Receiving any sort of positive response from an editor or agent is always a shiny moment, but when one such response included an acronym with multiple definitions, I found it impossible to resist substituting a few of those alternatives.
Excerpt from an editor’s recent email after reviewing full manuscript: [We’ve] highlighted a number of ways that the story could be tightened and angled a little more towards the target audience. We’d like to request an R&R if you’re open to taking a look at the notes. Please let me know how you’d like to proceed.
R&R?
Rest and recuperation? Reading our manuscript must have exhausted this editor. Poor thing. Yes, please take some R&R. Wind and waves? Mountains and trails? Regardless, margaritas are on us.
Refuse and resist! This could work. In fact a friend of mine had an agent request revisions three times before declining to represent her manuscript. That didn’t seem fair when it happened and it still doesn’t sit well with me. I suspect my friend might refuse any query-related R&R unless it’s for rest and recuperation. And margaritas.
Roles and responsibility? This one’s easy! My role is to write a terrific book. Yours, dearest editor, is to offer a multi-book contract with a million dollar advance. Wait, that creates too much performance pressure. How about a nice six figure advance? Yep. That’ll work perfectly.
Revise and resubmit? Or request for revisions? This is what the editor meant and his notes provided some terrific insight. Did I agree with all of his suggestions? After re-reading our manuscript with his suggestions in mind, I did.
However…
My first agent tried to sell my third novel for about six months, and after a number of declines she received a request for revisions (R&R) from an editor. As in, change the book from dark fantasy into a romance. A complete re-write. I pondered this for a long time. After all, I’d hooked that agent with the dark fantasy version. Plus, I’d never set out to write “romance.” After some R&R (Research and Reconnaissance) about what was selling well (Romance and more Romance), I decided to try a few chapters, which evolved into my changing the entire story. And that version did sell, ultimately earning a HOLT Medallion for Best First Book. (Romance Rocks!)
For this newest manuscript, even though the editor liked the revisions, he eventually declined because of word count. (Hello! We only cut 2,000 words!) But all is well. I’m enormously grateful for his R&R (Review and Recommendations), as the new, improved version is so much better and already under consideration by an agent.
Do I love R&R? You betcha! (Rock and roll, baby! Rock and roll!)
Have you received a request for revisions from an editor or agent before signing a contract? Did you choose to edit your manuscript?
Janet Fogg
www.janetfogg.com
Janet Fogg’s interest in writing began in the 5th grade when she won bronze for a statewide essay contest. Her focus on writing flourished while CFO and Managing Principal of OZ Architecture. Several decades and 15 writing awards later she resigned from OZ to follow the yellow brick road, and 10 months after that signed a contract for Soliloquy, her HOLT Medallion Award of Merit winner. Her military history, Fogg in the Cockpit, co-written with her husband, Richard, received an Air Force Historical Foundation nomination for best WWII book reviewed in Air Power History.
Janet joined RMFW in 1993 and has volunteered at conference and served on RMFW’s Board of Directors. She has also served on the boards of the Boulder Chamber of Commerce, Downtown Boulder, Inc., OZ Architecture, and KGA Studio Architects, P.C.
I figure recommended revisions (R&R) is part of the game. The Big Guys aren’t always right but they are right a big percentage of the time. Thanks, Janet.
Uplifting story, Janet and as always I enjoy your sense of humor. 😀
I’ve received such requests. Sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn’t. We just need to be careful and think it over before making big changes without a contract.
Most amusing, Janet – well played!
Thank you, Jeffe and Janet!
I agree, Pat and Shannon. Without a contract it is important to think about big changes. At the same time, a full read by an editor or agent, with comments, suggests that your manuscript is THIS close (holds finger and thumb together).
I received an R&R on a MS about six years ago that I turned down after a lot of consideration. I was asked to change some key character traits of the MC and her sidekick that changed the entire book into something cookie-cutter that I’d read before. It also would have ruined what I loved about writing the story and characters. I firmly believe that if a writer doesn’t love what she’s writing, she won’t write it well. So I declined. I wasn’t that desperate to sell the book. Selling a MS is one thing. Selling out is another. However, I have done R&R’s in the past if I agreed with the changes and knew I could still be happy with what I was writing.