Into the Dragon's Lair

It started off quite well.

Or so they told me.

In terms of standing up, walking to the place they wanted me to go, positioning myself in a very strange surrounding, and doing so without tripping, falling, or otherwise embarrassing myself, I had done exceptionally well.

Now I was standing in a room full of my fellow writers, my peers, and a panel of professionals all looking directly at me, and the thought occurs to me.

What in God’s name have I done?

What on earth possessed me to think that this was a good idea?

“Where are you from?”

The question brings me back to where I am and I find myself staring at a writer, whose books I love, staring back at me.  He’s expecting an answer.

Hand to my forehead as I try to remember where I am from.

Hope he doesn’t ask my name, or it’s game over.

“Er…” I stammer, “Scottish Borders.”

He tries to engage me in a little light banter, “You don’t have much of an accent.”

“Don’t I?” I try to joke back, doing all that I can to sound as English as possible and make the most of this.

He smiles and I think he’s doing his best to help me relax and not feel like the ground is about to open up beneath me.

God bless Mark Billingham.

He asks me if I have completed the book I am pitching and I say yes, I finished it last year and I’ve just finished book two. 

He smiles and nods, introductory part over.

It’s time for the pitch.

I try to smile and mutter “Hello” at the panel before me.

I lift the cards up and hope that my voice doesn’t shake as I begin to read from them, glad that I decided on cards over paper.

They shake a lot less.

About halfway through I am very awake that my legs are shaking, and not just a little tremble around about the knee.

Oh dear me no.

I mean the kind of shaking that can lead to stumbling, collapsing, and sitting on the floor.

Probably not the kind of professional image I am attempting to portray.

I shift a little in my stance, hoping it doesn’t show how much the shaking is affecting most of my legs now, and carry on reading.

I don’t look up at them.

It’s the kind of thing that is usually encouraged in pitches but it is all I can do to recall how to look at words, understand those words, read them out loud, and make them sound  a little like a story.

I am almost at the end when the bell goes and I stop.

“Oh dear,” Mark says kindly, “Did you have much left.”

I raise a shaking hand to indicate a gap of two inches, “About this much.”

Then he asks the panel to make their comments.

And one-by-one they do.

It's not at all what I was hoping for.

The general consensus of opinion seems to boil down to one thing.

They don’t get it.

My pitch confused them.

Which confuses me no end, because I am hardly known for writing complicated stories, and will always choose to err on the side of simplicity.

Or so I thought.

What didn’t they get?

Well, this is where it does in fact get complicated.

Because the more I tried to explain what it was all about, the more I seemed to get tangled up in my own words.

The words mix around inside my mind as I try to answer questions, and I seem to get even more caught up.

And she becomes the Tangled Writer at last.

The truth of the matter, which I managed to figure out later after many, many glasses of red wine and a very good friend, is that I wasn’t properly prepared.

All the questions that a writer must answer within the realms of her own work, the world she must know backwards, every detail and nuance, must be absolutely nailed down.

Without question.

Every piece of research must be done, and no stone left unturned in seeking the truth about this world and its characters.

Plus, obviously, writing a great pitch.

Would I do it again?

The thought alone makes me stop and smile, taking a pause to consider, but I think with enough preparation then, yes, I would.

I can see now how it could have all been so much simpler.

How squeezing an entire novel’s synopsis into a hundred or so words was probably not the right way to express the story, but rather gave them far more than they wanted to hear.

I’ll tell you this much, though.

It will make future rejections by email and letter so much milder by comparison.

I’m almost looking forward to them.

Almost.