Want a literary agent? Just @ them! (Please don’t).

So, I swore off Twitter for personal reasons, but like the mob - I just got pulled right back in.

The last year of building my brand and trying my hardest to get Waypoint published traditionally has led me to do some crazy stuff. I built a website (Hello, welcome) and started a blog (Again, hi). And, believe it or not, I returned to Twitter.

It turns out Twitter has a great writing community. You can interact with authors, literary agents, publishers, and other writers. And it’s usually super positive, collaborative, and refreshingly non-Twitter-like.

One thing I noticed right off the bat - there’s a ton of “events” that writers can participate in to get the attention of literary agents. And last week, I participated in my first!

Introducing MoodPitch

MoodPitch is an event where you craft a one-sentence pitch of your novel and find a way to express it visually.

Many authors take weeks to craft their MoodPitch. Me? I learned about it an hour before it went live. So…

I used AI to automatically generate some visuals that came to mind from Waypoint, and used Microsoft Designer to craft a professional-looking image. It all took maybe ten minutes.

Successes and Setbacks

• In the success column: My pitch was interesting enough that an agent requested a partial manuscript!

• In the loss column: The agent eventually had to reject me.

• Back in the success column: The agent gave me a personalized rejection! They said the novel was “really very well written” but too similar to another book they were sending to publishers.

• Also in the success column: A bunch of other MoodPitchers boosted my submission by re-tweeting it. It didn’t result in more interactions with agents, but one was enough, and it felt great to interact with folks.

If you want to see my MoodPitch, check out my Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheBucket015

I’d highly recommend getting on Twitter (shudder) if you want to boost your profile and get your stuff out there. Just don’t actually @ your literary agents. They won’t like that.