11
Nov
Agent Notes
0
I HAZ NOTES!
I got my first notes from my agent yesterday.
They are wonderful and challenging.
I loved the way he phrased thing as a list of questions. A few overall notes, things to bring out throughout the text, but lots of specific thought-provoking questions about what Molly is thinking here or why she trusts this person when it maybe seems like she shouldn’t or whether she might show more alarm in this situation. He doesn’t want me to cut or rearrange, just enhance what’s there. Clarify character arcs. Give more information about Quinn, Lexi, Julien, and Claire. Let the reader really be there in the moment, inside Molly’s head.
I am so excited to tackle this! I let it all marinate today while Hermy (my netbook) was being fixed. But tomorrow–oh, tomorrow I am going to dive back in. And I’m taking Hermy with me on the Bolt Bus to NY this weekend–hooray for 8 hours of round-trip potential revising! I think it’ll be really fun. I cut a lot of Molly’s observations and thoughts in my last draft because I was worried it hindered the pacing, but it seems I overdid it. I can’t wait to go back through the manuscript and make these characters more vivid and unique. Add shading and specificity.
I am so, so grateful for this guidance. This chance to make it better before it goes out into the world on submissions.
My goal is to have the revisions finished by the end of Thanksgiving break, which I think is completely doable. It smashes my JoNo goal to write 45K on the sequel (I’m only at 17K) but when I set that goal, I didn’t anticipate having an agent by now. So it’s a happy sort of goal-smashing, and there’s always December for that.
