I participated in my first #PBPitch yesterday. And, no, I didn’t get a heart.

Here’s why that’s still okay:

• I’m more confident about my queries. I honed the heck out my queries and synopses. If there was a chance that an agent would leave a heart on my pitch, I didn’t want anything standing in the way of sending off my work, especially myself! So in the weeks leading up to #PBPitch, I researched (and puzzled over) the differences between queries and synopses, realized I’d been mostly doing things incorrectly (!!), and worked at capturing the essence of my stories and providing the hook.
• I met a lot of writers. The #WriterCommunity is not a consolation prize. It is a prize, no qualification about it! There are so many great people out there all working toward the same thing, and taking time to help each other along the way. I had a lovely time feeling and giving back the love.
• I found agents open for queries. I do use QueryTracker, but seeing agents out in the wild yesterday was extremely helpful. Some agents took the time to pin a tweet saying that even if they didn’t ‘heart’ you, to query them anyway. That’s super cool.

If you did get a heart or hearts, congratulations! I hope your queries go all the way to publication.

If, like me, you didn’t get a heart this round, I hope you still found the experience useful, learned something, and met great people.

If we didn’t connect on Twitter, come find me!