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September 10, 2006 | Writing
You’ve finish your first draft. You let it sit and season for a couple of weeks while you recuperate from writing. You edit it to the best of your abilities and when you’re finished, you give it to your critique partners for review and comment. You’re really excited, and think you’ve done a really great job, written a story that’s tight, has plenty of tension, sparkling dialogue, two dimensional characters and a proper ending. Your critique partners agree, you’ve got a great story and they loved reading it. However …. There are some ‘little fixes’ that have to be done.
Little fixes my a$*$! To me, a little fix is a couple of typos; making sure your headers are correct; having the correct address for the agent you plan on sending your almost perfect book to, or chipping the polish on your pinky and not being able to remember the nail color name.
Truthfully, little fixes are edits. Why can’t we just call them what they are? Little edits. Little edits that can and will make the difference between an agent thinking you really care about your work being polished enough for them to represent you and sell the blasted book, or an agent believing you wouldn’t take the time to correct the ‘little fixes’ and therefore, why should they offer to represent you. First impressions are very important in this writing business and it is your work that speaks for you. You could look like Shrek’s Princess Fiona, but if you write, edit, revise, and fix the ‘little fixes’, the agent won’t care. Well you may not be doing many speaking engagements, but in the Internet World you can promote your book, post a picture of Halle Berry with red hair, pass it off as you, and no one will care. Your book will sell, your readers will love you, your agent will love you, and it’ll all be because you fixed the ‘little fixes.’
I feel your pain, but you’re write . . . er, RIGHT. 🙂
If you don’t care enough about your work to make it as perfect as you can get it, why should anyone else care enough about it to represent or publish it?
I think I take this blog personal! You must be a frequent attendee at my critique meetings.
No jokes – you are so true in what you wrote. Time to go back to those “little fixes”. Thanks for waking me up.
LOL. ALL writers should take this personal, although I might have had you and Beth in mind when I wrote it. Yep, come to think of it, I did!