Hey there!

• Have questions about Pitch Wars?
• Want to know what it was like and how successful it was?
• Want to ask the participants from last year?

Guess what—you totally can!

If you’re curious about Pitch Wars, or not sure you want to enter, or maybe you totally for-reals do want to enter, but you’re not sure what the process really looks like? Don’t fret! We can help!

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: The best part about Pitch Wars and Pitch parties is the writing community it fosters. Community is key. Writers struggle through doubt (not to mention the query trenches), and we struggle with patience and inspiration. But what keeps us going—aside from coffee—is our support for one another.

The Pitch Wars 2015 Crew has stayed involved and active in the last year that we’ve known each other, and we want to pay it forward. We want to help other writers in any way we can! So we’re providing resources and advice for Pitch Wars Generation 2016!

OK! Take a look at what the mentees from Pitch Wars 2015 have done together as a community. Since our magical adventure together, we’ve put together TWO blogs!

• Ask Authors Tumblr
• To The Shelves blog

Our Ask Authors Tumblr focuses on answering questions from visitors (like you, nudge-nudge!) Check it out!

Access the experience, wisdom, and silliness of over 100 writers! Among us, we have over 50 agented authors, and at least 5 book deals! We ask and answer a big question each week, and we’ll answer questions from visitors all the time. Ask us anything!

We’re accepting any questions you may have about Pitch Wars! Anything you want to know about our experiences, we’re happy to talk about!

• What was Pitch Wars really like?
• How did we feel when we saw our names on the Mentee list?
• What did our revisions look like?
• Do we still talk to our mentor(s)?
• Do we have any regrets?
• What percentage of us got agent deals or book deals in the year since the contest?
• How did we pick what mentor to apply to?

Ask us anything! We’ll do our best to give a wide variety of answers from our merry crew of writers.

We won’t shy away from difficult questions. If you’re nervous, don’t worry! You can ask questions anonymously (you don’t even need a Tumblr account).

If your question sparks a longer post, or if one of the crew wants to answer your question more in-depth, we’ll send you on over to the To The Shelves blog.

We answer questions about writing habits, craft resources, plotting and revision tips, our journeys as writers, and what we’ve learned along the way! We’ve also got a Resources page where we provide our favorite sites for information on literary agents, querying, and revision!

Have I used enough exclamation points yet? MAYBE!!!!!! Then again…

Don’t feel like asking questions, but you’re curious about our answers? Or maybe you don’t have a Tumblr, but you want to know when we answer questions? Or maybe you really like whistling and tweeting with the wisdom of birds and you want to start a lovely duet with us?

Awesome! We’ve got a Twitter (@AskAuthors) where we’ll tweet about each question we get!

To The Shelves blog

The group has a wide variety of skills and expertise that we are excited to share. Posts will cover anything writing related including pep talks, advice on craft, reflections on the writing process, pursuing writing professionally, and plain old book love, of course.

This is more of a traditional blog, where a variety of mentees from the Pitch Wars 2015 Crew offer up advice on writing and share our experiences. Maybe one of the mentees wants to share their experience of honing their 50-word pitch for the agent round. Maybe one of us has a goldmine of tips on how to make that first page shine!

Pitch Wars 2015 Statistics

Want to refresh on what the Pitch Wars Mentees did last year? Let’s look at some Pitch Wars math! (I can sense your unrestrained excitement.)

• 2015 Pitch Wars Statistics (Mentee Revisions and Manuscript Statistics)
  • What were our author’s ages? How about the final vs. beginning word count?
  • How ethnically diverse were our main characters?
  • What was our biggest revision?

• Know the Numbers from 2015 (Post-Agent Round Statistics)
  • Want to know how many submissions had agent requests?
  • Which genre had the most requests?