In the Desert You Can Remember Your Name

How do you know your work is ready to submit to agents? If your answer is that your mother loved it or your boyfriend, you are not ready. Don’t trust anyone who either diapered you or has sex with you. They are not objective. What you really need is a writer’s group. Other writers who will read your work and critique it and give you feedback. I wouldn’t be surprised if these groups exist online now. Or a class, again probably also available on line. There are Lo-res MFA programs, writer’s conferences and free-lance editors. I don’t think there is any other way to get solid feedback on your work. It’s also a really good idea to get some publishing credits before approaching agents. When someone tells me that they’ve sent out their manuscript fifty times and no one is interested, they rarely think the problem is with their material. Instead it’s the fault of the agents or the system. I’m going to say this: had I not worked in publishing I’m pretty sure I would never have gotten Forest for the Trees published. I had contacts. I made one phone call and got an agent. So fuck me, yes. But when someone has 50 rejections, even 20, I think they need to stop submitting, get into a workshop and be open to heavily revising their work including the title, query letter and most importantly the text itself. I know it’s hard to put on the brakes, I know it’s difficult to find a good writing group, it feels almost impossible to get writing credits, and harder yet to find an agent. So I ask you this:

What are you willing to do?