Road Map

I got my critique for my pitch proposal a lot sooner than I expected.  Crushed are my unrealistic dreams that she would be so in love with it that the world would fall away, and only she and the pitch would remain, their eyes locked in a fiery…

Anyway, that didn’t happen.  No short cuts for me; it’s the long and winding road for as long as it takes.  It’s a long road, treacherous and lonely, but at least I know where I’m going and how to get there.  Actually, it wasn’t all bad.  Heck, just getting honest feedback from a professional was worth the price of admission.  I don’t how polite she was in crafting the comments, but she had some positive words.  She complimented two of my sentences (I only had seven, so pretty good batting average) and said the opening was nice, if a little generic.  She was confused about Thea’s attitude toward her home and felt the mission was too vague.  I got the impression she liked it overall, but that it wasn’t specific enough, that it didn’t give her anything to make her want to pick my book out of the hundreds of letters she gets in a week.

Even though the miracle ending didn’t happen, this was a very positive experience.  The hardest thing for me to know is just how much of the Wind Maiden’s world people can “see”.  I’ve been living there with these characters off and on for five years; It’s as real to me as any place on Earth.  More so than some.  To everyone else, though, it’s just words on a page, and my biggest mistake in the pitch was not providing enough words.  I was so worried about overdoing it that I never considered I might under-do it.

Anyway, I’ve got great notes – a road map to along, as well as proof a respected literary agent thinks I can craft a good sentence (hey, we take the victories where they are).