Tuesday, September 18, 2018

2 R&Rs but no offer

I've been closet writing for a few years and finally felt ready to query. I received an R&R and after months of revisions sent it back. The agent was happy with the changes, but requested a second R&R with new notes and several back and forth discussions about them. The agent rejected my second round of revisions, stating we didn't "share the same vision" (What does that really mean? Is that a polite way to say "your revisions sucked?").

I know this road is full of rejection and there will be plenty more to come, but the blow seems a lot harder to take after 2x R&Rs. I've got some fulls out with other agents and each rejection seems to confirm that I've tripped on my hamster wheel and am doomed to keep tumbling until the wheel stops or I'm thrown off.

Did I screw up? Since I can't afford a blood thirsty outside editor and have exhausted my betas (old and new), do I let this one go and query something else? What if the problems I can't see in this manuscript just carry over to anything new (or is this TYFATKYFW and I should just shut up and learn to drink bourbon write?)

Any advice appreciated.

Regards,
On the Hamster Wheel of Death. 

What does share the same vision mean? It means different things to different agents. When I've used it it generally means that Ive tried to stuff a novelist into a category I want and things haven't gone well.

With non-fiction it can mean that the author and I disagree about what the story is.

In other words, it's a bullet dodged, because the last thing you want is an agent thinking your book is X when you think it's Y.

Now, it can also be softspeak for you didn't nail the revisions.  Some of the ways that can happen is when I say "you need to fix X and apply it to other places in the ms" and the author fixes X and nothing else.

Things like "pick up the pacing" doesn't mean speed up the action at the end; it can also mean get to the point more briskly.  Fix one, but not the other and after two revisions, the agent now understands you can't integrate instructions, and says "done."

Revising is an art form just like writing. It's harder cause it's thinking about the entire manuscript, and thinking about every word and every piece of punctuation all at the same time.  It's keeping pace and rhythm in mind, all while you're trying to twist the plot. It's knowing you have to lay in clues in chapter three that bloom into plot points in chapter twenty seven.

Writing is chess.
Revising is three dimensional chess.



I'm going to take a wild guess here and say you need to keep writing, but move on to a new project for the time being. Often you need to write your way to a publishable novel, and it takes a couple finished novels to get there. Almost every client I have will tell me about the novels safely tucked under the bed, never to see the light of day. Or, when you pour enough liquor into them, the novels that DID see the light of day in an agent's inbox, and were (rightfully) quickly shown the door.

I think you'd also benefit from a regular critique group rather than just beta readers.  You can find those both online and in person. Reading someone else's work (like reading published novels) is one very good way to learn what doesn't (or does!) work. And  having to talk about it in a cogent, helpful way is going to be very useful to you as well as the other writer. 

10 comments:

Carolyn Haley said...

"Writing is chess.
Revising is three dimensional chess."

Great way of putting it! May I quote you to my colleagues and clients?

DeadSpiderEye said...

'Can you make this character gay?'.
'No'.
'Why not?'.
'He's already gay'.
'We don't share the same vision'.

Julie Weathers said...

"Writing is chess.
Revising is three dimensional chess."

Nailed it.

I couldn't keep my hands off Rain Crow so I've been sifting through to find the naughty words. No, not those kind, the "justs" and "verys" that abound. This is mindless stuff that you don't really have to think about and I need the blank time before the real revisions start.

I've been there with the rejected R&R manuscripts and it's tough.

One thing I would strongly advise is not changing it to something that isn't yours to please an agent. I had a friend who went back and forth with one for years and he finally told her on the last pass he no longer handled xyz. She went back to her vision for the book, after a lot of tears, and found an agent who loves her, her vision, and her books.

Rain Crow is going to be a tough sell if it ever does, but I am standing my ground on some things. It's not worth whoring it out.

Good luck. You had one agent who was interested. There are probably others out there.

Craig F said...

Getting to an R&R is a major milestone in a writing career. It is also one major point in deciding where your writing will go. It is not securing an agent that loves you and your work.

It is an offer of compromise, sometimes. Your work is close to what that agent wants. It does not mean it is time to quit querying. The world will still be unsettled while you write your R&R.

Make sure that you keep a pristine copy of your work. If one agent felt a slight quickening of their heart rate from it, another might get full palpitations.

Do keep trying to come to a meeting of hearts and souls with this agent. It might be good for you, to a point. Personally I think my line in the sand is first person. If I get an R&R and an agent says "I wonder how it would work in first person?" I'm out.

Craig F said...

Oh, I also think that the revisions as three dimensional chess is brilliant. It is also the butterfly effect. Change one thing and it reverberates through all the rest of the chapters. It can chuck a wrench into more than just timing and pacing.

E.M. Goldsmith said...

Three dimensional chess indeed. I have written two additional novels since my ventures into an R&R quandary. With that book, almost four years back now, one agent ended up changing their career focus amid my R&R and so my book stopped being in their wheelhouse.

A second agent for whom I have tremendous respect tried to have it changed into something I did not wish to write. I'd been swimming in the reef long enough at that point to know that would not result in a good long-term business relationship. I put that book away, wrote another two.

One was fun but bad and wrong and so dirty. I tucked that into a trunk. I should probably burn it but I have this sick feeling if it published it would sell a bazillion copies which would obliterate my faith in mankind for all time.

The next book, full of pirates and dragons, sucked so bad I still shudder but it had bits I want to keep for the future so I marked what could work some day, maybe and shelved it. Drank a lot and wrote another book.

I finished it pretty quick - seven months, sent it to beta readers and all. At this point, friends and relatives who know I spend unholy amounts of my time writing are wondering what the Hell am I doing. Early versions of my WIP were so weak, stupid even- great concept - no tension. So I revised and revised. First group of beta readers said...well, nothing. One did damn me to Hell so that was something. I guess.

More revisions. Two years is going by so fast. Another group of beta readers. One honest reader told me "well, this is well-written but I don't care. Can't connect with anything or anyone happening here."

That was hard to take six months back. And they were dead on. I was so caught up in getting the story on the page and all those fancy plot twists, I forgot to give the reader characters they could sink their teeth into. I usually do the opposite - great character in search of a story. I am not sure if this story in search of characters is improvement.

So I scrapped it and went back to the drawing board. Same general story, more focused, tighter POV, and finished it.. again..only to find my amazing, perfect ending invalidated the first seven chapters of the book. Damn, this is really hard.

Keep writing, OP. You will get there. Get Jeff Somers to send you one of his cats or break into his liquor cabinet. It helps.

Liz Penney said...

Repeat after me: writing is subjective. But--maybe you are missing the mark somewhere. Been there. Put it aside for a while and start a new project. Go back with fresh eyes and new learning. Also it might just take the right agent. Mine had revisions I couldn't see until she said 'em. But I was more seasoned and ready to implement.
Disappointing yes, but don't quit. Agents don't give out that many R&Rs so your writing has promise.

Brenda said...

OP, I too am at the R&R stage. Thankyou for the reminder that R&R means I’m getting closer but it doesn’t mean a thing about representation. I try to remind myself regularly but, being human, I get caught up in the excitement of, “They almost like me!”
One thing that helps me through this is to focus on the work. Every single suggested revision has made the book stronger, in spite of the fact that I was convinced it couldn’t get any better after every finished round of revisions. At one point I was spinning my wheels so I took Janet’s advice and got professional eyes on the ms (charity auction). Ka-ching, an agent handed me an R&R suggestion that I believe will be the key to the whole over-edited mess. The auction for a three chapter critique was considerably cheaper than a full-on professional edit. If you can swing it, and aren’t the type to get auction fever, you might want to give it a whirl.
Another thing that helps me is to remind myself that I’m playing a long game here, that I’m aiming for a career. If this ms proves to be nothing more than a very time consuming writing class, so be it.
Not to get maudlin here, but we are both breathing the rarified air of J’s blog. (Drinking the rarified liquid on the reef? Swimming dangerously close to the rarified teeth of a Great Write?) Perhaps more intense beta reads can be found on this forum. I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.
Note: In saying ka-ching I don’t mean to imply that I expect this business to be lucrative. I have a decent imagination but I’m not delusional.

Lennon Faris said...

Three dimensional chess! I love that.

Hang in there, OP. That's rough but that must mean you write well.

BrendaLynn "Great Write" cracked me up.

MA Hudson said...

You’re so close, OP. Don’t give up. Keep querying until you’ve run out of people to query. And work on your next book at the same time. It takes the sting out of rejection when you know you’ve got something even better in the pipeline.