The Pitch

Recently, a lot of my friends have been trying to write the "perfect pitch". Good luck with that. I'm not saying there isn't value in a perfectly constructed mini-summary of your book. It has its place. However, I think the key to pitching is knowing your book well enough that you can gain enough interest in a very short period of time and then be able to expand without reciting a two page synopsis.

Huh? Okay, let's look at it this way. You have developed the "perfect" pitch that you can deliver in 30 seconds. That's wonderful. But what if you only have five seconds? Ten seconds? How are you going to adjust that perfect pitch you developed depending on the situation? Personally, I get extremely bored when I ask someone what their book is about and they launch into a formal pitch. I just want to know what it's about. That's all. But how do you do that?

You have to know your book, intimately, and know what there is about it that would spark an interest. Quickly.

I have several pitches for They Call Me Crazy. The formal pitch can be delivered in thirty seconds, and of course is for a more formal setting--an actual sit down opportunity to deliver it, where a pitch is expected, or as part of a written query process, tweaked of course. Here it is:

Roland Adams was just a good ol' boy from Deacon, Kansas. When his wife, Cass, is found trying to dump his body in the Spring River, the town can only come to one conclusion: She's crazy. Certifiable. Always has been. As Cass' life unfolds, the secrets held by her worm-farming brother-in-law, her psychic grandmother and her only friend, a promiscuous fifth grade teacher, may be the key to Cass' deliverance.
But Roland is the only one who has all of the answers. And he's not talking.

Yes, that tells the story, and hopefully it gives an indication that although the book is about killing a spouse, it does have a darkly humorous tone. However, if I'm standing in a bar with several people and someone asks, "What's your book about?" do you think I am really going to clear my throat and go in to this obviously rehearsed speech? Sorry. Not me. I know my book very well, and instead, depending on the group I'm with or the specific situation, I would throw out a one sentence 'pitch'. Something like:

A Kansas woman discovers how difficult it is to bury a husband: especially when using the same shovel she whacked him with in the first place.
OR,
After burying her husband in his garden, a Kansas woman unearths his secrets and wants to kill him again.

What I would NOT do is use a big fancy word like mariticide. Sure, that's what it's about, but it doesn't suggest the tone of the book, and showing off my smartness is not the point. I want someone to ask, "What kind of secrets?" or "Why did she kill him?" or... you get the idea. I want someone to GIVE ME more than five or ten seconds because they WANT TO.

Of course, with my other novel, Ragtown, the tone, the setting, the story is quite different and therefore, so are my various ways to present it. Sure, I have written formal taglines, blurby things, 'back of the book' stuff, etc., but, in my opinion, that is the easy part. Writing those sentences that tell 'what the book is about' should be easy for writers. It's getting that interest in a sentence, something you can throw out casually that makes someone say "tell me more." And in order to do that, you have to know your book and you have to know what it is about your book that might appeal to someone.

Now, 50% of the people that read this are going to disagree with what I'm going to say. But let me tell you, I take very good notes of people's reactions to my 'pitches' and with Ragtown, this works more than 50% of the time:

"It's a coming of age story about a construction worker in the 1930's working on the Hoover Dam project."

Boring as hell, right? Tells you NOTHING, right? Well let me tell you something I have learned over the past year; The Hoover Dam or Depression era dam building has touched so many people's lives in a variety of ways, that just by saying that boring line above, giving nothing other than the setting, more than 50% of the people I've thrown that out to want to hear more. In the past week alone, these are three comments I've had:

"My grandfather worked on the Coolie Dam. I'd love to read this."
"I've been to the Hoover Dam! How cool, that sounds great."(It doesn't sound great, they know nothing about it, however, they are familiar with the setting and therefore are interested)
"How many people are actually buried in the dam?" (I get a lot of questions about the dam itself, which in my opinion, means people are interested)

Each one of these, of course, gives me the opportunity to tell someone more about the book. And isn't that the point?

So come up with a lovely formal pitch, write it up, put it in your query, on your business cards and your website, sit back and revel in the beauty of your words. But when it comes down to really pitching, you better know your book and know what to say that is going to have them asking for more.

So, what's your book about?

Why Rejection is Good and Zola

In November, 2011, after three and a half years, including research and writing time, I finally ‘finished’ my historical novel, Ragtown. I wrote an amazing query letter and an equally awesome synopsis and began the process of querying agents. By the summer of 2012, after approximately forty rejections (and I’m sure I’m underestimating that), I realized something was definitely wrong.

It’s not that it was a ‘bad’ novel-not at all. It was well written, rich in historical detail, a great story of one man’s struggle to overcome his own past while working in the diversion tunnels of the Hoover dam, a treacherous environment, during one of the worst economic disasters in American history. It’s timely. It has a wide audience appeal. It’s American-like baseball and apple pie. But no-one was interested.

So maybe it wasn’t that great?

Rejections are hard to take. Especially when they seem to be coming at a rate of two a week. However, I’ve never been one to assume that when it comes to writing, I am always right and all those that don’t like my work ‘just don’t understand the story (or the concept, or the structure, or the blah, blah,blah)’. No, not at all. The people that were rejecting me have been in this business a lot longer than me, so obviously, they were seeing something that I wasn’t.

Yes, I kind of ate a rock for Ragtown research

So last summer, I pulled out all of those rejections and looked for common concerns. As new rejections came to my email, I started asking questions, specifics-what wasn’t working?  The majority of the concerns seemed to be in the first fifty pages. That’s where I started.

In October, I began a complete revision that included cutting almost 20K words, most from the first one hundred pages. I changed POV’s, I even gave one character a badly needed libido. I sent it through three editors and an additional twelve readers.

Last month, I again finished Ragtown.

And yesterday, I was notified that Ragtown is a finalist for the Pacific Northwest Writers Association Zola Award for Historical Fiction.

Rejection is hard. It’s too easy to say to yourself, “they are right, I am not very good at this” and give up. It’s too easy to be hard headed about what professionals say about your work and claim that they “just don’t get it.” But my goal is to have Ragtown published, and in order to do that, I had to put my ego aside and listen. Rejections may be hard to swallow, but they are also a good way for a writer to see what others find difficult about your work. And by taking heed, you might make that wonderful novel sellable.

Ragtown, a historical novel

Finalist for the Zola Award

Represented by Svetlana Pironko

Author Rights Agency

When Words Count Retreat

Nestled among mountains of green outside of Rochester, Vermont is the When Words Count Retreat. My good friend and writing buddy Beth Garland and I had the pleasure of spending four days and three nights there last week.

Beth and I eating pure sin at the local soda fountain

  

I could spend this entire post restating what is on their website, but, I won’t do that. Click here to read the details, and I will say that the beauty of the place is understated on their website.   What I want to tell you about are the things that aren’t on the website, the things that I personally found very special.

The Mark Twain room

I live in the desert. Being surrounded by fifty different shades of green instead of the usual brown of my environment was a novelty. I can only imagine how beautiful the area is in the Fall and Winter. On the drive to the retreat, both sides of the road were graced with creeks and brooks and waterfalls! Yes, waterfalls! I drove with the windows down just so I could listen to the sound of water. One particular waterfall outside of Granville, Vermont was so breathtaking that Beth and I had to stop and stand before it.  Granville is about ten miles from the retreat, and well worth the drive.

 

I live in the city. Walking through the town of Rochester, as well as several of the surrounding communities, is like taking a step back in time. Antique cash registers. Small book and antique stores.  A soda fountain with homemade brownies and bread pudding.  I watched several children play in the Rochester town square and wondered if they knew how lucky they were. I also wondered if the residents even felt the need to lock their doors.

I love animals. Although I have unique wildlife in my part of the country, I made it a point to search for the local animals. Taking the two mile walk around the block at the retreat, I passed farms that had cows, baby goats and alpaca. I also saw a red fox, what a cute little guy, ducks on the pond and geese taking their morning walk down the road. I missed the coyotes I was told live nearby and the bears and beaver weren’t willing to show their paws. For those that don’t know me well, I’ve been trying to see a moose for three years. I finally saw one.  That was a big score. At night, the sound of the many peepers were a melodic addition to the rain.

What a view

I love people!  First, I have to say that the staff and owners of the retreat are wonderful. Diana aims to please, Chef Paul aims to make you gain weight, and Jon and Steve offer great writing advice, encouragement and interesting conversation.  Second, there are other writers there, new friends from different places. I’ve always loved meeting other writers, hearing their words, listening to their stories. This trip was no exception. I made new friends.

  

So who cares about all that, right? Writers care. Getting out of your element is an opportunity to see things differently and gain inspiration. It was relaxing, fun and definitely a chance to write. In fact, I came back with a new project idea that I have been working on for the past week.

Would I recommend When Words Count to others? That depends. If you like sitting in front of your computer at your house, doing the same old thing every day and don’t need or want to experience anything new or meet wonderful people, then no.

However, if you are a writer who wants a relaxing place to write, eat good food, engage with others and gain a bit of inspiration, then yes, check them out.  And enjoy the experience.

  

Kelly 5.0-The New and Improved Version

To hear my mother tell, it wasn't an easy birth. Kicking and screaming, fighting my way out of the birth canal---For the writers and readers amongst us, we'll call that a foreshadow. I was never an easy child, nor an uncomplicated adult. But, I've made it to fifty, so I must still be here for a reason.

You know the old saying "There is a lot of water under the bridge?" Yeah, that. Think Atlantic Ocean. Might as well include the other three as well. During a hurricane. And a tsunami.

  

But I have learned a lot and I think at fifty, you are allowed to share some of that knowledge. So here are a few of the more non-traditional things I've learned along the way; things that will hopefully see me through the next fifty years:

Raising good children is the most satisfying experience on the planet- I'm not talking about birthing them and making sure they live to see adulthood, I'm talking about raising them: teaching them to be compassionate human beings, giving them the tools so they can succeed, loving them even when you feel like strangling them. My children have been my greatest gift in life and I never considered parenting a hobby. It's paid off. I have two wonderful young men that continue to amaze me.

Laugh every day and make someone else laugh everyday-Of course there are documented health benefits to laughter, but the thing is, it just feels good to laugh. Make a point to do it every day, and if you can't get someone else to laugh, at least make them smile.

Strange is okay-My standard response when someone says "You're strange (weird, odd, crazy, etc.)" is "No, I'm unique." And that's a good thing. It reminds me of an old Edie Brickell song: What I am is what I am are you what you are or what?

 The power of the raised eyebrow-This subtle facial expression is very powerful when you use it correctly. If you aren't a natural, you'll have to practice and learn the technique (like I did). But once mastered, you will be able to convey a lot of thoughts without openly offending anyone.

Work to live, don't live to work-Yes, I work a lot. But, I do work to live. A life dedicated to working is not living. It's working.

Bad decisions usually weren't bad decisions at the time-We all spend way too much time looking back and thinking "if only I'd have taken this road instead." But here's the thing: We rarely remember why we chose the path we did. When given options, we all try to chose what is best for us, so at the time I made those decisions that I now consider 'bad', well, they seemed like my best option at the time. And who knows, maybe the other option would have been worse. Stop tripping on it and move on.

Fighting is a good thing-My dad used to say "Don't run up a hill you are not willing to die on." This has become a mantra in my house. Stand up for what you believe, and fight for the things that you are willing to take a punch for.

Weight IS an issue-I have struggled with my weight since I was 5. Yes, at five years old, I was the biggest kid in my class and for most years of my life, have been that big girl. I've tried every diet known to man, I exercise and I eat healthier than most, but it's always there. Even when I'm in one of my 'thin' stages, it's always there (fellow fatties know what I mean by this). When you are chronically overweight, everything you put in your mouth causes a mini guilt trip. Not a day passes when you don't think about it. Those that haven't lived this kind of life can never understand the personal torment that chronically overweight people experience.  It is a horrible way to live.  As I get older, I still work hard to control my weight and it's still an uphill fight. However, here's the big difference: I no longer do it because I want to 'look good', I do it now because I want to be healthier. Weight is a mental health issue, one I'm sure I can never resolve, but it is also a physical health issue---and I'm sure I will be working on that for the rest of my life.

Never underestimate the power of an animal's love-A pet will love you whether you are young, old, big, little, red, white, blue, gay, straight, obnoxious, reserved, overdressed, naked, conservative, liberal, happy or angry. Not a day goes by that my dog or cat doesn't make me smile and I can't imagine not having an animal friend in my home.

"If in doubt, don't" is bad advice-I've missed a lot of opportunities because of my own self doubt. Doubt often comes from fear, and fear you should try to overcome. If in doubt, think about why the doubt is there, re-evalute the situation and see if your reasons for doubt are justified. You may find you are missing a potentially golden opportunity just because you are afraid to fail.

Don't let people tell you 'you can't'-When I was a teenager, I wanted to do two things: write books and build houses. I heard so many times "writing is a hobby, not a job" and "no construction company is going to hire a girl" (It was the 70's, okay?) that I let that negativity infect me and went to nursing school instead. No one is allowed to tell me "you can't" any more. If they dare, I say "watch me." Now, I write. And I will build my own house some day. Watch me.

The Turner Erotica: Robert Begiebing on BookTalkNation.com

 April 24, 2013 at 7:00 pm EST, author Robert Begiebing will be interviewed live on BookTalkNation.com about his latest release, The Turner Erotica: A Biographical Novel. Begiebing is one of the most fascinating speakers I have had the pleasure to listen to and his knowledge of historical fiction writing is legendary. Don't miss this opportunity to talk with him, ask a question or just listen and learn from him.  

Go to BookTalkNation.com and register for the interview and send in a question for Robert Begiebing. A wonderful opportunity to hear from an amazing artist.


I have included below an excerpt from an interview with the author conducted by John Lemon, editor and owner of Ilium Press.   

Research. Art. History. Oh, and erotica.

The story behind the story is a story in itself...

JL: J. M. W. Turner was a revolutionary 19th century artist. Explain how his work changed the landscape of art.

April, 2013 from Ilium Press

RB: This is a big question probably not adequately answerable in an interview like this without sounding like a parody of glib art criticism. But let me try to lay out some points to suggest Turner's significance. Beyond sheer genius, being the youngest member elected to the Royal Academy, one of the first things that comes to mind is his taking the art of watercolors to a whole new level of technique and competence, demonstrating that water can be as important, detailed, and powerful as oil painting. He was a real pioneer on that front, just as he brought the techniques of oil painting to a new level, including original uses of some of the new pigments available in the early 19th century.
Turner is arguably the greatest painter Britain has produced, and his paintings have become national icons. He's buried in St. Paul's Cathedral along with other great British artists and national heroes such as Lord Nelson. The National Gallery accepted his posthumous bequest in 1856, representing 60 years of dedicated artistic labor—including something like 540 oil paintings, 1,600 finished watercolors, and 19,300 sketch studies.
He's the great master of advancing painterly traditions even while forging a new visionary Western art that reaches through the nineteenth and into the twentieth century. If he studied during his journeys abroad old masters such as Titian, Claude, and the Venetians—Canaletto, Titian, Tintoretto—particularly for confidence in his lengthy elucidation of light, he also studied his more local 18th-century predecessors from Blake to West to Mortimer. And he worked in all the traditional genres—history, biblical and mythological themes, landscapes, marines, and so on, avoiding only portraiture per se. Probably in part because he made a respectable living without the grind of portraiture so many lesser painters depended on for patronage. (After his famous self-portrait at age 26 or 27, he stayed away from it.) It's his land and seascapes that represent him at his most advanced and visionary—

JL: So, to be clear, it is as what you are calling a visionary artist that his influence is greatest?

Robert Begiebing

RB: Yes. As a visionary artist, reminiscent of his near contemporary Blake, Turner developed on canvas a perception of strong light eroding the solidity of the material world; he became, as one critic called him, a "painter of light, air, space." His life partakes of the character of his works: ever evolving, mysterious and puzzling to the observer who is forced to think; he avoids explanations, but was known to wink and say, "Make that out if you can." This deeper and mysterious attribute of his work seems to parallel his private life—his relations with women, his illegitimate children, and his private abodes and incognitos unknown to most of his acquaintances. He found a way to employ his whole self, including the mature and immature self, the eccentric self and the Royal Academician, a self that expresses an almost adolescent curiosity or fascination with the architecture and physiology and energy of sex (evident in the erotica), which seems, in turn, an expression of his inexhaustible appetite for observation.
His effects, traditional and visionary, lay beyond the competence of most artists at the time, including painting with his fingers, fingernails, brush ends, etc., along with the usual accoutrements. He's advancing the art at every level. And his influence is vast, not least unto the European and American Impressionists but also all the way into the mid-twentieth century abstract, non-objective painters, and no doubt beyond.

JL: Can you give a few examples?

RB: If Turner influenced the French (from Delacroix in 1825 to the Impressionists in 1870) who used his example pointing the way nearer the heart of Light more than he influenced English painters, the Americans above all developed a devotion to Turner. As early as the 1830s American artists such as Benjamin West and Washington Allston championed Turner as did William Ellery Channing in the North American Review. Thomas Cole studied Turner and met him. Fredrick Church was deeply influenced, as was Abba May Alcott, described as a "female Turner." And then there are the American Luminists, of the 1860s mostly: Fitz Hugh Lane, John Frederick Kensett, Martin Johnson Heade. Their studies of light and atmosphere were more generally serene, but they are a sort of Constable meets Turner group. All these Americans were suggesting on canvas the palpability of light; if forms are isolated structurally, they are tied together coloristically through a golden glow or blue tonality playing over them. Turner is not without influence on the Transcendentalist writers as well, in the sense that they seek the divinity of light and submergence of one's personality in Divine power. Charles Eliot Norton mounted an exhibition in America and Ralph Waldo Emerson read Modern Painters.
Thomas Moran is called "The American Turner." By late 1860s and 70s the American palettes grow even lighter and more colorful as American artists prepare for the full impact of impressionism in the 1880s-90s (studying the ways light affects color relationships as well as compositional organization): think of Mary Cassatt, Childe Hassam, William Merritt Chase, even John Singer Sargent. And then there is James McNeill Whistler whose gestural manner and use of color for moods, as if he were creating music and poetry, looks ahead to the abstractionist expressionists.
Is it too far a reach to suggest that in the twentieth century, to take just two examples, Rothko's bands and blocks of color and Jackson Pollock's energized brush strokes and gestural splashes and power drips of paint display a chain of influence? Look at Pollock's Sounds in the Grass: Shimmering Substance. And come to think of it, Motherwell spoke of Turner's lead in organizing "states of feeling" as "questions of light, color, weight, solidity, airiness, lyricism…." Turner valued not only cosmic energy in his paintings, he adumbrated these much later artists in his quest for emotionality, for unconscious energy, for nature's elemental forces. It's very difficult for me to look at some of these abstract expressionists without seeing the familiar visionary subjectivity in Turner's late works.

JL: There has been a significant amount of controversy around the theft and destruction of the Turner erotica sketches. Explain your research that leads you to believe this really occurred and by John Ruskin's hand.

RB: By the documentary evidence available to us, the destruction most likely did occur. If you credit the documentary evidence (it boils down to four documents, letters and diary entries) you don't end up trying to prove a negative (i.e., no holocaust) through reasonable speculations and extrapolations. Just before or just after someone's death, the burning of potentially embarrassing documents was not at all uncommon in the nineteenth century. One of the most famous instances is Isabel Burton's burning of Sir Richard Burton's manuscripts and papers after his death. She cited Ruskin's burning of the Turner erotica as one excuse for her doing so, to preserve another great man's reputation.
There is some debate, however, over how much Turner erotica was burned, or even whether any was, since Turner scholar Ian Warrell posited another way to look at the surviving erotic studies in a long academic essay on the matter. Warrell was tentative and exploratory about a possible interpretation of evidence that might at least suggest the immolation never occurred, but the press (The New York Times and The Guardian) got wind of Warrell's essay and turned the matter into a "case closed" and "we've all been fooled by this legend" news story, in the sensational, absolutist manner journalists are too often prone to feed us benighted citizens in the interests of commerce.
On the other hand, the specifics of the theft by narrator Stillman's hand are fictional though plausible, given what we know of Stillman and the rather mysterious falling out he actually had with Ruskin, his one-time mentor.

Check out all of Robert Begiebing's books at his website www.begiebing.com

Visit Ilium Press at www.iliumpress.com



Interview reproduced with author permission.