I’m trapped inside a novel that pitches well, but writes hard. That’s how I roll, yo. The ideas I can pitch well I can’t write. But the stories I love don’t pitch well. Irony has made me her bitch.

So, let me give you, the world, an example. Hello world. Hello Aaron. Nice to meet you. I wish I could say the same. Damn you, Irony. Queue Alanis Morissette.

So, I just finished the second draft of a wonderful book about a shy, withdrawn teenage girl whose grandmother has been comatose for fourteen years. The grandmother wakes up, calls the girl and says she needs to get to France before midnight on Halloween night to meet a prince she loved from another world. See! You’re glazing over. You’re thinking, who cares? Grandmother? Shy girl? Prince from another world? Who cares? My pitch blows. The book glows. It rhymes, so it has to be true.

Now, the other book I’m working on, I can pitch in two words: magic addicts. Hmm, you think. Magic addiction. Fresh, cool, intriguing. How does that work?
Gets better. A magic addict wants to recover, but giving up his magic will destroy the world.

Stakes. Good. You don’t want the world destroyed, but you don’t want some addict running around miserable or stealing your lunch money. Which book would you want to read? The Magic Addicts. Which book am I having trouble writing? The Magic Addicts.

So then the voice of reason rings out! Work on only one book at a time and you’ll figure out how to pitch it. Yeah, well, in my writing life, reason is like Ally Sheedy in The Breakfast Club: in the back of the room, not quite there, shaking her dandruff over a picture. I have destroyed reason and now I flit around, flitting. Uncertain, knowing that I’m blowing it.
However. Take note. I do have a book I love, and that is a wonderful thing. I’ve spent time on books I don’t love, and it’s blood work. If the secret to life is doing what you love, why angst over what you don’t?

But it pitches well, damn you. It pitches well.