I mentioned in my last post how I got here, and why I was so sleep deprived. What I forgot to mention was my sneaking tendency toward a caffein addiction by PitMad day, but that is beside the point. PitMad was upon me. If there was ever a day to justify caffein and chocolate consumption, it was that day.
And yet, adrenaline was pumping through me instead. I can’t stress enough how dysfunctional I usually am on little sleep. But that day was different.
Yes, like every good little PitMad participant, I scheduled my tweets to post on Twitter at the exact moment I KNEW they would gain the most visibility. At least that was the general consensus of a few Google searches, and my inability to nit-pick my strategy anymore. Still, I set my alarm for 5:05 to wake up long enough to make sure my first post posted. (Cheers to the East Coasters who got to start their journey at the humane hour of 8am.)
It posted. Great. By some miracle, I caught another hour of sleep after that. I woke up to TWO likes on my post.
Did I forget to explain how PitMad functions? In a nutshell, you post your tweets, and throughout the world agents are scouring the PitMad hashtag for something that intrigues them. If they like your tweet, they tap the little heart icon (“like”) and you turn into Flubber—melty and bouncy all at the same time. The trick is, not EVERYONE on Twitter knows how this works, so you may get a few likes from, say, a profile pic of Gollum, whose bio reads “I’m just here for the women.” The other one of my two likes was from a freelance editor, which gave me just the confidence boost I needed to believe in the potential of my pitch, but didn’t hit home with my goal to snag an agent’s attention.
So we beat on, boats in the current, borne back ceaselessly into the insignificance of the morning routine. In a haze that blurred my memory of almost everything that happened that morning, I made my kids breakfast, probably got them dressed in something mismatched, and brushed everyone’s teeth. I told myself that refreshing Twitter every five seconds would drive me to madness, so I only refreshed every ten. But one thing I will be forever grateful for is the blessing of optimism. I was giddy all morning, sure that SOMETHING would come of all of my efforts.
I was standing in the bathroom (washing my hands? Doing my makeup? No, I didn’t have time for makeup…) running late for drop-off at the first babysitter I had lined up for the day. (Highly recommend babysitting. Five stars.) I’ll check for notifications one more time before we get in the car.
One. More. Time.
One. More. Like.
Great, I thought. What dummy account came to mess with my soul this time?
No. This account had both a first AND a last name, AND the first line of her bio cited a literary agency with whom she was theoretically employed. I didn’t have time to dive into researching her further at that moment, nor would the kids have let me if I did. So instead, I yelled for Cannon, who stood stunned on the stairs, wondering what trouble he was in this time. I grabbed him, spun him around, and we danced our socks off to whatever epic Disney song was playing through our Echo Dot.
“Mommy has been working so hard on something, and somebody just told me they like it!” I told him. His smile might have been bigger than mine, if that was possible. I danced with Bailee all the way up the stairs to find “backup underwear” for Cannon to take with him to the babysitter. When we found it, Cannon said, “First you made something and somebody liked it, then we found two backup underwears! How great is this day??”
Bless his little heart. He sure knows how to celebrate. Also, I didn’t do much laundry leading up to PitMad. Finding underwear was truly a win.
We jumped in the car, and I missed the freeway exit to my friend’s house by at least three miles because I couldn’t think past my excitement. A like is a like, not a publishing contract. But no matter the end result, it was progress.
I dropped the kids off at the babysitter and faced the reality of the other part of PitMad: retweeting. Weeks before PitMad, you start acquiring a list of people whose tweets you agree to retweet, hoping for reciprocity. But by 9am, I had over 200 retweets to reciprocate, not to mention that PitMad is an excellent time to network. I told myself I would get on top of my retweets before researching the agent who had liked my tweet.
I have given birth twice.
I have helped my husband through residency.
I wrote a book with a word count over 100k.
But that retweet session was the hardest thing I have ever done.
Talk about an exercise in patience. I read some great tweets, and I mourned that there was simply not enough time to respond to every single one that I loved, let alone add in the #f (fantasy) filter to see what my peeps were up to this fine PitMad day. But I did my best. It was now 11:30am. I would allow myself to research.
Imagine my relief when I discovered that, sure enough, this agent was legit. Not only was she legit, she was actively seeking adult manuscripts, and her wishlist seemed to match my novel point for point. Her agency’s website was well put together, and she even looked nice in her profile picture.
Only one thing stood between me and submitting the query letter and first ten pages she wanted: admitting that I had all the materials ready, and could hit send at any time.
I couldn’t hit send just yet.
My second tweet rolled out and got less attention, which made sense because a lot of my retweets were focused on the first one, and the second tweet wasn’t as good. When my third tweet went live and the SAME AGENT liked it, I was reeling. Did that mean she stumbled upon it and liked the concept again out of fate? Was she following my progress and reaffirming she WANTED to read my story? WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?
Only time would tell…after I hit send. Which I couldn’t do, yet.
It was time to pick up my kids from the second babysitter and attend a birthday party. PitMad would end in ten minutes. It felt like I should do more, retweet more, refresh more. But I didn’t. I sat back and watched the minutes tick away until they were gone.
No more bites. But did that mean anything? No. It meant I was one of the incredibly fortunate participants who had ANY traction at all. I got an AGENT like.
We went to the birthday party, we did the bedtime routine, I even went to a high fitness class with my friends and did burpees like I hadn’t only had four hours of sleep the night before. I rode the adrenaline high all the way to 9pm, at which point I went home and hit send.
On their website, the agency claims they usually get back to people with a response within two weeks. It has been 11 very long days…
Up Next: PitMad Pandemonium: The Results Are In (You’ll know when I do!)
