As in pitching a book to a lit agent in a pitch session, not baseball. Though the Brewers pitching staff has been quite good this year, especially the bullpen.

I’m headed down to Chitown tomorrow to my first writers conference, and I signed up for two pitch sessions with agents. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but as it’s now here, I wonder what I was thinking when I decided I would try to sell my work by talking to people. In person. Oops.

Anyway, I’ve seen some conflicting advice regarding how to go about the pitch, so I probably won’t do it right. My pitch is about 45 seconds in length, provided I don’t break down in tears in the middle and need time to recover. When I was in college and needed to give presentations, even including a couple at academic conferences in foreign countries, I always thought I did a pretty decent job, and never really felt that uncomfortable. But with those, I had visual aids to help guide my thoughts, and the stakes weren’t quite as high if I did a poor job. It mattered, but it didn’t mean crippling rejection over a book I slaved away for 17 months on.

Oh, and I wasn’t sitting directly in front of a single person who will probably want nothing more than for me to leave so she can get the damn day over with.

But we’ll see how it goes. I’m stuffing a portable box of wine in my laptop bag so I can start drinking the instant I’m done shaming myself.