manuscript

Coping with your Critique

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rockville_8Editors.

As the saying goes, you can’t live without ’em…and you can’t live without ’em.

A good editor can make all the difference between an amateur manuscript that goes nowhere and a highly polished gem that you can be proud of. But the process of working through the criticisms of an editor’s letter can often be a soul-smushing experience, one that often drains your energy to even work on the manuscript.

Fear not! There are ways to keep from taking your critique to heart. Check out this guest blog post I wrote for The Rockville Eight on strategies for coping with your editor’s letter, and maybe even getting more mileage out of it than you had previously.

Using the Kindle to Edit

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When the manuscript for my novel A Reason to Live was ready to move from critique groups to professional editing, I was lucky enough to land the wonderful Alison Dasho (nee Janssen), a former editor for Bleak House Books and Tyrus Books [visit her at http://www.alisonedits.com/].

She’s in Wisconsin, I’m in Virginia; obviously, this was going to be a digital relationship. But there are a million ways to exchange documents online. How best to get my 90,000 words to you? I asked. Just send the Word document, she said, I’ll put it on my Kindle.

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Don’t Let Your Manuscript Push You Around

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At a certain point when you’re writing, no matter what the subject matter or how excited you are about a plot–often when you’re ready to revise or rewrite–there’s a moment when you’ll feel like you’re being pushed around by the words on the page.

And that’s the wrong relationship to have with a manuscript.

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