Struggling to Pitch my WIP and Anxiety Surrounding it

This is based on true events that happened today! It was the first day of class in the new semester and so I now have a new lecturer. While he has seen our dissertation proposals he wanted us to explain our story ideas to him ourselves. Immediately, I was very nervous because my idea is very complicated and I wasn’t sure how to get it across. I did the best I could but I thought it’d be worth discussing how to pitch yourself (something I am still figuring out).

Even when writing my last blog post discussing my current project I could feel myself needing another post to finish talking about it. I mean this is the project I had to write a 5,000 word proposal about, there are a lot of moving parts and the plot was still growing. But a simple pitch can’t be too complicated, it should be around 3 sentences and give you the gist of the story. 

I think my problem is that I get too embarrassed. I know I’m writing a monster story. I know that my themes revolve around that. I also know of and admire many creatives who are interested in the same things. However, it’s hard to power through with pursuing your ideas when the people around you look down on them.

Whenever I have shared my story ideas with non-creatives I tend to get a similar response. Something like a wrinkled nose and a phrase along the lines of ‘that’s so dark’, ‘why don’t you write something like this’, etc. I have always admired bold storytelling. I love when novels are different and when they use creative ways to get their themes across. Books like Bunny by Mona Awad, Woman, Eating by Claire Kohda, and Tender is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica are bold novels. They are unique and different from things I have seen before and they do not shy away from their premises. However, I always find myself nervous to take risks like them and others.

My monster story is a step out of my comfort zone. I have never written this style of monster, usually sticking to vampiric or ghostly characters which I found much easier to write. It also involves a lot more explanation. Oddly, saying it’s like a beauty and the beast-esque story helps a lot. It’s much quicker to just say that, even though the story takes a definitive left turn outside of that narrative. 

At the beginning of this process, I scheduled a meeting with my lecturer to discuss the story and how the modules were going and some of these anxieties regarding my story were much more built up than I realized and I cried. I explained that I was worried that my story was too weird, that I was doing too much, or that I should tone it down. I explained my concerns that my approach to this story was lazy, that maybe my decision to not answer some of the audience's questions was me backing out of having to.

It was a really productive conversation. He agreed that my decision to have the events of the story happen in a vacuum was a good one. It leaves the reader feeling uneasy, uncertain, it ups the horror aspects of the story. We discussed my worries about it being too weird and he encouraged me to go all in, and helped me to refine my third act.  write with your audience in mind. To think about who would like the story you’re writing and if the audience you’re writing for is yourself, that's okay. It’s your story. 

So, in terms of today, I explained my story very haphazardly. Hopefully, I can better explain it next time. I think with a complicated story it takes a bit of dress rehearsal to nail down your pitch. I also feel as though everything makes more sense when I explain the ending, which is a bit of a twist, but I also don’t want to give everything away. So, it’s difficult to know what to do.

I think finding your writing style is important. Knowing what you like and being confident in that is important. I wrote in my admission to my university that my focus was on gothic and horror. I really should be able to just own that, but there is always a small fear in the back of my head that it’s just weird. The idea is just weird and not clever and not interesting. That someone would read the blurb on the back and just think to themselves ‘that’s weird’ and put it back. I think I’m coming to understand that I have to be okay with that. Not everybody will get it and that is okay. 

I suppose I just like highly thematic stories. I love when stories have multiple layers and different ways to interpret them. I love stories that you can’t just take at face value, that you have to sit with and think about. Woman, Eating–which I’ll talk about in more detail another time–really stood out to me as a novel because it used its vampire to tell a story about an eating disorder (among other things). I thought that was such an excellent use of the vampire and such a creative vessel to tell a story. 

Part of the reason I wanted to get my Master’s was because I was missing that sort of writing community. In my undergrad everyone was very nervous to talk and in my Master’s everyone is a lot more confident. It’s nice to have that community of people who understand what being a writer is. It’s funny when my lecturers say things like ‘you guys get it you’re writers’, because we do get it. The writing process is hard to explain to people who don’t do it, writing is such a complicated task, but it is so rewarding. I have to write 1,000 words next week to show the group. I can’t wait to see what I come up with.

I will post the first 1,000 words of my story eventually, and if anyone has any thoughts on it feel free to reach out. It is definitely still a work in progress.