It wasn't just an #AdPit day, it was a whole #AdPit week!

Today is the Twitter pitch party #AdPit! (Of which I am especially fond, because I found my agent during an #AdPit Twitter pitch party.) This round of Heidi Norrod's #AdPit was even more exciting because #AdPit has evolved to be more than just a Twitter pitch party. Earlier this week, #AdPit included a pre-party, where entrants were invited to submit their queries for a chance to win a query critique, and a few agents even stopped by the inbox to take a peek and make requests.

And I got to be one of the slush readers! When I told Heidi (@HRNorrod) I would help, I don't think I realized what I was getting myself into. I was at the Love is Murder mystery writer's conference last weekend. I didn't realize that the submission window would close at the exact same time as my flight home would board. I also wasn't expecting how exciting this part would be. As slush readers, we weren't allowed to touch (or maybe it was more that I was afraid to touch) anything in the inbox until submissions closed. But wow!

Looking at all of those queries was an honor and a privilege. One of my favorite parts, was seeing the queries that were nearly perfect - the ones where we all marked "YES" to a great concept, a great pitch and a great query. Those queries deserved to be read by more than just us. So it was good news that a few agents agreed to stop by the inbox to take a peek. I enjoyed the flurry of emails and the teasing Tweets between myself, @HRNorrod, @mtelschelwilliams and @sidneytblake (all friends from Twitter, none of whom I knew very well before this). Another favorite part was finding a query that had been marked by someone else as a "NO" and while I loved the pitch and concept, I also saw something in it that I knew I could fix. Those are the queries that ended up in my pick pile.

Also new this round was the #AdPitCrit - a special hashtag where participants-to-be could stop by and practice their Twitter pitches. There is an art to a Twitter pitch, 140 characters to summarize an entire manuscript is not a lot. So providing a place where writers could practice their pitches and critique each other was a great idea. Watching other writers help each other out, and seeing the pitches get better and better over the course of the week was a lot of fun.

So if you are thinking about trying a Twitter pitch event, in the words of the Nike commercial: Just Do It. There are so many reasons. You make Twitter friends and writer connections. I never made it to any of the final rounds of the contests I chose (#SunvsSnow and I think #AgentTrickorTreat) but that didn't matter. I still found my agent anyway and I made friends and connections along the way. 

Participating in the contests made me a better writer. You practice summarizing your entire manuscript into a ridiculously small word count. When my agent asked me for summaries of various lengths, I already had them and/or could write them quickly, because I'd already done a ton of them for the Twitter pitch parties. My writing became tighter. One of the contests had a first chapter word limit. When I ran my revisions by my CP's (who were forever telling me I needed to tighten my writing) they said "Yes! This!" And it was all because I was just trying to fit as much as I could into the darn word limit on the submission guidelines.

So @HRNorrod and other Twitter party organizers, thanks again for hosting #AdPit and #AgentMatch and #SunvsSnow and all the others. They added one giant step on this writer's path that made it all just a little easier.