Welcome to the NYWP June 2025 Group Forum

PRESERVE AND ENHANCE THE ENERGY!

Thanks for starting this and reposting it for those of us who are mildly techno-challenged. ;-)

Appreciate the email this week. I'm battling self doubt and trying to decide whether to trunk my novel given the real life political situation. Happy to see some interest in it, but I am worried about reception. It's both deep and shallow and I think hard to sell as a debut. I don't know. If I walked away with anything, it was the necessity of a writing community. How is everyone else doing?

Hi everyone,

Michael, thanks for starting (or restarting) our group forum.  The photo is great, but it looks like we had some early departures, so to those of you who are missing- know you are missed:)

Amy- I can appreciate your concerns and given the political nature of my story, I have battled similar sentiments in the past.  What has curbed those fears for me is knowing that I am simply a storyteller at heart.  If people wanna spread their politics all over my story, that is their business, not mine.  When a story comes to me is HAS to come out of me.  Feel free to call if you wanna chat about it.

I sent queries pages to the two people who requested them and haven't heard back yet (not that I expected a miraculous turn-around). I am querying with a little more zeal now- feeling pretty confident about the info included in my pitch.  Thank you Michael for helping me fine tune mine.  And a big thank you to all of you talented and brave writers in our group.  I learned something from each of you.

I'm looking forward to all of your updates.  In the meantime, be well, be kind and be write!

xoxox, 

Claire Bateman

Hello!

So cool that we have this chat forum. I very much enjoyed the conference and getting to meet everybody. After I recovered from my mini coma when I got home, I've been working on the edits and everything and I'm so excited. I've been so against writer groups and conferences for so long because they didn't seem very smart or helpful, at least not for me, and Michael's advice on the writer groups definitely went along with my own concerns on the topic. I actually only decided to look for a conference type event this spring and found Write to Pitch. It immediately seemed properly legit and I cannot express how happy I am that I got accepted and was able to attend. 

Everyone I met and pitched to contributed even more to my enduring determination to continue on this journey. Every bit of feedback was refreshing and invigorating, even the bits that meant I needed to make some big changes. It all adds up to the exact thing I needed most; a path forward. And with every comment that's exactly what I saw; a way to keep moving forward. 

Claire, you were an absolute pleasure to talk to on the last day and I wish I'd gotten to talk to you more. 

Amy, I'm very glad I got to talk you as well on several occasions and very much want to read your manuscript whenever or whatever you work on next! My favorite thing about writing is that it's flexible and we can always change our minds.

By the by, I'm the one who moved groups on the second day so most of Michael's group didn't hear my pitch at all, but that's okay, it wasn't good yet anyway:)

-Jamie

Hi everyone. Just thought I'd toss out an update and see how everyone else is doing. I got the analysis of my first hundred pages back from Michael yesterday. I can't say it was a glowing review, but I don't think it was as horrendous as it could have been. At least they're not advising me to ditch the whole project! lol.

I'd love to hear how some of the rest of you are doing after that really exciting week in New York.

At any rate, have a great rest of the summer. We're under a heat advisory here for the next few days, so it's a great time to get caught started on my massive rewrite.