Premature . . .

By virtue of this blog or that six degrees of separation thing, where a friend of a friend of my third cousin writes to me, I get emails asking me something about publishing all the time. And I guarantee you that over the last five years, I have been asked the following twenty times, in one form of another:

Dear Erica . . . question for you. I worked on my novel for a year and a half and finally started querying agents. I got three requests for partials and sent them. Now two have asked for the full. The only problem is since I queried four months ago, I actually started showing my manuscript to some writer-friends and realize the pacing is off and I've totally changed the first three chapters, and actually now that I think about it, it affects the synopsis. What should I do?

Um . . . avoid premature ejacu-- . . . . oh, never mind.

I wonder about when enough is enough. When you've tweaked and rewritten and poked at and prodded and kneaded a book into submission. When you've gotten it into submission, THEN it's time to submit. But I have to question the whole dynamic at work with prematurely querying and sending out your book.

And for me, some of it boils down to this. What are you open and willing to HEAR? Because if you are asking for esteemed opinions AFTER you have submitted . . . why bother? Shouldn't at that point it be too late to fix (in practicality versus a philosophical sense of it's never too late)? Did you just want to hear that you were great? Or did you really want to lay bare your novel and take it to the next level? And if it's the latter, the point when that occurs should be much earlier in the process.

Are you afraid to hear that after a year or more, you still need to do a lot more work? Then I suggest you read this. And while you're at it, pre-order his book because it's great. And I know this because I read it and blurbed it.

And then, since the topic was raging over at Konrath's . . . and since a certain someone wrote me an email on the subject . . . I often then think this speaks to self-pubbing. To the "it's good enough" . . . the "might as well publish it." I have to wonder whether things then get pubbed that really needed to peculate for longer.

And I sometimes, still further, think this comes down to fear. Fear of what you might hear. And for the quintillionth (is there such a number?) time, I am grateful for my writers' group, which makes sure the writing foreplay goes on a little longer, and with whom I have great trust, not fear, of what I might hear.

Thoughts?