It’s truly sad. I’m always pained by stories of writers who sent their novels out too soon. Recently, I read about a writer who sent out their manuscript to agents, and has received 57 rejections.
I can’t presume too much – after all, he sent out his manuscript. That’s more than most writers will ever do. Sad fact, and I’ll have a blog entry this week on that subject. He sent out his manuscript, and got 57 rejections. That could be a number of factors, and I’ll explore later what the answers could be. And it could be that the problem is not his writing, instead the problem could be his writing style was not a good fit for his potential agents. That’s an easy fix – if they’re using comments like “this isn’t the genre I represent”, get one of those agents guides and see who DOES represent that genre!
Today, let’s assume for the sake of argument that his case is the case of 90% of those who send out their books for publication – that his material simply wasn’t ready.
Must You Edit?
It’s a sad fact that most writers have a anti-revision mindset, including myself. I hate editing. I procrastinate instead of editing and revising because the process I’ve created is so daunting.
After all, it took you thirty to ninety days to write your novel. Yes, that’s it. I know your excited you finished your novel, and you enjoyed it, and surely it must be ready!
It’s not. I know, this was my mindset too. I finished my first novel, and it was SO GOOD I knew it didn’t need any more further editing! It’s so good I can dictate the terms of what I will allow to be cut! After all, fixing any story problems – of which there are none – is the editor’s job.
Every belief I had above was absolutely false. My first novel needed a lot of work. If I’d sent that out, forget it. It would have been terrible. I would have blacklisted myself in the eyes of agents.
This is not a good position to be in. Absolutely do not send out your manuscript to agents until it is ready. If I was an agent and I saw your name a second time after I rejected your novel, I’d be hesitant to read again. If I saw it a third time, I’d refuse. “Nope, rejected you twice already.”
It’s two strikes, you’re out with many agents. Some you get one chance, one. It depends on how busy they are.
An Educational Rejection Letter
If I was an agent, here would be a copy of my rejection letter.
“Dear sir, ma’am or whoever,
I received your manuscript and query letter. I did find it t be an interesting read. However, I regret to say it’s not publish ready at this time. Do not lose heart, even the most terrible novel (and yours was not) can be fixed. I suggest taking a year and revise your manuscript. Words and phrases that add nothing or repeat what has already been stated should be cut. Remove filter words and forbidden words, get your adjectives to a minimum. Then run it through Prowritingaid, another round of editing, prowritingaid, revise, prowriting aid – then resubmit it at that time.”
“Your future agent, N. R.”
See, that’s a good rejection letter. Agents can feel free to copy it and use as a template- the only changes you need to make is to add the person’s name and the name of their novel.
Conclusion
Take some time and peruse my voluminous blog for articles on editing and revising your novel. Set up a system for revision and editing of your novel, and determine how you can track your progress and set deadlines for each phase of revisions. Once you’ve completed this with your novels, then it’s time to submit.
How do you know when it’s truly, truly time? Easy. You did the above, and finally reached a point where you can’t make one more change to the manuscript.
Get busy.
