Tip of the Day: The YALSA Symposium is three months away! Who's going (besides me)?
I am rewriting the MG novel that got me my first agent in 2008. Two slightly different versions of that novel were subbed to -- and rejected by -- about eight editors over the course of 2008-2009.
This year I went back to that novel. I love that novel (unlike some drawer novels that I have no interest in working on again). I've been rewriting and revising it like crazy, with good feedback from my CPs, and think it is so much tighter and developed and the characters stand on their own.
The main plotline of the novel is the same, as is the setting, but the execution is just so much more on point because I am a much better writer now than I was in '08.
BUT, it is too late for an agent to look at that novel? Has the ship sailed? I know editors move around a lot from house to house, and some who read it are no longer at the same houses or even still in the pub business.
If this novel were polished and ready to go out four years after its first attempt, what do you suggest I do with it if I am unagented?
Deena, Miss Subbing for Pubbing
4 comments:
Are you going to use it to get an agent? Then no, I don't think the ship has sailed. It's different now so query new agents with it. Or are you subbing directly to editors? If you are, just try to sub to different editors than before. You only hit 8 so that's not a lot. :-)
What Kristina said.
Also, there is so much editorial turnover that I know of at least one author who resubmitted a ms. to the same publishers she had hit before, only there were new editors there, and one of them ended up publishing it.
Thanks Tina and Jennifer. I would like an agent so would go that route first. What do you think about when to divulge the entire history of the ms?
After you get the agent mention that an older draft had gone out to editors A, B, and C and that you've changed it significantly since.
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