Link of the day

[pbray]

agentobscura is having a fascinating discussion asking folks to suggest how they would respond to various queries. Look for the subject lines "choose your own adventure".

Comments

[janni.livejournal.com]

I'm finding it fascinating how many people there assume "one final pass" means the author is just fussing too much and giving the book extra polish.

My final passes are a lot deeper than that! All my passes are.

[pbray.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I do so much prewriting in my head that I don't do as many deep revision passes as other authors do, and I suspect that's why we have different concepts of passes.

I know authors who say "One final pass" when they mean "I'm too nervous to send this out so I want to read it one more time before I convince myself that it's ready to leave the house." That's usually where I am, when my final pass is the last read through, trying to catch all the stupid stuff before I send it out to my agent or editor.

I also know people who have been in the situation described by agentobscura where they don't have a finished manuscript because they were counting on a several month lag in response time. In one case a friend of mine said "I needed to polish the manuscript" when what she meant was "I need to write the last third of the novel." :-)