The Finish Line is Near
Early Monday morning I received my fully-edited manuscript from my editor, Lauren, of LVD Letters.
She had very positive things to say. Quoted text below:
"I'm honored to have been one of your story's first readers, and to do my part in helping you enhance your already beautiful story!
Your story is equally heartbreaking and celebratory and wonderfully paced, with perfectly imperfect, relatable, lovable characters. I found myself cheering on Hannah, desperately clinging to hope with Paige and Ryan, begging Charlie for the truth, and even empathizing with Jimmy and Jay. All your characters' motivations, fears, desires, and insecurities are deep and clear in a way that strengthens your story and makes it captivating."
She then relayed that her feedback focused on:
Varying sentence structure and dialogue tags
Replacing repetitive words
Improving readability of paragraphs/sentences where necessary
Offering suggestions for where action or body language statements can be added
Offering suggestions where clarity or specificity can be improved
Adjusting dialogue formatting for more clarity and better flow
As a first-time author I was nervous for what my edited manuscript might come back looking like. I guess I didn't want it to feel like someone did my work for me. Much to my relief, it doesn't feel like that at all. My story is still absolutely mine, but she definitely had a hand in taking it to the next level.
She added many a missed comma and fixed a lot of indentations and words that needed to be italicized (or not). There was a lot with formatting that I wasn't sure on, and I'm very glad that I had an expert eye on it!
Do I capitalize the word god? Sometimes, depending on how its being used. Same with mom or dad. Do I italicize the name of a performer showing on a headliner sign? How about the name of a food truck that appears in the story? There were a lot of things that came like that that I doubted myself on. I am taking notes on how she fixed things so that in my next book I won't make the same errors.
When I look at the shared document I see in a highlight with a comment any of the changes she made, such as adding commas or suggesting I reduce two or three sentences into one. Or, a highlight with a comment that says to add more detail for clarity, or include some body language or expression. For the small grammatical errors she fixed, all I have to do is click on the suggested change and it inserts itself into the doc. For the things that were suggested, it's up to me if I want to add or edit the lines.
She also provided me a clean copy of my story where she has already fixed all of those commas etc. I could use that copy if I didn't want to make any further changes based on her feedback, or to double check my work later. I am enjoying reading my story again very carefully and deciding what suggestions to implement. Yesterday I worked my way through the edits through chapter 6.
Overall, her feedback was very positive! I have a meeting with her in the next few weeks via Zoom to go over any questions I have regarding the edit. I am looking forward to that.
In the meantime I am continuing to perfect my query letter that I will send to literary agents. If I want to be a traditionally published author I must find an agent to represent me/my story who will then try to sell it to their publishers.
You don’t want to query agents until you have a polished manuscript. The reason for that is because if an agent asks to see a larger sample of your book, you want to send them the highest quality product possible. They aren’t interested in what you book COULD BE with more editing, they want to be shown it’s READY.
I am using a website called Query Tracker to find agents, keep track of who I am sending letters to, and track their responses. The site also directly links to the agent, so rather than send via email, you upload various items through the site.
For example, one agent I plan to query is the same one that represents MN author Abby Jimenez. She wants authors to send several things such as: an author bio, the first chapter of their story, the book's synopsis, and of course, the query letter itself. It feels a bit like applying for a job.
I am supposed to read up on the agent and personalize my letter to them, so that is going to take some time. I have completed my first draft of my query letter.
I want to get it just right because I likely only have one chance for each agent. If they reject you, you aren't supposed to try again with them.
For context I can see how many authors have queried a particular agent and how many received offers to be represented.
I may choose not to query agents who have 1000+ submissions and only handful of offers.
