Sick person

I just got a request from an agent for a partial, so all's right in my writing world.

But for three days before that I didn't hear from any of the agents I queried, and I got so depressed I was about to rewrite my entire manuscript (and came up with about a dozen good ideas).

A week before that an agent asked for a full and I was on top of the world.

Sometimes I think I'm addicted to the roller coaster.

I would tell you what it's like if I ever got to be up there for more than a minute.

In the time it took to post this message, the agent who asked for the partial already rejected it (actually, it was two hours from email submission to email rejection). At least I got a couple of personalized comments out of it.

But at this rate, I could run out of agents by tomorrow.

JennaGlatzer said:

Popmuze, I think the excitement and anticipation and unpredictable ups and downs are the main reasons I stick with writing. It would be so dull if everything we wrote was accepted as is, no?

But you've hit on an important problem: knowing whether rejection means "time to rewrite" or "just haven't hit the right person yet." That was always tricky for me. (The only reason I say "was" is that I usually write to assignment now, so not so much with the sending stuff out and hoping.)

Do you have any particular rule for yourself about when it's time to rework something?

For me, though not hard rules, here was my usual plan:

REVISE IF...

-I get feedback from anyone (agent, editor) that makes sense to me and sounds like it would really improve the piece.

-I get the same sort of feedback from more than one professional, even if I didn't think I agreed with it before. Most likely, if at least two people in the business offer the same critique (unlikeable protag, climax not climactic enough, etc.), I need to look at it again.

-I'm getting several (5 or more) form rejection letters with no personal comments.

Otherwise, I try to just keep moving onto the next piece, and if the original one hasn't sold in maybe 4-5 months, I do a fresh read, which always seems to bring the putrid parts of the manuscript right out into the open.

Click to expand...

Here's a brief history to put things in perspective. I published three YA novels with a major publisher 20 years ago, and have had many non-fiction books published ever since. In those 20 years I couldn't get past page 50 on an adult novel--at which point I would discover it was turning into the one before it.

A couple of years ago I broke through and finished a first draft, gave it to my agent, who sent it out without (I'm willing to bet) even reading it. It did get a nice rejection from an editor, but I withdrew it for another draft. Later I withdrew the agent.

In 2006, after having it read and edited by several worthy people, and commented on by various others, I decided it might be finished. So far, the reviews I've gotten from agents turning it down have been better than a lot of the reviews I got for my earlier novels. Ultimately, one thing or another has stopped them from offering representation.

Some hate the main character, others love him. Some love the period detail, others think it's too nostalgic. Some have been taken by the plot, others felt it was too slow. Each time I re-read it I find gaps I could fill in to make things more (dramatic, humorous, scathing, moving).

I don't have a next one. Since I'm drawing mainly requests for the full manuscript and mainly personalized rejections, I figure this is close. One agent from a huge agency said, "This is a cut above 90% of the stuff we see around here." Of course, according to James A, you need to be a cut above 98% of what's out there to be published these days. So now I'm trying to figure out how to make up that 8%.

Like you, I thought I was off the roller coaster once I started writing for money. But this is more like the Parachute Jump (there goes another nostalgic reference)