*exhales dramatically*

Today was the day. I even put it in my planner: submit! 

But I’m just not ready. And the last thing I want is to hear from an agent is, ‘Sorry, but your book isn’t good,’ or ‘What is this writing, you fool?!’

Upon rejection, I want to hear, ‘Your book is good but it’s not right for me.’

Last night, I got feedback on my novel which I needed to hear. The good news is, there isn’t a lot to change! The better news is, agents only request the first 3 chapters so I only need to edit those before I send it off. While I wait those long brutal weeks for a response, I’ll be doing a fifth edit of the book. (Hopefully, I’ll cut some words, too.)

My main problems, I think, are:

1. Too much detail. I think I try too hard to be artsy and evocative but sometimes, it just ends being a lot of detail.
2. The passive voice. My worst enemy. Someone brought this up with me last week and I didn’t even notice I did it. I’ve probably done it 91 times in this post already! On the plus side: Word has a passive voice checker. News to me.
3. Syntax. Words are objects I tend to arrange oddly in sentences. See! (I did that on purpose). But seriously, I word things weirdly. Instead of saying, ‘She looked at him again. His face was stern.’ I might say, ‘Again, she looked at him, noticing his stern face.’ Like WHAT! (Okay, this might be an exaggeration but you get what I mean.)

I’m sure there are tons of other problems but those are what I’m focusing on during this redraft. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t do it that often. The feedback I got on my novel was actually very good and I’m extremely happy with it.

I just don’t want to submit something that can be obviously better. I mean, how gutting would it be if I got rejected because of passive voice? Of course, everything can always be better in some way. Nothing is perfect, and I’m sure I could edit this book every day for 100 years and still find something wrong with it. But when the problems are so fixable, it’s better to fix them now. Like my husband said this morning, ‘There’s no rush.’

Stay tuned, and keep writing!

Song of the Day: Psycho by Lauren Aquilina. It’s new & it’s good.