The dreaded pitch

So, you have a finished manuscript. You’ve polished and prodded and written and rewritten and finally you think it’s ready to find a home in the world. Congratulations! Not everyone can do that, sustain a story over 80k or more words so that there’s a coherent beginning, middle, and end; where your characters have faced obstacles and grown; and  where everything ends up as it should—happy, sad, or in between. It’s hard. Really, really hard to do that.

But the process isn’t over yet. In fact, ...