As many of you saw on Twitter, last week I announced that #PitchDis was going to be rescheduled and would not be occurring on June 22 as planned. This was in part due to the WGA strike.

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I struggled with this decision for nearly a month before finally announcing it. There were three main reasons why I delayed rescheduling #PitchDis.

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First of all, I was hoping all the big studio executives would come to their senses quickly, make a deal with the writers on strike for fair wages, and the strike would be over with soon. Unfortunately, that hasn’t been the case.

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The second reason is because I know how important it is to get disabled voices into the publishing industry. While #PitchDis isn’t the only way, it has helped several authors either attain representation or a publishing deal. I feel like we need to continue providing any and every opportunity we can.

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Third, I know many of you have been planning ahead for this event. As someone who likes to plan ahead as much as possible, I’m aware how annoying and disappointing it can be to have things suddenly change. That’s why I went ahead and announced it on Twitter last week, before I’d have time to write this post about it.

 

Now, the reasons why I came to the decision to reschedule.

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We want to show support to the Writers Guild of America during their dispute against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. The WGA writers are asking for fair compensation/residuals for their writing, especially from streaming deals. Many of these writers actually make less than what they did years ago because of unfair streaming deals, while the network executives are making millions. The writers are asking for fair pay, as well as for studios not to replace them with AI like ChatGPT. Though it’s mostly writers who write for film and TV who are part of this strike, this affects all writers.

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The other reason is that with the indispensable writers on strike, major studios are looking for other writers—and ideas—to try to replace them. There is a concern that pitch contests will be used by studio heads to get ideas for new stories. Basically, we don’t want them stealing your ideas.

 

What happens now.

So while I don’t have a concrete date yet, IF all is settled with the strike, the plan is to have #PitchDis in mid to late September. It may even be as late as October or the first week of November. It really will all depend on the strike at this point. I know how disappointing it is for many of you. I’m disappointed too—this event means a lot to me, and I’ve loved getting to meet so many of you and seeing your amazing pitches. But I truly feel this is the best thing to do, and I hope you understand why I came to the decision.

 

If you have any questions or concerns, please send an email or send a DM or tweet through Twitter.