The Importance of Doing Things Wrong.

It's been awhile since I've written a blog post. To long really.  I've been meaning to write up a fun post regarding Stephen Fraser's 12 favorite middle grade novels.  He was a keynote speaker at the SCBWI Summer Conference and was fantastic to listen to (he's an agent at the top of my top ten list.) However, that is not what brings me here today.  I come bearing wisdom.  A wisdom that was not just passed along to me but that was EARNED, and therefore imprinted upon my mind forever. As most wisdom that is earned, it came with a price.

My story begins at a pivotal moment. A moment that has been a long time in the making.  After hours of courses, conferences, and webinars, hours of research and hard work, hours of editing and revising, I was finally ready to query agents.  I had read my finished manuscript hundreds of times.  I had other people read my manuscript to me.  I made it into a dummy book to make sure I made the most of page turns.  I had an English teacher edit my manuscript for typos, punctuation, tense changes, and grammar. I took courses on how to write a perfect query letter.  I researched agents, and had a list of my top ten, who would be my first round of queries. Yesterday, I sent out my first query.  It was to an agent on the top of my list.  One of the few who, if I had my pick of all picks, I would like to work with.  He only takes exclusive queries though, which means I could only send his query, and then patiently wait until he responds before sending out the rest of my first round list.  Before I sent it out however, I read through my manuscript yet again.  I looked at one line and decided to see if I liked something different, so I changed it.  I didn't like it as well, so I changed it back. This is a common practice for me, but not usually so late in my process. This is where I made my second mistake (yes I meant second), which I will get to in a moment.  Deciding that it was as ready as it was ever going to be, I copied and pasted my query letter and my manuscript into an email.  I first sent it to myself to make sure the formatting came through the email correctly.  It did.  So I recopied and pasted into a new email and then sat and stared at it.  Reading it through a few more times.  Okay, I just had to push send. That was all that was left to do.  So with a bundle of nerves in my stomach, I clicked.  Email sent.  I, of course, Bcc'd myself on the email.  I'm compulsive like that.  About five minutes later I opened my copy of the email and read it... again.  My jaw hit the floor.  I cursed Murphy and his stupid law.  As I read through the manuscript part of the email I found not one but TWO errors! I sat there, a pit in my stomach, in stunned silence. The first error was a small one.  The use of the word "it" when it should have been "in."  It was so blatant when I came across it, that I wondered where it had come from.  Surely it was not there before. How did it get in my manuscript? I had to look back at my dummy book to see if it was there all along. It was! How is it that I have read that manuscript HUNDREDS of times and had it edited, and it was missed EVERY TIME until, of course, the first time I read it AFTER it was already sent? Then as I continued reading I found my second error.  That blasted line that I had changed came back to haunt me.  I had written the word "something" twice in a row.  I had apparently failed to read that line carefully after I changed it and before I sent it.  But again, it was so apparently there, when I was reading it that I couldn't believe how I missed it the few times I had read it before sending it.

So here is the take away to this story.  While my chances for getting accepted by this agent have plummeted, I have learned a valuable lesson.  A lesson that I will NEVER make again.  That is why mistakes can be so important.  They make an impact. I skipped a step.  I did not print out a copy for myself to line edit.  To painstakingly go over my story word for word, line by line.  I had been advised to, but skipped it all the same, thinking that it couldn't be all that important.  After all I could do the same thing on my computer.  Well its not true.  That piece of advise was given by an expert for a reason.  So, I share this monumental piece of wisdom with you so that you can avoid this lesson in your future.  Don't skip steps.  Even if you think you don't need them, they are there for a reason.

M

Confession: While this post has multiple purposes, from writing therapy to advise sharing.  I would be lying if I didn't admit to having a small flame of hope that the aforementioned agent looked me up and saw this post.  For him to know that I know there were errors and how embarrassed I feel for skipping that one important step. I know how unprofessional that looks, and for that I am sorry.  I don't mind rejection, I expect it, as any writer should.  But if I am going to be rejected I want to be rejected on merit, not on technical mistakes.  I am better than that.  In the future, my writing will be, too.