Don’t stop at THE END

THE END … the two words that every novelist strives for after months, years, or decades of scribbling and typing in a secret world we’ve created. A cause for celebration for sure, so when it happens to you, don’t hesitate to rejoice.  When I got to that place, I did a little dance around the house and sent out a few self-congratulatory texts. Then I sat back and relaxed for a day, dreaming of my book on shelves of every bookstore across the country. I knew a little bit about how to start querying and dove right into getting my pitch ready for the upcoming SCBWI (society of children’s book writers and illustrators) regional conference. I knew that I needed to read over and edit somewhat since everyone makes a few mistakes.

“Edit somewhat” is like saying I’ll put that batter I mixed up in the oven and I will have a fully frosted birthday cake in a couple minutes. Editing is a never-ending search for perfection in a world where everyone’s idea of perfection is different. Of course, in the beginning it was easy to spot grammatical problems and misspellings (maybe I shouldn’t say easy, I still am not convinced I know all the quotation rules … more on that later). Then I get to the layer of word choice. (Really, I’m thankful for the really cool search feature of Word documents because I really wouldn’t want to read a really long manuscript just to see how many times I used “really” That would be really ridiculous!) Then, just when I thought it couldn’t be edited anymore, I was informed that I needed to “tighten up” the opening chapters. And a whole new level of editing began.

Here’s where the subjective part of writing comes in. Readers all have their own ways they like to get into a story, and so do agents. As writers we need to walk a tightrope between pulling the reader into a story and giving enough description and background to make them want to stay. To jump back to my cake analogy … you want them to savor the icing and cake but not to have to wait too long to get to the strawberry filling. Realizing this (after googling “tighten up a manuscript”), I spent many more hours working through my manuscript, taking out unnecessary descriptions, dialogue, and actions … while trying to leave in all the fun character development and red herrings that make a good mystery.

This tricky, time consuming process started to lead down a slippery slope of never feeling finished enough to query. This is where I had to rely on my alpha and beta readers to let me know when my manuscript had been tugged and twisted into a “I couldn’t go to sleep until I knew how it would end!” kind of read. That’s when I said, “Enough!” Time to jump back into the agent hunt!

I know there will probably be more editing once I get to past the Land of Querying, but until then I will start mixing up the next batch of a story in my imagination. And I just can’t wait until I light the candles on the birth day celebration of my novel, I hear that it’s even better then typing “THE END.”