OOOPS help!

amyashley said:

I sent out queries in early Oct thinking my MS was polished and perfect.

LOTS of rejections started coming back.

I asked someone with more experience to take a look at my opening (included in many queries) and my query. She found a major grammatical issue and also convinced me the opening really needed fixing.

Unfortunately, I still have a LOT of queries out.

I just got my third partial request today. What should I do? I'm working on the grammatical edits and the opening edits, but it is going to take a bit. Should I send the old material? Should I wait and send the revised, working as fast as I can? (note, this is slow, since I have little kids) Should I tell her I screwed up and it was recently pointed out and offer to send the partial later?

I don't want an agent to think I sent my MS out undone, because I didn't, I really thought I was cool. BTW, this is an agent who has also seen and read the SAME 10 pages my pal did. Pal is AW person.

Click to expand...

Amy, didn't we have this conversation last week? Am I not remembering right?

It would be silly to send the unrevised partials - you know it's not ready, and that it has obvious issues (tense, etc.). So, as I see it, you have two choices:

One, don't respond and when you are ready, send a very tardy partial.

Or,

Two, send an email explaining that you have recently received some helpful comments and are revising, and that you will send the partial when you have completed the revisions. Hopefully, the agent will assume you received the comments off another partial.

Either path may irritate one agent or another, but sending the not ready draft is like shooting yourself in the foot before the race begins.

So, you choose whether to say nothing and send it late, or send an explanatory email. But those are the most viable options, IMO. Personally, I'd chose option two unless the agent has specifically railed against such emails. But that's me.

good luck.

~suki

Send your partial out, Amy.

P.S. I'm proud of you!