I could give all sorts of excuses: work stress, spending every free moment revising, I don't know what to say. All very valid and true, but still just excuses. I'm supposed to be some sort of creative beast aren't I? Just make it up!
Well, I'll work on that. In fact, I'm working on a topic list for myself so I can cover them any time I don't have something else to blog about. It means you're going to hear my opinions on some writing stuff, and they could be way off base.
I've been revising my butt off, and I accidentally entered an awesome after-contest by the lovely Brenda Drake (#PitMad on Twitter), where I had to fit my pitch into a tweet, minus some characters for tags etc. Call it a fit of ego, I had to see if I could pull it off. I was a bit confused when the first person favourited one of my tweets. Wait! What? They want a Query letter and pages?!?!?!Needless to say, my MS was/is SO NOT READY! I haven't done my "out loud" pass, and I didn't even have a query letter! In a fit of madness I did a few passes on the pages and wrote a query letter. Then I let it all sit over night so I could look at it again in the morning.
I slept horribly. Took another look at it, cleaned some stuff up, and sent it off. In the 4 days since I've found all sorts of ways to clean up those pages and make them even better, all while working on later parts of the book too.I can only hope the literary gods and those fine upstanding Agents will still talk to me in a month or so when I'm all set to send it to them again, all nice and clean.
Until then, um, sorry...
Of course, I've been pretty unbearable on the home front because of it. Last night I packed it in early with a big dose of I SUCK and went to bed.
Today I'm dropping that and digging back in. I'll re-submit to those 3 Agents with an apology when I get things cleaned up. No hard feelings if they don't read it a second time, the fault is mine.
I have 12 chapters left to brush up on this pass, then a round with CPs for plot and character consistency while I go over the dialog etc. out loud. Depending on how long that process takes (it's my first time so it may be rough) I should be ready to go on submission in March/April.
Lessons learned.
I feel your angst. I myself got two requests from #PitMad. My manuscript is currently in a terrible state, so I couldn't send it right now, even if they asked for it. But y'know, I'm guessing that some agents expect this, especially from contests like #PitMad. Some might be just fine with it. And, in the end, it's a learning experience no matter what happens. Don't get down on yourself. Kudos for sticking your neck out and trying.
ReplyDeleteDon't worry. I succumbed to this, too. A year ago I was convinced my MS was ready to go, and I'm still making changes to it, and making it better. I think everyone gets a little over-excited by contests sometimes. Good luck! :)
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