Viewing Post from: Three dead moths in my mailbox ...from finished manuscript to book publishing contract
The blog highlights what I found to be the three keys to getting published: rewriting, persistence, and stalking. The reader will take away practical tips for dealing with frustration, and the understanding that a manuscript is never finished until it is between two covers. The blog will also explore how writing and life are explicably connected.
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| Keep that manuscript warm Stubby! |
I won’t say I’ve finished a draft of my young adult
contemporary (entirely lacking in vampires) work-in-progress manuscript, but
I’ve written the story all the way through.
So, isn’t that a first draft? I
hear you say. It might be if it
wasn’t 20K words too short. Maybe it’s a first draft and the second draft will
conclude the search for the missing 20K.
I’ve read it through and edited it on-line until my eyes
bled, then decided it was time to print it out and read the whole thing in one
sitting.
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| Stubby, are you rejecting my manuscript? |
In the olden days (i.e., before the internet was invented by
aliens) popular wisdom dictated that you should print out your manuscript and
then hide it in a drawer for six months. The idea being that enough time would
pass that you would be able to spot what’s missing in the story. Great idea.
But who’s got that kind of time? I was never able to do that in the olden days
and in the nowadays when we check our email five times a minute, I don’t see me
leaving anything in a drawer for six months (unless it’s those unwashed dishes
I do go on about).
It’s been a
little over two weeks that I’ve left it unread and that’s my limit.
I thought I’d let Stubby the cat weigh in on my manuscript
then sit in the sun this weekend, read it like a book and see what I think
of it.
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My to-be-read shelf of books recently supplemented by a shopping trip
@ Powell's Books Portland, is on hold until my to-be-read manuscript is read! |
Ah, yes the sit in a drawer for six months method... The variation I was taught was to start on your next project. I do not recommend this method as years often went by between drafts for me (I'm easily distracted by shiny new ideas). Sometimes MANY years. For example, I wrote the 1st draft of Dreamline in 1988 (grade 11). It was published last year.
Wow, that's a long time Nicole! You're right, that is the danger in letting it sit and starting something shiny and new!