[Teresa Edgerton]

#5
When preparing to submit a book manuscript, learn to think past the moment when an agent or editor first reads it to a time when it might actually go into production.

I’ve often heard beginning writers say, “Why do editors and agents worry about unimportant things like spelling and punctuation, when it’s the story that counts.” Skipping right over the fact that for many readers things like poor spelling and punctuation can be a major distraction -- if you don’t understand or believe this already, nothing I say now is going to convince you -- I’m going to assume that you do know that no reputable publisher is going to have a book printed up with all of those errors uncorrected. If you haven’t fixed those things already, someone is going to have to do it for you -- most probably a freelance copy-editor who is not going to want to be doing all of that extra work without sufficient compensation. Therefore, publishing your book is going to cost more time and money -- not a good idea to put into an editor’s mind when he or she first picks up your manuscript. Especially because most first novels barely break even as it is, and many of them actually lose money for the publisher.

There is also the fact that the kind of carelessness that leads to multiple errors in grammar, etc. usually comes out in other ways: poor plotting, poor characterization, and so forth. So again, these mistakes tell an editor or an agent that producing your manuscript is likely to be more time-consuming -- and that working with you is not going to be an agreeable process, since you are either too ignorant, too lazy, or too arrogant to take care of these things yourself and expect other people to do your work for you.

And now we come to the matter of manuscript format. You may want to know why editors are so picky about things like the size of your margins, or whether a manuscript is double-spaced or not, or what font you use. You may even think that they are making you jump through hoops merely for their own satisfaction. But there are reasons for all of these rules, based on what happens when a manuscript goes into production. As more and more publishers handle more and more of the process electronically some of these rules are becoming out-dated -- but they were never arbitrary and some of them are still there for a very good reason. Many large publishing houses still have the copy-editor mark up the hard copy by hand, and those large margins and that double spacing gives the copy-editor room to work. (And it doesn’t matter how clean your manuscript is and how few errors there are to correct, some of these marks are there to make sure the final book is properly typeset and formatted -- so that your italics are actually italicized and your dashes are dashes instead of hyphens.) And the font you choose? Believe it or not, that can make a difference in the way the production department figures out the final word and page count.

Again, there are reasons for these rules, and if you don’t follow them, the moment any agent or editor picks up your manuscript he or she knows: this book is going to require more work during the production process. That is not a good way to entice them to read further.

Which brings us to:

#6
Learn as much as you can about how the publishing business really works.

Many writers spoil their chances by deciding in advance how the publishing business must work -- by convincing themselves that it’s just like the movie business, or the music business, or like selling brand-name products at the grocery store -- or how it ought to work -- to make life easier for first-time authors -- and proceeding accordingly. When this doesn’t work out, rather than change their approach, they decide that getting published is impossible, or that the system is corrupt (oddly enough, people are most likely to reach this conclusion when they themselves have tried a little influence-peddling and failed), or some other excuse rather than the real one, which is that they went about things in the wrong way and increased their chances of rejection many times over.

Do not let this happen to you. Find out how the industry really works, and proceed from a position of knowledge and power. It’s true that your book may still be rejected, but at least it won’t be because of a mistake you didn’t have to make.

Also, do get your information from people within the industry if at all possible. There are a great many things that people believe simply because they’ve heard them said over and over, without considering -- often without even knowing -- the original source. And the very people who have done the most to spoil their own chances are often the most eager to spread around their misconceptions. Oh, they’re sincere enough, and it really would be unfair to accuse them of jealousy or sour grapes . Let’s just say that their personal conviction that they know better than the entire publishing industry makes them particularly inclined to share their views.

#7
The purpose of a critique is not to encourage you or to make you feel good about your writing. (Neither is it to discourage you or make you feel wretched.) Its sole purpose is to help you improve.

Which may, yes, include telling you what it is you are doing particularly well, so that you can continue doing it, but it should never include false praise. It is possible to be tactful and still be honest; it is possible to be gentle and still be honest. Unfortunately, as I said in the section on agents and editors, it takes time to frame criticism that accomplishes all this, and it’s far easier to just say, “Great. I love it. Keep on going.” No one’s ego gets bruised, everyone comes away from the experience happy, but in the long run it’s far less constructive than telling the truth.

If you have just started writing and you are getting a great many compliments, you need to find a more honest (or a more experienced) group of readers. Because, honestly, your first efforts are not going to be that good. You may have talent, you may have wonderful, fresh ideas, but learning to write well takes time. Those early drafts of your first stories, no matter how much promise they show, are going to have serious flaws. You need people who are going to be able to show you what those flaws are -- particularly if you are a great talent -- so that you can reach your full potential.

Even when you have been writing for a while, there are two things you need to ask yourself in considering the value of any overwhelmingly favorable critique: How much is this person invested in helping me produce my best possible work? (A lot of the time the answer to this question is going to be: Not much.) To what extent is this person invested in making me happy/getting along with me/appearing like a nice person to the rest of the group? Then you weigh the two answers against each other.

But how about the really cruel critiques (and by cruel I don’t mean the critiques that are the most exacting, but the ones that include large amounts of sarcasm, or any variation on the phrase, “this story is a piece of %%^%^”)? Those you throw away, preferably before reading very far. They may, in fact, include some good advice along with the parts you would do well to ignore, but it’s more trouble than it’s worth to winnow out what is valuable from all that spite and malice. Besides, critiques of this sort may actually do more harm than good, by setting up a bias against the same advice when you hear it elsewhere. If you find yourself in a group where such critiques are common practice, find another group.

But another kind of critique you should avoid is the kind where somebody else (usually a perfectly well-meaning somebody else), tries to do too much of the writing for you by making numerous corrections and alterations. It’s fine if someone does this once or twice to show you that your spelling, punctuation, etc. need vast improvement -- so long as you use these critiques to inspire you to brush up your grammar or whatever else it is you need to work on. But do not allow yourself to grow dependent on other people to find and fix such mistakes for you, not if you have serious aspirations. You need to learn these things yourself, and the sooner the better.

On the other hand, if you know that your writing mechanics are good -- your spelling, punctuation, grammar, are fine except for the occasional typo or other slip-up -- and people are still going through your writing and changing sentence after sentence, you need to consider whether you are dealing with individuals who have lost sight of the difference between editing and collaborating. Because even if they are right, which they very well may be -- your sentence structure is awkward, your prose is over-written, your word choices are inappropriate-- a truly constructive critique would simply point these things out, give you a few examples of how to correct them, and leave you to fix them on your own. You’ll never learn how to revise while other people are doing the revising for you.

But there is also the possibility that someone is trying to fix your style by making it more like their style. Some writers favor a style that is absolutely transparent, others one that is more ornate. Some choose one that is terse and modern; some choose a style that is quirky and idiosyncratic. There are both good and bad examples of these various approaches. Whichever you choose, you need to find readers who understand and appreciate what you are trying to do -- while still remaining critical enough to tell you when it isn’t working.

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