The Quest for Perfection

As I slog through my manuscript accepting all the editorial changes my agent requested, trying to figure out how to reword passages, clarify particular points, etc., I'll admit, I'm experiencing a certain level of frustration.

Don't get me wrong. I am in full agreement with the changes my agent wants. They tighten up the writing, fix littly niggly problems and so forth. What is frustrating is despite all the effort I put into trying to get it right, it still wasn't. After I got it back from her assistant,  I went over the manuscript myself so many times I could have recited the thing by heart. I even read it aloud. I went through my agent's list of "Look for and fix these things..." and went through the manuscript several more times. Then, I joined a critique group. Individual chapters were critiqued by several people in the group. The entire manuscript was critiqued by two different people, including a university English professor. Despite all that, I still didn't get it right.

Obviously, my agent outranks all others at this point. If she wants a comma put here instead of there, so be it. If she doesn't like the way a sentence is worded, it gets changed. Yet, it's frustrating when she continues to tell her clients we need to make sure our manuscripts are as clean as possible. I doubt any of us is purposefully sending in bad manuscripts. I think we all hope that ours is up to par. I know it makes her job harder, but until I got mine back from her, I didn't really know exactly what she expected. I thought I had gotten rid of the passive verbs, the extraneous "said" tags, excess exclamation points, etc. I learned very quickly that my idea of what was acceptable differed greatly from my agent's. It was an eye opener.

I've learned so much during the process of trying to get my book published. Every step educates me further. Sure, it can be frustrating. I'll look at current bestsellers and  quickly identify a variety of things  they can get away with that I've been told are no-no's (i.e. prologues, lots of said tags...). I try and listen to my agent because she is undoubtedly more up on what is currently preferred by publishers. Why have an agent if you aren't going to listen to her?

So, I will continue in my quest for perfection. It won't be easy, but now I have a much better feel for what she's looking for. That can only help me with any future manuscripts I might ask her to represent. In the meantime, I think I'll go read up on commas!