Some of you may be aware that I took a first ten pages ‘bootcamp’ seminar at the turn of the year. It dovetailed quite nicely with another Manuscript Academy Submission Strategy workshop that taught me a lot about the querying process. Beyond learning how to interpret agent responses to queries, I finished with a new tracking system to be certain I was following submission guidelines for each agency to the letter.
Around this time, an email arrived with my final feedback from the ‘bootcamp’ agent assigned to me and TANGLED DARKNESS. Elated with the feedback, I read over and over her final comments: “Good job! My advice now is to continue to revise and polish as you move through the rest of the manuscript, keeping in mind everything you learned in the course of the bootcamp.”
You can imagine what it was like to read the section I italicized above. What? She wants me to do another complete MS revision? In my mind, I had polished and edited until the cows-came-home already! Had a developmental edit on draft two. Had beta readers and ran the whole book through my writers’ group. I’d abandoned numbering the drafts of the book in favor of identifying them by color. So, was I to move from the ‘orange’ draft, and now create ‘purple’?
Well. I had to sit with this a bit. In the meantime, while going through the Sisters in Crime email messaging board daily as usual, I found a series of posts with recommendations for editors. With one published crime fiction writer, a SinC member, and former editor at a big five publisher endorsed several times, it seemed I was getting the memo. And so, by mid-January I was reaching out to see if this editor had an opening to help me through the color purple (no pun intended).
Now, it’s three months later and I have complete yet one more complete revision. And I’m within a couple of weeks of getting the manuscript back with her feedback on the changes I made. At the Manuscript Academy Submission Strategy workshop mentioned above — this is known as the ‘pause and pivot’ in my journey through the query trenches. I hit the pause button on sending queries after thirty. Now, depending on what comes back soon, I hope to be actively querying again next month.
You know how it’s often said there’s always a ‘silver lining’ when you’re sad or discouraged? [Note to self: investigate where this phrase originated.] Yes, there’s been a silver lining. The down time, while TANGLED DARKNESS is under the watchful eye of an editor, has given me the opportunity to create a new story. And somehow the feeling of ‘hurry up’ and get there (wherever ‘there’ is in this novel-writing journey) has fallen away. I can’t tell you how many podcasts heard where the author was asked, “What’s one bit of advice you’d give to a new writer from a mistake you’ve made?” The answer was often, “Don’t send your manuscript out too soon.” So, another silver lining is that I did hit the pause and pivot when I did.
The author who runs my writers’ group says, “If anything, consider the first book you write as your ‘PhD’ in novel-writing. There’s no other way to learn what you learn but to do it.” I’m finding, as I start writing scenes in book two, that I have a better idea what the challenge is in the setup. The down time also gave me more time to do the things I love (doing more stuff with my partner, people and dog connections, watching stories and planning some travel, etc.), more reading time, more time to learn about storytelling.
And that’s wrap: what I’ve been up to lately.
