© Dan Piraro
So, when you’ve finished your manuscript, what do you do next?
It’s a question I was asking myself for a long, long time. It wasn’t because I didn’t know what the choices were, but because I didn’t know which of them was right for me.
It transpired that I was wasting my time–at least it felt like it–debating with myself whether to send it off to an agent or to start preparing to self-publish. Why was I wasting my time? Because either way, I didn’t know if my MSS was truly ready yet.
You may have been there yourself, where friends and family give you blazing reviews and say that it’s ready to be sent off to an agent/publisher. Naturally they expect the first one you send it to, to snap it up and to see your book on the shelves in time for Christmas. In effect, your friends and family take the place of what you were like when you first decided to put pen to paper. You remember? When you first started planning your tale, thinking the idea was so great what publisher wouldn’t want you?
As we all know, it’s not about the idea, at least a large chunk of it isn’t. It’s about the writing, that is after all what you are/wanting to be… a writer. Really, it probably was never about whether your idea was good enough, it was and is about whether you can write a good story with great pacing and fully-developed characters.
The problem is, it’s those kind of things that your loved ones might be willing to overlook. They’ll be over the moon that you managed to write a few hundred pages, and may even expect that those character-shaped creases will be ironed out by the agent, or the editor, or whoever it is “you writer’s send your book off to”.
That’s not to say that those loved ones don’t know what they’re talking about at all. No doubt you’ve received feedback from some of them that has changed the way you’ve written parts of the book, or perhaps even changed the story. I think I’ve been extremely lucky with my test readers, for they’ve given me some really good advice including their critical feedback on pacing. This helped a great deal and has shaped the first third of my book quite considerably. Yet, even after all this feedback that I feel is worth its weight in gold, I’m still left with that doubt in my mind that my book isn’t ready.
The reason is quite simple. My friends and family aren’t literary professionals.
For me then, before I decide which publishing road to drive down, I seek professional validation that my MSS is ready in the first place. You may think this isn’t quite so important if I decide to try traditional publishing, for if the book’s not ready the agent will say so. From the sounds of it, however, I’d be lucky to get that kind of feedback from an agent. A nicely worded rejection letter would be all I’d expect if anything at all in this rapidly changing book world.
As such, I likely wouldn’t know why my MSS was rejected. But even if it was rejected with “IT’S NOT READY YET” stamped on the front, it’s still spoiling my chances with that agent for the future. Best then to make sure that the MSS isn’t a large piece of amateur bullshit before sending it off.
The need for this professional opinion is far more obvious and self-explanatory when self-publishing, for there is no such thing as rejection. Even though I’m confident about my story and my writing, I wouldn’t be so bold as to assume the MSS was definitely ready, or at least “professional”, without that tip of a hat.
And so it comes down to that need for professional validation (or not as the case may be). There are lots and lots of companies out there who will give you honest, critical, professional feedback for a price. It’s a big step, because if you’re a first-time writer chances are you won’t have too much money to throw around.
My advice then, if this is your first time dealing with literary consultancies (as they seem to be bracketed as), is to find one that is first of all reputable of course, but also one that does a sample of work. Again this won’t be free (though I think there may be a couple out there who offer to do a small sample for free), and the one I’ve found and decided to go with has an option to send your query letter, synopsis and first 5000 words of your MSS, all for a set price.
This seems perfect, as you’re in effect asking them to check exactly what you’d be sending to the majority of agents if you choose that route. And this is what I’ve done.
What am I expecting? Aside from honest, professional feedback, I hope that what I receive is a clearer idea of what further work my MSS needs in order to be of professional quality. This may mean that there’s so much wrong with the first 5000 words that I need to pay full whack for a complete editorial overhaul, or perhaps the only thing that’s wrong are small grammatical errors that require nothing more than a line editor.
Whatever the outcome, I’m looking forward to having a better idea of what my next step will be, and I promise even if the feedback is dream-shattering, I’ll report back here… after a bottle of whiskey.
