If I’m supposed to be selling my book to potential readers, that is not the way to do it.
Even on the occasions when I successfully regurgitate what I’ve memorized, I just sound like a malfunctioning robot. Sadly most of the time the panic wipes my brain clean, and all I can find in my Things I’ve Memorized file is a few random Bible verses and the Pledge of Allegiance. More than one person has suggested that I should just memorize my official pitch word for word.
The other part of why this question is so hard for me is about the panic and how my brain responds to it. After you’ve spent months or years crafting a complex and nuanced story, now you’re supposed to boil it down to a few sentences? I’m terrible at this in part for the same reason I write novels instead of flash fiction. Part of this difficulty is related to many writers’ struggles with query letters and elevator pitches. When I received a PR Q&A from my publisher with the question “what is your book about?” I may have yelled out loud, “Don’t you people have a whole sales department to tell me what my book is about?” I try to buy time by saying, “Wellllll,” and “Uuuuummm,” and “Okay, sooooo.” My first book was published seven years ago, my fourth novel is coming in August, and this still happens every time someone asks me what my book is about. My brain sets off alarms that sound all over my body. (I never noticed before just how often people say, “What do you do for living?” until I started answering that question with “I’m a writer.”) From there the conversation usually moves to what genre I write, what I’ve published, when my next book is coming out, and then like a hand grenade tossed into my lap: “What’s your book about?”
This happens more often than I’d like to admit: I’m sitting around with friends or acquaintances or random strangers, and the fact that I’m a writer comes up.
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