How To Raise Your Heartrate
I just had one of the scariest 10 minutes I have ever had since I started writing and submitting my work 20 years ago. For those who don’t know, PitchWars is an online event where writers are able to send a sample of their book to mentors. These mentors then choose the writers they want to help develop. It’s highly competitive and you don’t want to leave a i undotted or a t uncrossed.
My middle grade fantasy/mystery is ready for submission and I’ve been working on the query letter and synopsis, try to get the best impression possible. Today I went over submission guidelines and realized my formatting was different from the required. So, I copied the story and went to paste it into a blank google doc.
I don’t know what happened but my query letter show up. My novel was GONE. Completly gone. “No such beast exists ma’am,” gone. I panicked of course. The back button did nothing. The file wasn’t just moved, it was not there. Luckily, my editor Chell Morrow, is usually available through messenger and she came through. She sent me an early edit. No, didn’t want to go through the entire weeks long procedure. Apparently she was frantically looking through her files too.
Together we both panicked and then she said to open the file I was working on and click on “Version”. It was there. I saved the darn thing as a Word doc and it is safely in my files now.
Is 10:30 too too early for a glass of wine?