Learn up and Listen
As a writer I humbly go before you – oh mighty publishing industry
About two years ago, my sis and I finished our MS. We were ready to query. By spring, we’d have an agent. By summer, we’d have a book deal. By the fall, we’d be hot stuff.
But that’s not what happened.
By spring, we’d been rejected eleven times. By summer, we’d received not even a request for more pages. And by the fall, we were dead in the water. Researching agents, querying, and being rejected or receiving nothing at all. So is the life of querying writers.
Except for we knew something had to change. We knew something was off. So,we went to hacking at the query, which did get better – not great, but better. That clearly had to be the problem. Our synopsis. Our detailed story in three dense paragraphs. Then, we entered a pitch contest. All that was needed to participate: One 35-word pitch – upside no matter what, you would receive feedback on your pitch and first 250 words.
The feedback on pitch: I want to read this!
The feedback on 250 words: Too much back story.
The feedback was exactly what we needed, a direction as to what might be wrong. Shockingly – it might be our MS after all. So, we got in the weeds and chopped the back story. Gone. Loved it, but it was gone. With all that fixed. We queried again. Unsuccessfully. What? How could this be? We chopped the back story. We have a long thorough query. We entered another contest. Didn’t get in. No feedback.
But we did get an idea. Something might be truly wrong with our manuscript and query. We needed to start learning up. And we did. Learned as dedicated pupils of The Book Doctors to perfect the query and had an aha moment – it’s a PITCH! Not a synopsis. Not my book in three paragraphs. Instead, an enticing morsel that encourages the agent to beg for more. And apparently, there’s a 250-word industry guideline. How that got missed by us - I have not a clue. We read articles about telltale signs of amateur writers and started combing our MS. We took a torch to our first three chapters, we changed the age of our protagonist, we changed a fundamental plot point, we increased the stakes, we learned up and like warrior princesses went bravely into our manuscript with swords drawn. And we listened. We listened when a gracious editor, providing feedback for free, said – I’m confused and this is cliché in reference to our new first 5 pages. We may have not known how to change it, but we listened. We marinated on it.
Recently on Twitter, I saw someone comment that if you’re not published to not worry, that it’s just not your time yet. – And well, I agree, sometimes it’s a matter of it not being your time yet. And that’s why you don’t have an agent. Or you’re not published. But sometimes -- it’s because you are not good enough. And you need to improve. You need to get better.
Success takes a humbled and flexible ego.
