How an Agent Prepares a Revised Manuscript for Submission to Publishers
Most of the pragmatic publishing advice to writers focuses on finding an agent. Having an ally on the inside matters if you want to write professionally, but once I cleared that hurdle, I realized I didn’t have much information about all the steps that came afterward: agent revision passes, getting permission for epigraphs, sharing input for cover and interior art, working with a publicist, etc. This valley between getting an agent and getting a deal is the part where an earlier novel of mine had gotten stuck in 2014, and I was worried. It happens all the time. It’s heartbreaking for a writer. It’s usually nobody’s fault. Having gone through it once, I knew it was survivable, but I didn’t want to repeat it because it means that your manuscript needs to go live in a drawer for years, maybe forever.
In the last post, I talked about working with a sensitivity/authenticity reader. In this second of a two-part post, I will share two other important tasks that happened over the six months between starting to work with an agent and the manuscript’s submission to publishers: revisions and submissions. I hope it’s helpful.
Revising Well
How did I spend the time between accepting Adam’s offer of representation in December 2020 and the novel’s submission to editors in June 2021? Besides moving from California to DC and gently prying my wrist out of a golden retriever puppy’s jaw many times, I revised the novel twice.
I’d gotten hung up in this part of the process on a manuscript years ago, so I was determined to be clear-eyed and organized about any new changes. Not because I’d been messy about my earlier novel, or even that its rejection was any personal failing of mine at all—I just wanted to be able to look in the mirror, if this whole process dead-ended again, and be able to say that I wouldn’t have done a single thing differently. So, this time, there’d be no avoiding asking hard questions, ignoring my instincts, or leaving anything at “good enough.”