, for that matter — should be inferred or believed absolutely.

Try to maintain perspective. If you can’t, stop and take a few deep breaths.

Admittedly, perspective is genuinely hard to achieve when a real, live agent says, “Sure, send me the first chapter,” especially if you’ve been shopping the book around for eons. But it is vital to keep in the back of your mind that eliciting this request is not the end of your job as a marketer. To slap another golden oldie from the broken record collection on the turntable:

Regardless of how much any given agent or editor says she loves your pitch, she’s not going to make an actual decision until she’s read at least part of it. And she’s not going to clear her schedule for the rest of the month to read it, either.

So even if you are over the moon about positive response from the agent of your dreams, please, I beg you, do not stop pitching to any other agent that might conceivably be a good fit for your book. Try to generate as many requests to see your work as you can.

Why, yes, you’re right: that is going to be a heck of a lot of work. Your point?

No matter who says yes to you first, you will be much, much happier two months from now if you have a longer requested submissions list. Ultimately, going to a conference to pitch only twice, when there are 20 agents in the building, is just not efficient.

Far too many aspiring writers will just give up after one successful pitch, assuming, often wrongly, that a friendly pitch meeting means a predisposition to like a submission or an implied promise to read it quickly. It doesn’t, and it isn’t. So it is very much in your interest to send out submissions to several agents at once, rather than one at a time.

I heard that gasp, but no, there is absolutely nothing unethical about this, unless (a) one of the agencies has a policy precluding multiple submissions (rare) or (b) you actively promised one agent an exclusive. (I would emphatically discourage you from granting (b), by the way — and if you don’t know why, please see the EXCLUSIVES TO AGENTS category at right before you even consider pitching at a conference.)

Some of you look concerned, but trust me, this is what the agents will be expecting you to do. If an agent wants an exclusive peek, she will ask for one point-blank; there’s no such thing as a tacit request for a solo submission. By all means, tell each of the agents in the cover letter that others are looking at it, but don’t make the hugely pervasive mistake of granting an effective exclusive that the agent does not expect, simply because she was the one you liked best.

I see some of you blushing: you were thinking that, weren’t you, conference-goers? Or you have in the past, and then ended up waiting six months to hear back from that agent. Or did not hear back at all, right?

“Wow, Anne!” gasp those of you who have lived through this highly unpleasant experience. “What kind of a crystal ball are you wielding these days? That’s precisely what happened to me!”

No crystal ball needed on this one: it happens to pitchers all the time. They misunderstand the level of connection they made with agents at conferences, committing themselves in principle before the agents in question have even seen their work. “Well, we just clicked,” these writers say.

What they tend not to add is that let’s face it, it’s a heck of a lot less work — not to mention less wearing on the nerves — to send out one submission than, say, seven or eight. It’s also less stressful not to keep querying while that nice agent from the conference considers your submission.

And then one sad day, months after the conference, pitchers that think this way receive the rejection, often as a form letter. “What happened?” one-at-a-timers cry. “I thought we clicked! And now I feel like it’s too late to send out those requested materials to other agents.”

Actually, if less than a year has passed since the conference, it isn’t. But just think how much happier a writer who could say, “Well, I’m sad that the agent I liked best decided against representing my book, but at least those four other agents are still considering it,” would be in that moment. Or even one in a position to sigh with relief and murmur, “Wow, am I ever glad that I kept querying throughout these last six months. Now, I have other requests for materials.”

Besides, your time is valuable: sending out those post-conference submissions one at a time, waiting for a response from each before moving on to the next, could eat up months. Years, even, if you’re dealing with agencies that practice the increasingly common rejection tactic of simply never contacting the writer if the answer is no.

Yes, really. Even if the agent requested the entire manuscript. See now why a savvy writer never grants a tacit exclusive?

Just mention in your cover letter to each that other agents are also reading it, and keep moving forward. Trust me, hearing that it’s a multiple submission not going to annoy anyone that did not explicitly tell you that he does not expect an exclusive peek. That old saw about agents’ getting insulted if you don’t submit one at a time is absolutely untrue. Let’s toss another broken record onto the turntable:

Unless an agent asks for an exclusive look at your work, it’s neither expected nor in your interest to act as if s/he has. In fact, hearing that others are interested may even make your book seem more attractive.

Yet another reason you should keep on pitching in those hallways: it tends to be a trifle easier to get to yes than in a formal pitch. Counter-intuitive, isn’t it? Yet in many ways, casual pitches are more persuasive.

Why? For one simple reason: time. In a hallway pitch, agents will often automatically tell a writer to submit the first chapter, simply in order to be able to keep on walking down the hall, finish loading salad onto their plates, or be able to move on to the next person in line after the agents’ forum.

Seriously, it’s true. If the agent handles your type of work, the premise is interesting, and you are polite, he will usually hand you his business cards and say, “Send me the first 50 pages.”

Okay, pop quiz to see who has been paying attention over the past few days. After the agent says this, do you:

(a) regard it as an invitation to talk about your work at greater length?

(b) regard it as an invitation to a lifetime of friendship?

(c) regard it as a promise to make you the next bestselling author?

(d) say, “Gee, you’re a much nicer human being than {insert name of other agent here}. He turned me down flat,” and go on to give details about how mean he was?

(e) launch into a ten-minute diatribe about the two years you’ve spent querying this particular project?

(f) thank her profusely and vanish in a puff of smoke, so you may pitch to another agent? And before you send out the requested pages IN THEIR ENTIRETY, IN HARD COPY, and OUT LOUD?

If you said anything but (f), I can only advise you run, not walk, to read my Pitchingpalooza series — conveniently gathered for your perusing pleasure under the PITCHING heading on the archive list at right — and as well as the entirety of the INDUSTRY ETIQUETTE category. You need to learn what’s considered polite and reasonable in the industry, pronto.

It will also help you gain a more realistic sense of the immense importance agents and editors attach to their time. In a face-to-face pitch in a formal meeting, agents tend to be more selective than in a hallway pitch. The reason is, you guessed it, time: they’ve got more of it than in a hallway pitch. In a ten-minute meeting, there is actual leisure to consider what you are saying, to weigh the book’s merits.

In short, enough time to save themselves some down the line by rejecting your book now.

Why might this seem desirable to them? Well, think about it: if you send it to them at their request, someone in their office is ethically required to spend time reading it, right? By rejecting it on the pitch alone, they’ve just saved their Millicent 5 or 10 minutes.

In a perverse way, a formal pitch can be significantly harder to give successfully than a casual one. Sitting down in front of an agent or editor, looking her in the eye, and beginning to talk about your book can be quite a bit more intimidating than launching into a hallway pitch.

Think of it this way: every time you buttonhole an agent and say those words is one less query letter you’re going to need to send out.

Still breathing at least once an hour? Good; I’ll move on.

As a veteran of many, many writers’ conferences all over the country, I can tell you from experience that they can be very, very tiring. Especially if it’s your first conference. Just sitting under fluorescent lights in an air-conditioned room for that many hours would tend to leech the life force out of you all by itself, but here, you will be surrounded by a whole lot of very stressed people while you are trying to learn as much as you possibly can.

As you may have noticed, most of my advice on how to cope with all of this ambient stress gracefully is pretty much what your mother said to you before you went to your first party: be polite; be nice to yourself and others; watch your caffeine and alcohol intake, and make sure to drink enough water throughout the day. Eat occasionally.

And you’re not wearing that, are you?

Actually, on the only occasion when my mother actually made that comment upon something I was wearing, she had made the frock in question. For my senior prom, she cranked out a backless little number in midnight-blue Chinese silk that she liked to call my Carole Lombard dress for an occasion where practically every other girl was going to be wearing something demure and flouncy by Laura Ashley. It was, to put it mildly, not what anyone expected the valedictorian to wear.

She hastened to alter it. Even with the addition of quite a bit of additional fabric, most of the male teachers followed me around all night long. The last time I bumped into my old chorus teacher, he spontaneously recalled the dress. “A shame that you didn’t dress like that all the time,” he said wistfully.

Oh, what a great dress that was. Oh, how inappropriate it would have been for a writers’ conference — or really, for any occasion that did not involve going out for a big night on the town in 1939. But then, so would those prissy Laura Ashley frocks.

Which brings me back to my point (thank goodness).

I wrote on what you should and shouldn’t wear to a conference at some length in an earlier post, but if you find yourself in perplexity when you are standing in front of your closet, remember this solid rule that will help you wherever you go within the publishing industry: unless you will be attending a black-tie affair, you are almost always safe with what would be appropriate to wear to your first big public reading of your book.

And don’t those of you who have been hanging around the industry for a while wish someone had shared that little tidbit with you sooner?

To repeat a bit more motherly advice: do remember to eat something within an hour or two of your pitch meeting. I know that you may feel too nervous to feel hungry, but believe me, if you were going to pick an hour of your life for feeling light-headed, your first encounter with your future agent is not a wise choice. If you are giving a hallway pitch, or standing waiting to go into a meeting, make sure not to lock your knees, so you do not faint.

And practice, practice, practice before you go into your meetings. This is the single best thing you can do in advance to preserve yourself from being overwhelmed.

Fortunately, conferences are peculiarly rich in opportunities to practice talking about your book. As I pointed out last time, you will be surrounded by hundreds of other writers. Introduce yourself, and practice pitching to them. Better still, find people who share your interests and get to know them. Share a cookie; ask whether they know a good place to get lunch; talk about your work with someone who will understand.

Because, really, is your life, is any writer’s life, already filled with too many people who get what we do? You will be an infinitely happier camper in the long run if you have friends who can understand your successes and sympathize with your setbacks as only another writer can.

I was thinking about this the other day, when I snuck into the PNWA conference to videotape an interview with a recently-published author and longtime member of the Author! Author! community about his novel. Had the muses abruptly snatched me up, carried me through the air, and flung me down at any similar gathering in the world, I would have known within seconds that I was at a writers’ conference, and on the first day, too.

How did I know? Because the lobby, the bar, and the restaurant in the hotel where the conference was being held was filled with nervous-looking people sitting by themselves. Half of them were peering at pieces of paper, their mouths moving: clearly, they were practicing their pitches. While just a few feet away, a perfectly nice fellow writer was doing precisely the same thing.

As someone who has over the years met hundreds of fabulous people by the simple expedient of turning to the nearest pitch-practicer in a situation like this and saying, “So what do you write?”, I have to say, I find this dynamic sad. I hope that these isolated souls did eventually work up the nerve to say hello to one another, but astonishingly often, I see writers leaving conferences without seeming to say goodbye to anyone.

I cannot urge you strongly enough not to be one of those conference attendees. Make some friends. Because, honestly, a writer’s life cannot be too full of other writers.

Why not? Well, who else is going to be as thrilled to hear that you have landed an agent? Or sold a manuscript? Who else is going to rush out and buy your book the instant it appears in print, because it’s so empowering to see a fellow writer succeed?

Again, I speak from experience: the first people I told about my first book deal — after my SO and my mother, of course — were writers I had met at conferences. Why call them before, say, my college roommate? Because ordinary people, the kind who don’t spend their spare time creating new realities out of whole cloth, honestly, truly, sincerely, often have difficulty understanding the pressures and timelines that rule writers’ lives.

I was lucky: I already knew a lot of writers, including my college roommate — who recently sold her first novel to Algonquin, by the way. (Well done, Julie!) But the very first words my erstwhile SO’s mother uttered after hearing that my memoir had sold were, “What do you mean, it’s not coming out for another couple of years? Can’t you write any faster than that?”?

This kind of response is unfortunately common, and frankly, most people’s eyes glaze over about 42 seconds into an explanation of how a print queue works. I don’t think any writer ever gets used to seeing her non-writer friends’ faces fall upon being told that the book won’t be coming out for a year or two, at least, after the sale that’s just happened, or that upon learning that signing with an agent does not automatically equal a publication contract, or upon receiving the startling revelation that not every book is headed for the bestseller list.

Thought I got off track from the question of how to keep from getting stressed out, didn’t you? Actually, I didn’t: finding buddies to go through the conference process with you can help you feel grounded throughout both the conference and your writing life.

Not only are these new buddies great potential first readers for your manuscripts, future writing group members, and people to invite to book readings, they’re also folks to pass notes to during talks. (Minor disobedience is a terrific way to blow off steam, don’t you find?) You can hear about the high points of classes you don’t attend from them afterward.

And who wouldn’t rather walk into a room with 300 strangers and one keynote speaker with a newfound chum than alone?

Making friends within the hectic conference environment will help you retain a sense of being a valuable, interesting individual far better than keeping to yourself, and the long-term benefits are endless. To paraphrase Goethe, it is not the formal structures that make the world fell warm and friendly; friends make the earth feel like an inhabited garden.

So please, for your own sake: make some friends at the conference, so you will have someone to pick up the phone and call when the agent of your dreams falls in love with your first chapter and asks to see the entire book. And get to enjoy the vicarious thrill when your writing friends leap their hurdles, too.

Oh, you think it didn’t make my day when Julie’s book sold? It made my month. It showed that being serious, talented, and smart can indeed pay off in the long run.

Writing can be a very lonely business. Nothing brightens the long, slow slog like opening your e-mail when you’re really discouraged to find a message from a friend who’s just sold a book or landed an agent.

Well, okay, I’ll admit it: getting a call from your agent telling you that YOU have just sold a book is rather more of a day-brightener. As is the call saying, “I love your work, and I want to represent you.”

But the other is still awfully darned good. Start laying the groundwork for it now.

Something else that can help keep you from stressing out too much: while it’s always nice if you can be so comfortable with your pitch that you can give it from memory, it’s probably fair to assume that you’re going to be the teensiest bit nervous during your meetings. So do yourself a favor — write it all down; give yourself permission to read it when the time comes, if you feel that will help you.

Really, it’s considered perfectly acceptable, and it will keep you from forgetting key points. Please humor me by writing on the top of the paper, in great big letters: BREATHE!

I sense some of you shifting uncomfortably in your seats, stubbornly refusing to breathe. “But Anne,” you point out, “I keep seeing pitching advice online that says if I can’t recite my pitch from memory, I might as well not give it at all.”

Ah, I have seen that advice, too. Almost invariably, it’s talking about pitching a script, not a manuscript — snd a script pitch, my friends, is much, much shorter than the average book pitch. Isn’t it amazing how often terms cross industry lines, yet people assume that since the word is that same, it must mean the same thing in every context in which it is used?.

Besides, people who work with manuscripts for a living understand wanting to write things down. Don’t be ashamed to consult your notes if you get stuck; believe me, everyone involved will be much, much happier to see you read it than to sit there uncomfortably while you struggle to remember the next bullet point on your list.

Do remember to pat yourself on the back occasionally, by the way, for being brave enough to put your ego on the line for your work. As with querying and submitting, it requires genuine guts to submit your ideas to the pros; I don’t think writers get enough credit for that.

In that spirit, I’m going to confess: I have one other conference-going ritual, something I do just before I walk into any convention center, anywhere, anytime, either to teach or to pitch. It’s not as courteous or as public-spirited as the other techniques I have described, but I find it is terrific for the mental health. I go away by myself somewhere and play at top volume Joe Jackson’s song Hit Single and Jill Sobule’s (I Don’t Want to Get) Bitter. Here’s the first: