Thread by @themoosef

Let's talk about pitchwars babe.

It's about time. (1/X)

I love my PitchWars sibs! They're a great community. I love my mentor (and if Pintip is still the mentee liaison, she was great too!). I love what I learned about my craft going forward after doing PitchWars. It's an OVERALL positive experience. The good is better than the bad.

When you join PitchWars, do it for the stronger manuscript, for the exposure, and for the community. HOWEVER. This is not a GUARANTEED experience of PitchWars.

I'm here to tell you about the dark side, and why it's an opportunity to take advantage of—not some benevolent charity helping you out of the goodness of their heart.

STRONGER MANUSCRIPT.

The whole point of PitchWars is to partner up with someone who can give you PRESCRIPTIVE ADVICE on how to fix your book and get it to the most finished level for participating in the showcase.

The best possible way this could go? You get a fellow writer with more experience in the industry that's a champion for your book and your friend.

But that doesn't happen for everyone.

Within PitchWars 19 alone, we've had mentors who were unhelpful, mentors who ignored their mentees, mentors who never sent the edits they were SUPPOSED to send. I've seen all sides of the spectrum MORE THAN ONCE. Just in my year.

EXPOSURE.

In the writing community, we see PitchWars everywhere. Even right now, I'm talking about it! It's a great way to get your name out there and add a little weight to it. The best way this could go is getting a lot of requests during the showcase--

--AND your FRIENDS getting a lot of requests—before you quickly go through the query and pub process off of the momentum. But there are SO MANY BAD THINGS attached to this one, I'm going to save the deets for after the third benefit:

COMMUNITY.

Now, this may not be true for every PitchWars class, but PW19 is a CREW. I made so many friends through PitchWars – including friends in high places *cough uknowhoimtalmbout cough* It's honestly the only thing that doesn't turn out bad.

Since it's a professional community, we keep drama out of it, too. My PitchWars '19 siblings don't care about my bald spot or my compulsive need to tell jokes. They're my cheerleaders, my beta readers, my soundboard, honorary aunts of my niece, and so forth.

This is the best ending, and the reason why I ALWAYS suggest to writers: if you need a community, apply to PitchWars EVERY. YEAR. Until you get an agent. Just keep going for it. Who cares if you don't get in?

"EYE care if I don't get in," you say to me, rolling your neck.
I ignore the attitude and crouch before you. You ignore the sound of my knees cracking. "You shouldn't care," I say. "Because PitchWars ain't no crystal stair."

Throughout this thread, I have tried to balance your expectations with real examples of negative outcomes. Because PitchWars really isn't perfect. They'll tell you it, too.

But I'm here to tell you it's not "aww shucks, pobody's nerfect!" There are some very real structural issues that you need to be aware of. For example, your mentor can keep you out of the showcase with as little reason as "I don't feel you're ready."

Without warning. It's entirely up to their jurisdiction. One mentee's mentors suddenly told them to change everything about the revision they did, or else they wouldn't be allowed to participate in the showcase.

Another mentee was told they cannot enter the showcase right before the showcase. When they complained to the committee (the people in charge) nothing was done.

There were also some issues with identity policing. Mentors saying something should or shouldn't be #ownvoices, or using the wrong identities to describe a book (like using a Nigerian comp for a Jamaican book).

MANY of the PW Mentors are white women. These missteps in insensitivity are a symptom of the larger problem in the book world—but this can be very upsetting if you have to deal with it. And the committee probably will not do anything if you report it.

ANOTHER mentee's mentor never even gave her her revision notes. She basically entered and exited PitchWars with the same manuscript she started with, unable to talk about her experience. When SHE complained to the committee…they didn't do anything about it.

(hmm, there's a commonality here but I can't quite put my finger on it)

I say again—I loved my PitchWars experience! But if 5 people have a bad experience, and the leadership does not take clear steps to fix it, it could be 10 PW20 mentees. I'm not saying your experience WILL be bad. This thread's point is to clarify the light PitchWars is held in.

It's an opportunity. One of many. It doesn't even do the work for you--many mentees got agents through #DVPit or #PitMad instead of the showcase. So rather than thinking of it as your golden chariot, PLEASE take this as a reality check: PitchWars is not good. Nor bad. It just is.

Now, throughout this thread, there were two things that came up consistently. I would like to address those at this time. THE FOLLOWING IS A PERSECUTION OF A PITCHWARS YOU MAY NEVER ENCOUNTER. If you're scared of applying, this may only make it worse. Read if you'll apply anyway.

THE SHOWCASE

The girl worth fighting for? No, it isn't. The showcase is a warped cesspool of PW's issues that magnifies every bit of suck in the experience. Get a lot of showcase requests? Your friend didn't. Or XYZ got way more. Or they're all agents that rejected you already.

Didn't get many showcase requests? Your friend got 100. You thought your book was in good condition, even though your mentor disappeared on you there at the end. Apparently not. How can you query confidently after this? It feels so embarrassing.

The showcase is absolutely meaningless and agents are sheep who will just pick whatever got the most likes or whatever entry was first. That really is how it goes. Sure, there are books with a lot of likes that are good. But there is no correlation, unfortunately.

"I already know the showcase is meaningless," you say, interrupting me. "I read all the threads. I get it!"

I sigh, closing my eyes. Patience. That's most important in education. "Not exactly," I respond.

GASLIGHTING & NUMBERS

Slightly after PitchWars got started, there were a million threads from past mentees about how the showcase numbers don't matter. The PitchWars committee THEMSELVES will tell you numbers don't matter in the showcase!

Numbers don't matter, numbers don't matter, numbers don't matter!

Wait. What's this? The PitchWars twitter just tweeted that someone got a lot of requests? Whoa wait—they KEEP celebrating the NUMBERS? Oh.

Okay. Well, I guess the numbers DO matter to them.

Yeah. This is the dark side of exposure. Even though "nUMBerS dOn'T mATteR", you'd get hella mixed messages from the PW Committee, and often from your own mentor. Something good happens? "Well, that means nothing. Don't get excited."

You accomplished something. "Manage your expectations—it's nice to be happy, but don't get your hopes up."

Meanwhile, the LEADERS of the organization are having a celebration GIF free-for-all.

These mixed messages of actions versus orders took a toll on many of the PW19 mentees. I highly encourage you to mute everything Pitchwars around showcase time. In fact, don't ever even look at the site. Get everything filtered through your mentor.

But let's say you DO get requests…that's the good part, right?

AGENT VETTING

This could be its own thread, but there is more to agent vetting than tweeting at young writers "DO YouR rEsEARcH." The word "predatory" exists for a reason. The fact of the matter is that—in addition to PitchWars having a low bar for participating agents—

mentees would get reprimanded for advising other mentees against querying certain agents.

Make it make sense.

There were several agents that participated in the showcase that maybe shouldn't have. And PitchWars let it happen.

There's also the fact that they let agents request HUGE amounts of manuscripts with NO WAY of guaranteeing commitment from agents. Agents really can request your work and ghost you, with no push back from any one.

We're really on our own. (I got u tho.)

"That's not true!"
I'm getting real tired of your interruption nonsense.
"But it's NOT true! There's a mentee liaison! There are POC! I seen it all on the website!"
"Okay, then," I say. "Aight then bet. I'll get through this last bit, and it ain't pretty."
"What?"

THE COMMITTEE

My biggest problem with PitchWars was not that the committee was bad. PitchWars is a lot of work—the fact that the showcase happens? And it happens well? That's such an accomplishment.

My biggest problem with PitchWars is the committee does not support the mentees. The majority of support, the majority of the benefit of the doubt, goes to the mentors.

In a lot of cases, mentors are close with the committee, too! Why does that matter? Well, when you have a problem with your mentor, and they're friends with the people you're supposed to turn to—do you think you'll feel heard?

There are several mentors that, post-PW, we've found have a RECORD of being not great. And yet, they consistently show up.

There is an actual word for this, and I'll try not to get too headass.

The main issue is the epistemic and hermeneutical injustices that the structure of PitchWars promotes. Pretty much all of these issues were brought up to the committee privately. They are aware that this is how we feel. Usually, they either got defensive or we were ignored.

When we take an issue to the committee, the committee assumes we don't know what we're talking about because we're "young/new". Mentees. When we explain a fault, our experiences aren't seen as valid because the committee sees their own attempts at solving the issue as valid.

It's possible to be inefficient. Hermeneutical injustice works because the person in power believes that acknowledgement is efficiency.

This fault is embedded in the power dynamics of PitchWars, and must be addressed.

However, since I don't see that happening any time soon, I can at least acknowledge the issue. That helps, right?

POWER DYNAMICS

It is difficult for many younger/newer writers to navigate the power dynamics of PitchWars because it's hard for them to push back on suggestions that they don't agree with, or even feel are offensive.

The concept of "pushing back" often times made mentees feel like a problem, and some mentees were on their first or second book!

It's hard to have the level of confidence necessary to say "NO!" in a situation like PitchWars, and seeing that those who stood up for themselves had no help from the committee—some even possibly out the showcase—did nothing to encourage an environment of dialogue.

But the funny thing is—and I've said it several times—I LOVED my PitchWars experience.

But even I, a fan of my mentor and my PW draft, had one thing I hated at the very fiber of my being. An issue that persists to this day. Something so vile it's its own section and IF YOU'RE A PART OF PITCHWARS, YOU KNOW EXACTLY WHO AND WHAT I'M FUCKING TALKING ABOUT.

THE FUCKING SUBTWEETING

Is this specific to PW19? Maybe not—if not, my fellow classes, we see you.

We got subtweeted ALL THE TIME. By agents. By mentors. By the committee. It's so fucking annoying and unprofessional. One agent did a whole thread about how PW wasn't worth it and how the work was lower quality.

Another agent talked about how PW isn't worth it when agents fight over mentees. A mentee commented on a similar post like "Hey, let authors get their time to shine!" and a mentor subtweeted her like "it's not a good look to get mad at agents celebrating PW" or whatever.

Committee members, too! Someone had an issue with their mentor—brought it up to the committee. You know how that story goes. But then, a committee member SUBTWEETED the mentee. The twitter fingers are strong with these ones.

And the worst bit: seeing this shit in the midst of revising. Being SILENT because within our guidebook we're told not to behave the same way. And then in the midst of THAT, seeing-in the comments of a tweet-a COMMITTEE member responding to the agent "Aww, sorry PitchWars sucks."

Fuck that. If you're reading this right now and you're a part of PitchWars?

Stop. I'm going to start QTing you, and I won't be nice about it.

CONCLUSION

Wow. Did you read all of that?

It's fine if you didn't make it to the end. All of this is just to say one thing. PitchWars is not perfect.

You are.

Use it to your advantage, but be smart about the real trouble that comes along with it.

As always, PW19 and most other past mentees are here to answer your questions honestly. Yes, you can get accurate information from the PitchWars website. But that's just about dates, people, statistics.

We'll give you the trash.

-end of thread- (this was 2K words my ass is so triflin omg)