What does an Elevator have to do with a New Book Idea?

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Imagine you get on an elevator with someone really important to you. This is your one shot to talk to them and if it goes well, completely change your life.

That’s the idea behind the Elevator Pitch. A writer comes up with a pitch for a book that is so exciting that in a short elevator ride you convince an agent or editor to say, “YES! I want to make your incredible story a best seller!”

So that was what I was doing in 2022. Trying to come up with a new Elevator Pitch after 2 years of ideas that hadn’t gone anywhere. When I thought about what had succeeded in the past, I realized that my best ideas are sparked by some bit of current news and a deeper issue I’m grappling with.

What current news? What issue? That generally comes down to what I call a CRAPSHOOT.

So, in 2022: I see a story about a huge mass of seaweed off the coast of Florida. That feels creepy in a good way. I also see articles about kids working to limit plastics in the ocean. Maybe I can do an ocean thing?

I make a few early notes: Kids battling climate change? Seaweed. A fish named Glug.

At the same time, I’m also dealing with a personal issue:
I’m afraid of falling off a mountain.

It sounds ridiculous—isn’t everyone? But after years of hiking all sorts of trails, I suddenly found myself afraid of mountains. One day, on a hike with my husband, I froze on a slope and had a panic attack. Another time, with a group of friends, I got so scared I had to turn around. I skidded down on my bottom until I could breathe. I was so embarrassed that day, I stopped saying yes to group hikes until I could “fix myself”.

We all know how this goes, right? We bravely face our fears and conquer them.

But what happens if we try and we can’t?

Are we weak? Pathetic? Broken?

A lot of us have fears—it’s a normal thing. So why did it feel like a failure? Why couldn’t I accept myself? Why couldn’t I trust my friends to accept me? This felt like an issue worth writing about. How could I weave that into a story about fish and seaweed?

April 2023, I wrote this (not very good) Elevator Pitch:

Cassie has a heart condition that’s made her fearful. She joins Beach Warrior Camp when she visits her aunt who lives by the ocean. She wants to do something brave. She sees a fish named Glug caught in some seaweed and in order to save him she’ll have to trust her heart and face her fear.

I wrote some scenes but there were problems. The heart thing didn’t work because it was a legit fear: I wanted it to be an irrational fear, like mine. And how would Cassie save a fish if she’s just visiting? How does she know about fish? What else is happening in the story? And my idea of Glug the fish didn’t match the voice in my head.

I rewrote a new version. Cassie lives in San Diego. She’s afraid of the ocean and hiding that from her friends. Blue is the fish. Same creepy seaweed. At the end, Cassie saves Blue.

Then I got stuck. What else is going on? What does Cassie care about?

I wrote another version and another. What if Cassie is a beachcomber? What if she’s searching for a lost treasure?
I got stuck again. I took a workshop, shared scenes with critique groups and eventually the very wise writing coach Chris Tebbetts asked, “What if your ending becomes your middle? My first thought:
How dumb is that? A fish rescue in the middle of the book? Then what?

Turns out, a nice way to shake yourself loose of a problem is to think of it in a whole new way.

I rewrote again. I made the end the middle and another ending appeared.

Around August 2023, I wrote a new Elevator Pitch:

Cassie Stein is a beachcomber with a shameful secret: She’s afraid of the ocean. But if she can find a lost diamond necklace everyone is searching for, she’ll be a hero. Then Cassie discovers a fish, Blue, who turns out to be even bigger treasure. But when Blue’s life is on the line, will Cassie choose to be a hero or a friend?

That’s the book I wrote.

More truthfully, that’s the 9nth version of the book I wrote.

I didn’t know if it was good or it would sell. But it was the first middle grade manuscript I’d finished in about a DECADE. Talk about scaling a mountain!

After an apple fritter and a very good bottle of wine, I had to face the next mountain.

How do I sell it?  More on that next month…