I’m anal. No one I know would describe me any differently. I write a book and then take a couple of days off. I come back to it with rested eyes and I begin a self edit. I look for all the telling that I know I do. I insert all the dropped words I know are missing. I look for pet words and phrases. I look for weak spots in the storyline or plot. I look for places where I rushed and could have explained better. When I’ve done all that, I turn it over to another set of eyes.
When I write M/M, the next set of eyes usually belong to a gay or bi man. Most other stuff I turn over to one of three people whose opinions I value as a critiquer. None of the three pull any punches with me. They are hard on me. “You info dumped here, delete it.” “Too much scenery here, not enough emotion. Shift the focus.” “I really think you have overused the word PINK. You need to search on it and remove it.” Sometimes when I worry about how something will be perceived, I get a new set of eyes, a true reader. For Ride the Lightning with it’s suicide scene, I wanted someone other than my normal critters and betas to tell me the book was fine with that scene in it. So I handed the manuscript to one of the AWH puppies.
My point here is that when you finish a manuscript… you are far from finished. In point of fact, the real work has just begun. Trying to polish something that is your baby can be very difficult. You’ve been looking at it so long, you don’t see the dropped words and missing commas and hyphens. Having another set of eyes is IMPERATIVE. If you are doing it all on your own and subbing it to publishers you are probably going to get a rejection or at least a revise and resubmit.
How do I know this? I’ve been reading submissions for Freya’s Bower and Wild Child Publishing for nearly a year now. I’ve seen a lot of authors turn in manuscripts that could have been better if only they had critters, beta readers, and had learned to self edit. Missing periods and scrambled words just don’t belong in a professional submission. You should not be sending your story to a publisher without someone else vetting it first. Even the best of us can miss a dropped word. In fact, most authors miss them because they’ve just been too close to the manuscript. The other set of eyes is pretty much mandatory for catching those boo boos.
Now, go ahead and crit my blog post. It’s a blog post, not a manuscript for a publisher. At the same time, it’s nearly 9 pm and I’ve worked OT today and I haven’t been sleeping well.That means SOMETHING is bound to be wrong with this post! Will I see it? Maybe not. Will you? Well, you’re more likely to than I am! And that right there is the thrust of my post.
As writers and authors, you should be self editing. But you should also have those manuscripts critiqued by someone who is knowledgeable and willing to tell it like it is. Sycophants need not apply for this job! (Don’t know that word? Dictionary.com! GO. Go, now!)
If you are not self editing and you are not using critiquers who know what they are talking about… you are not ready to be published. You deserve all the stinging red marks an editor is going to fill your manuscript with. And if you receive a rejection, well, you may just deserve that too because I am here, telling you what to do to help avoid those things. If you choose to ignore my advice, you’re courting the big R or the grumpy editor with the red tracking marks. If you don’t believe me, ask the whacker wielders at AWH.
Avail yourself of the groups out there that can help you. Ask published authors or former editors to read your work. If you are a writer who has never been pubbed, don’t hand your manuscript off to a handful of other aspiring writers who are in the same boat as you. Give it to someone more experienced. If you are an author already, give the manuscript to another author or former editor. Perhaps someone who has been doing this longer than you or who has had more success at it. Don’t sit on your laurels and turn in shitty, messy manuscripts to your editors thinking they will take it cause they took the last three… You may find yourself shocked right out of your complacence with a big, fat rejection email.
Go on out there and edit yourself. Then get someone else to crit it. Give yourself a fighting chance to win at the publishing game.
Have a great day!
Lex Valentine
Excellent advice. With the internet, there really are excellent opportunities for critiquing and editing help that weren’t available several years ago. Authors, published or not, would be silly not to avail themselves of the help.
It can be difficult sometimes to find a beta reader or crit partner. I’ve had experiences where I’ve asked someone to beta read, or they’ve offered, and then they haven’t read what I’ve sent them. In a couple of cases, they disappeared off the radar entirely, stopped posting on loops, and stopped answering my emails. Because of that, most of what I’ve submitted so far hasn’t been beta read or critted, and it showed. I have a few people beta-ing one of my stories now, and hopefully they’ll agree to beta future stuff for me… I tend to think things that I don’t actually type, without realizing that the reader might not understand what I meant, so I need a reader to tell me that before I submit the story. I agree with Lex, that extra set of eyes is important, both to be sure your manuscript is the best it can be and to make things easier on your editor.
Finding a critique partner is the number one thing any aspiring author can do to help ensure they are published. After that, continuing with one is paramount. Regardless of how many books you have out there, getting feedback and finding those pesky problems that you overlook in your own work is still necessary. Excellent post, Lex. I’m in full agreement.
Mary, Karenna, and Tess – It is hard to find good people to look at your work but there are people out there. You have to keep looking around and joining different groups until you meet the people who fit you best. I joined and left a number of groups before I found the people I have. I had one advantage, my first critter I found through my blog.
I know it’s hard to find someone experienced to look at a newbie’s work. I’ve had newb’s ask me to crit for them and I hate having to tell them no, but I just don’t have time and I already crit for a couple of people. You just have to be persistent and keep asking people whom you respect. Eventually, someone will say yes!
don’t get much critiqueing from myspace…obviously need to get off my duff. ty
Where were you when I first started out? LOL I was a mess, had no idea what a crit partner was or self-editing. Now, whenever i meet new author that is the first thing i tell them. get a crit partner, someone who knows their stuff and not another newbie.
Excellent post and not too many errors.
At what point do you suggest moving from crit partners who are also unpublished, to seeking out published others? Any suggestions? I’m part of a writing group where we critique each other’s work on a weekly basis, but none of us are published. A few are in the submission stage, but most of the others are still putting words to paper. Do you think there is any harm in having people at that stage looking over work that you’re thinking about submitting?
I never had unpubbed critters. I wanted the best chance to make it with my first submission. And even now that I am multi-pubbed, I’m not yet with one of the bigger houses (LI, Samhain or EC) and even for an in house submission, I have other eyes check me. And since it’s only been a year since I started down this road, I’d rather err on the side of caution. Once you’re at the point of readying yourself to submit, you should have someone other than unpubbed critters looking at your work.
Well hell. Good info, but now I have to find one, lol. Thank you for the information!
Self editing is a necessary evil. I’d rather write, but that’s the easy part. The revisions are what take forever, but the manuscript will only glow when finished. Newbie writers need to buckle down and learn how to edit well. It will save them a lot of agony in the long run.