Whether you’re submitting to a publisher or an agent, there are things you can do to give yourself a leg up on the competition. (You do understand there’s lots of competition, right? Right?)
Having been a writer, I know rejection sucks, especially rejections that don’t explain why a book was rejected. As an acquiring editor for small press, I can tell you why. 99% of the time rejection has absolutely nothing to do with structure, characters/arcs or the marketability of a book. In fact, if acquiring editors reach the point where they’re picking that kind of detail apart, you can give yourself a pat on the back for membership in that exclusive One-Percenter’s club.
The One Percenters are the lucky few who get requests for revisions, personal notes from editors and invitations to resubmit.
The other 99% — aka the Ninety-Niners — get the impersonal rejection. Why? Well, either there are mechanical problems, laborious/fussy wording or some other problem that made it, quite frankly, too much work to read your submission.
Let me repeat: It’s work to read your writing.
Stop looking insulted. Everybody has to start somewhere, and if you’re really serious about being published, then at some point you have to realize that writing is not a one-off hobby. It’s work. It’s a job, and your job as an author is to make the reader forget they’re reading.
How do you make that happen? Well, let’s start with the basics. Spelling counts. Words mean specific things. So do punctuation marks. Mistakes make your writing hard to read.
That all sounds very basic, and it is — or it should be, but apparently it’s not, and I’m in a position to know. A writer’s job is to do these things right so you won’t confuse a reader.
Next, if you’re using a grammar checker, shut…it…off. There is nothing more unpleasant than slogging through proper English. End your sentences with prepositions. Split your infinitives. Turn nouns into verbs and have fun with the language, for the love of God. Go nuts. You won’t be sent to some special writer’s hell. You have my word on that.
Next, show us you’ve paid attention to what you’ve put on the page. Repetitive word and phase use, stage directions, passive voice… They all show inattention to detail and indecisiveness. This is not the sort of writer we trust. If you can’t be arsed, neither can publishers, and you certainly can’t expect readers to pay for a scratched, skipping record.
Now it’s time to recognize print convention: how things are supposed to look on the page, what punctuation means to readers, what indents mean, and the myriad visual cues that transmit messages to readers without words.
You learn this by reading, and be advised no publisher in the world is interested in reinventing the wheel for your book. Read. Learn the patterns. Don’t improvise.
Finally, understand what writing is. The best possible explanation I’ve ever encountered came in Stephen King’s On Writing, in the section titled, not surprisingly, “What Writing Is”. It comes just before he starts the Toolbox. Can’t miss it.
If you’ve not read it, you owe it to yourself and your readers to do so, because there isn’t a publisher in the world who wouldn’t work their butts off to correct your usage and mechanical errors if you can transport readers into an experience the way Mr. King describes.
Now, when preparing to submit, make yourself a revisions checklist. Start with the most basic stuff like spelling, usage and punctuation. Then delve into the intermediate like repetitive word and phrase use, bad passive voice (there’s good passive, too, but it’s mostly weak) and work your way up to seeking out places where you could use telepathy to deepen immersion and character empathy.
No one can do this for you. Nobody else shares your precise strengths and weaknesses, and nobody else is telling the exact same story the same way you are.
So do this for yourself. It’s your job. Do the work before you submit, and you will be miles ahead of all that competition out there.
