After spending so much time myself with the manuscript, first writing the rough draft, then going over and over it, I knew I had to get some outside help. But what was I to do? I call myself a “closet writer”. Not that I write in the closet, mind you, but that I keep my writing a secret. I was brave enough to share my work with my husband. And his positive feedback was enough to encourage
me to share it with one of my closest friends. She gave me more good feedback and some much needed editing help. But it needed something….more. So, my husband and I decided to put some money and faith into my work and hired another friend, who is a copyeditor, to review my manuscript. We knew that she could help prepare it and make it the strongest it could be so that we could ready it for querying.
I was so nervous the whole time she had it! Nervous about what she thought…nervous about how much editing it might need. In the end, she really liked it and the grammatical and content editing wasn’t anything major.
So, we did the next scary thing…we put it out there for agents and publishers. And if I thought I was nervous during copyediting, boy was I wrong! I was sooooo tense during those first days after we sent out my manuscript for query. In the end, it required patience. But, I did eventually get a bite.