Are You Too Married?

A manuscript is an extension of you. In a way it's like a child---you create it, play with it, train it, and hope to share it with the world. But remember, you love your children like no one else in the world. You also love your manuscript more than anyone in the world.

You SHOULD love it, but. . .

It's easy to get too attached to your manuscript. After all, you've spent countless hours working to make it perfect. You've sacrificed time you could have spent with family and friends writing your masterpiece. You've weighed every word, deleted and reinserted the same scene several times, rewritten dialogue for weeks at a time. And now it's finished. And it's perfect. And YOU'RE NOT GOING TO CHANGE A DARN THING.

If you feel this way, you're too married to your manuscript. After you've spent months, or years, with the same story, it's impossible to see your own work. You need the advice of other writers, agents, editors. Change can be a good thing. Don't resist. Listen, weigh, and go back to your masterpiece. Usually you will see that at least a few of them are right.

When writers are too married to a manuscript, a red flag pops into the heads of publishing professionals. If you're unwilling to change a single word, a single scene break, they're going to think you're high maintenance. And you know what that means, right? In the words of my mother, "Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater." If a few changes could make the difference in whether you get published, consider making those changes. Consider listening.

Here's the disclaimer: If the suggested changes mean you have to compromise a theme or change the whole concept of the book, think long and hard before you decide.

On the other hand, if the changes are mostly window dressing, maybe you should make them. After all, it's better to improve your manuscript for your readers than to get your way.

Blinded by Your Own Brilliance or Why You Should Edit with Fresh Eyes

It's hard to know when you're really finished with a manuscript. After all the writing, editing, polishing, rewriting, and re-editing, it's easy to feel finished too soon.

The first ten pages of your manuscript are pivotal. They tell an agent or editor a lot about you as a writer. You don't want ANY mistakes on these first pages.

I was recently judging a contest and I was shocked at how many minor mistakes were in the first few pages of many of the entries. I could tell, by the writing, these aspiring authors knew better. I'm talking about things like "to" instead of "too", a minor change in a character's name, inconsistencies with attire or setting.

Here's what I think the problem was:

The author thought he/she was finished and neglected to do a thorough edit with fresh eyes. After looking over the first few pages dozens of times, the author decided it was finished, done, finito, and sent the manuscript in to be judged. If, with fresh eyes, the author had gone over the pages again, I think all these mistakes would have been corrected, thereby increasing the chances of doing well in the contest.

Sometimes, in order to complete a productive edit of your manuscript, you need to put it down for a while. A couple of weeks, a month---a significant period of time. This way you pay more attention. You haven't JUST read it and your eye doesn't fill in nearly as much.

The first ten pages of your manuscript may be BRILLIANT but if they're riddled with errors, most agents and editors will likely pass. They want to make sure you're precise and capable of editing your own work. Sure, they'll have changes and edits to add to yours, but you don't want a stupid mistake to ruin your chances.

Be sure to join me tomorrow. We've got another guest blogger!

The Curse of Overwriting

I've been talking to my friends in the business quite a bit lately. Do you know what they're complaining about these days? OVERWRITING.

It's is a common problem. Lots of writers do it. And it stalls a lot of otherwise saleable manuscripts.

Here's are some examples I pulled from one of my own novels. It's several years old and abandoned in the depths of a file cabinet. It never sold, even though there was quite a bit of interest in it. Part of the reason it's still at my house instead of on your bookshelf is my OVERWRITING. The examples below were noted by several agents and editors alike.

Example 1:
She waited for David to drive away then she shook her head to clear her body of the image of the handsome Marine.

This is what I should have written:
She watched his taillights dissappear. She shook her head to clear the image of the handsome Marine.

Example 2 :
On Tuesday, she’d been thirty minutes late and by the time she arrived, Andrew, her eight-year old nephew, was the last kid waiting.

I should have written:
She’d been thirty minutes late on Tuesday. Andrew was the last kid waiting.

See how those small edits changed the readability and the pace of those sentences? Part of becoming a better writer is learning the economy of words and the power of words. Less is usually more.

If you have an OVERWRITTEN sentence, post it on the comments and maybe our bloggers can help you pare it down.