I submitted a query to a publisher, based off the recommendation from another publisher. I got a positive response, but a request to address some issues and if I felt I could do that, to resubmit.
Yeah, me!
I made the edits, resubmitted, and my excitement starting to climb.
I then got an e-mail from the publisher saying they’d had an editor look it over and there were some “significant” concerns, but if I felt I could address them, to send it back again.
That was one of those good news/bad news days. I mean, they wanted me to resubmit, so they didn’t hate it, right? I read the comments, and of course my first knee-jerk reaction was, “Are you kidding me? I can’t do that. Those changes will ruin the story!” I sat down and fumed and cussed and cussed and fumed.
And then I did what writers do. I looked at the comments, read the parts of the manuscript that applied, and I made changes. Little ones at first, which of course I told myself was the best it was going to get. Then a day or two later, I thought of some other changes I could make that tilted it a little more toward what the editor had hinted at.
And then the holidays hit and my productivity tanked.
Now I’ve had time to recover from the Very Merrys, and got back on the manuscript. I printed it out, because I find when it gets down to the nitty gritty, I really need a hard copy to see a bigger picture than I can on my computer. And to be able to flip back and forth between scenes to make sure I’m not changing something that affects something further in the story.
Arggggh! How can there be so many typos at this point? I’ve looked at it (many, many times!), my Beta Readers have looked at it, the publisher has read it, the editor has read it… but they’re still there. And I’m finding and fixing them, along with a few other tweaks here and there.
At this point, my biggest concern is that I’ll just keep tweaking it — making it different, but not necessarily better. So I’ve set a goal. One more pass. Unless I see red on every page or in every chapter, I’ll just fix those spots, and not go back to the start.
I WILL SUBMIT! And then I’ll chew my nails to the quick and worry that I didn’t do enough. That it isn’t good enough.
But I hope it is.
How about you? Do you go through the same agony when submitting? Or is this process preventing you from submitting in the first place, like it did for me for, literally, decades?
Either way, Write On — and Submit!
Hi Terry. As a new writer, I feel like editing comments exist within their own linguistic subspace that excels at enumerating symptoms but is unable to articulate actual diseases. I need to listen to the symptoms but resist the urge to treat them. I sleep on it, reread the manuscript and the comments, sleep on it again… And eventually I begin to diagnose what’s wrong with my story. It’s that light-bulb-over-my-head feeling you get when you finally realize what changes you really need to make.
Now, like I said, I’m a new writer. Maybe I’ve got it all wrong. Maybe I shouldn’t be trying to read between the lines of the editorial comments? What do others think?
Thanks for sharing your journey. I share that too. Although I thought I was done with book number one, following all the advice I could read from famous people, I would up with a bloated book and a need to delete 40,000 words from my novel. Every word seemed precious and important. Now, I remain dedicated to figuring out how to do what must be done, and realizing that at each chapter, I need to re-edit each time for typos and space and insert errors. ARGGGH! Thanks for sharing our common road to improvement.
I just submitted my last rewrite to my editor – my book doesn’t publish for another 14 months so there’s still some time for additional edits but after two passes, I think I’ve got it nailed down. IF your editor is someone who’s comments you trust, I think you should seriously consider what they’ve told you and give yourself time to absorb it. For me, almost every comment my editor gave me was something that needed fixing. Sometimes just one sentence did it. Sometimes I had to add an entirely new scene or move a scene to a different place. Sometimes I had to go deeper into the interactions between two characters. Sure, I pushed back in a few places but all in all, I was astonished at how much better my story is now.
I’m willing to make any changes that I think will make my book better. The difficulty comes when the feedback is different (even absolute opposite). Change this/don’t dare change this, etc. It can be confusing. but power on! We have to trust our own instincts at some point.
Hi Terry, I think any writer worth his/her salt goes through the same thing. After all, we wouldn’t send anything but our very best, right? And for them to insinuate it could be better? Wait–did my heroine just have lunch three times on the same day? Yup! Actually happened to me. The fact the editor was willing to offer suggestions and ask for a resubmit once was a miracle, and a second time? Supernatural phenom. At some point we have to call it “good enough”, and there will be some changes we refuse–like the one I got once to change the time period from 1956 to contemporary. Nope. The time period is a character and the story would be completely different if I made it contemporary. So good on you to set a limit of one more pass. Good on you to persevere. Keep us updated!
I submitted a short story to an online publication and they said they’d like to publish it with some changes. In so many words, they told me the story was too nuanced. I had purposefully written the story to be nuanced because it underscored the theme, but hey–I’d give it a try because I had another story published with them in the past. When I resubmitted, they (rudely) called out most of the sentences I had revised or added at their suggestion. The story really depends upon its nuance and I knew that. We agreed to part ways and I’ll find a home for the piece somewhere that appreciates the underlying painful simmer. Hold ’em, fold ’em, keep an open mind to changes, but stand by the integrity of your story.
Have you heard yet? Fingers crossed for you. Thanks for sharing your process!
I have mixed feelings about this sort of thing. I revised a manuscript recently, based on the editor’s comments on the proposal. Then I resubmitted it and waited NINE MONTHS for their reply. They wanted more changes, with no guarantee (of course) that they would want it even if I made the changes. I declined to rework the book a second time. One consideration is that this is a publisher that has a history of putting writers through the ringer and then not buying the book in the end anyway. Sometimes editors are pointing out flaws, but other times I think they are looking for reasons to reject a book they don’t love. If you’ve been at this a long time, I think you have to trust your judgment and move on sometimes.
Thanks for all the comments. I agree that we should never make changes just because someone tells us to. It’s our book, and we should write it the way we want. But what I’ve found is that often when someone – whether a beta reader, critique partner, an experienced writer, editor, or whatever – mentions something doesn’t work or asks if I could do it a different way, I find my “own new way” that makes it better. Not always. But it’s worth trying it on to see if I like the fit (I ALWAYS save the original). And then, there is the decision as to if an agent or editor is a good fit, and is really interested in what you’re submitting. I guess that’s why there’s no EASY button. Rats.