If you’re not on Twitter all the time, like I am, you might not know what PitMad is. According to the website: “#PitMad is a pitch party on Twitter where writers tweet a 280-character pitch for their completed, polished, unpublished manuscripts. Agents and editors make requests by liking/favoriting the tweeted pitch.”
As an active member of the writing community on Twitter, I was aware any time a PitMad came around. Lots of pitches would be floating around, some of which were books I would actually read if they were published. Until recently, I didn’t have a manuscript ready to be pitched. But the Monday before Dec. 5, I saw a tweet about PitMad and thought maybe I’d give it a shot.
Before…
Now going in I didn’t have any expectations. I just thought it’d be a bit of fun to see what would happen.
My pitches (it was recommended I have three of them to post at different times during the day) were unpolished and fresh from the brainpan. They hadn’t been reviewed by any writer who actually knows how to write a decent pitch. This fuelled my low expectations.
I’m currently in the process of reworking/rewriting my query letter because I already knew I wasn’t doing my best at selling my book to agents. So I already knew I wasn’t very strong at the pitch game yet.
During…
PitMad begins at 8am EST and I had my first tweet ready to go just after the clock struck.
During the day, I tried to retweet as many pitches I saw as possible to show support and love for my fellow writers. I also posted two more pitches around noon and 4pm, but my first tweet was the most “popular” and got continuous support throughout the day.
I stayed on as much as I could to support writers and monitor my own progress. Despite having low expectations, there was still a part of me that had hope I’d get noticed by an agent or two.
It didn’t happen. While I’m a smidge disappointed, I knew this would happen. This industry requires a thick skin and boy is mine really thick now.
After…
Well nothing has drastically changed. I finished the evening feeling supported by the writing community, but not any closer to being represented. It takes a lot of bravery to put yourself out there (especially in a public forum like Twitter), and I’m proud of myself for doing it.
The next date is in March and I guess we’ll see what happens between now and then.
If I do participate next time I’m going to do some things differently:
- Have my pitches critiqued beforehand
- Have more willpower not to check Twitter every five minutes
- Promote myself a little bit more before hand so my followers know I’m participating
This was an interesting experience, but ultimately I’m glad I participated. While nothing came out of it, I wouldn’t say anything negative about PitMad.
I’m hopeful that next year I’ll continue to improve my pitch and query, so that come March I can participate in the next PitMad feeling more confident.
Jenna Goldsmith 
One thought on “I Participated in my First #PitMad and This is What Happened”