It's ten p.m. here in Melbourne, Australia. I'm sitting at the end of the weary kitchen table which is half covered by a crumpled shiny white Mediterranean-style table cloth (not too shabby after meatballs, potatoes and rocket/chive salad from the garden). The rest of the table is covered by my sons' Year 9 Japanese and Future Problem Solving homework and parts of my and my husband's Property Options course module homework: our Spiritual, Relationships, Physical, Career, Finance, and Contribution goals spanning the next 40 years which should have been submitted eight weeks ago.
The room's too hot. I've got a sneezing nose that suddenly fills to the brim, a sore throat, and a wobbly brain infused with the repetitive melody of one of my twin sons practising saxophone upstairs. My other twin son calls out to him several times to close the door and move to the other side of the house so he can play Assassin's Creed in peace. It's school holidays for goodness' sake.
However, I am speechless and flighty because, by surprise, I have just discovered the perfect fifteen word pitch for the 300+ page children's novel that I have been working on for the past eighteen months. Hooray! I wrote about 25 pitches for it a few months ago and 15 late last night. Then just now, in a subconscious stupor while the saxophone repeated that crooning bar again, the words flashed into my head.
The Pitch needed some editorial tweaking, der, but it was as easy as a primary school fun word game and gave me that levitating feeling that you get when you know you've found something secret and precious. Perhaps only another novelist would understand that feeling and why it is so important to spend so much time finding the perfect fifteen words.
It's interesting to follow my pitch development from the terrible, initial one that I came up with under pressure at a Faber Academy Day Children's Writing Course last year. From then, the pitches for this children's novel went through private, agonising phases from numerous different angles, all of which felt awkward and cut off at the knees.
Someone else might think what a waste of energy, working for so long on fifteen words, but trying to somehow sum up my developed characters and themes, my in-depth plot tree and the numerous sub-plots that entwine it which consist of hundreds of carefully considered and constructed pages - in a compelling fifteen words or less pitch to compel readers to buy my book and the publisher to contract it - is worthy of my time.
If you find mistakes in this blog, please forgive me. I'm usually very meticulous, but it's late and my head is a balloon and my throat is a jalopy at the moment. This is my first blog, by the way. I really hope that there was something in it for you.
Sweet dreams,
Danae Andrea
