When the publisher told me my manuscript was on the way back to me, I hoped that I wouldn’t have to 
make many changes. Luckily, I didn’t. But what I do have to work at is wrapping up some stuff I thought I was complete.
I hinted at some of the stuff in conversation, thinking those ends were nicely wrapped up; however my publisher thinks otherwise. The hanging threads need to be sewn up tight, leaving no doubt as to the outcome of two critical situations in the novel.
The facilitator at the workshop I used to attend always warned the group never to write down to the reader. Always assume the reader is more intelligent than you are, he used to say. I’m wondering if I took a good saying too far. Nonetheless, I’ve learned some good things from this experience.
1. Don’t gloss over solutions: Better to write in what I consider tiny details that could turn out to be important in terms of leaving the reader satisfied.
2. Don’t be sloppy: In the story, one of my characters is abducted. The men who did it got nabbed, but I never mentioned how the accusation was laid against the kidnappers and how the police tied that crime to the heroine’s uncle, except to say that he knew his cohorts would finger him to save themselves. That’s one of the things I have to fix.
3. Never stop learning: Like a lot of other writers, I’m learning on the job. When I went through
the manuscript , I noted that the editor added a lot of comma’s I missed the first time around.
In the interim, I’d done some more editing and put most of the commas in, so that wasn’t a
hardship. The point is that I’ve improved in my craft, so much so that I got most of the commas
in the right places. I’m a firm believer in learning something new every day, and I figure as long
as I’m writing, I have tons more that I need to know.
4. Beware improper document formatting: Somehow, I ended up with a nightmarish situation, wherein I had double spaces in my double spaced manuscript. The extra spaces refused to go away, no matter what I did.
My writing pals gave wonderful advice, which should have worked, but all to no avail. I started the document in Word 2003 and eventually transferred it over to Word 2007, so I’m not sure at what point my file might have got corrupted. After half the day spent deleting spaces one paragraph at a time, I’m not willing to take on that kind of horror again. I plan to be very, very careful with formatting my manuscripts.
5. A manuscript is never, ever complete: no matter that at some point, usually after the 50th or so read, the body of work in question feels as if nothing can possibly be out of place. The editor put in some simple questions, which made me realize that I hadn’t shown how the character felt about a particular situation, or a significant bit of news.
Needless to say, I’ll still feel there’s stuff to edit an I will want to edit the book when I have it in my hand.
6. Spare some of your ‘had’s and ‘wases’: Unpublished writers tend to be hard on each other for the dreaded ‘was’ and the loose use of ‘had’, but hey, like other writers about to be published, I’ve come to realize that sometimes there’s no getting around them. I’ve gone to the point where I avoided the use of these two words at the peril of having my sentences sound unnatural. I’m not advocating going overboard, but if my story is compelling enough and I limit myself, then there’s nothing wrong with making use of ‘had’ and ‘was’.
7. Relax and enjoy the ride: I’m now ready to admit, I’ll never cross every ‘t’ and dot every ‘i’, but I’ll come as close as I can to submitting the perfect best possible manuscript every time.
If I can remember this stuff for my next manuscript then I’ll be way ahead of this game. Hope this will help you as you navigate through your work-in-progress.
