Here’s a bit of advice for the agent-seeking writers who read my blog. Be sure to polish, spit shine, and then refine your manuscript again before you query.

Sounds obvious, right? I mean who wouldn’t do that?

Um, me.

Yes, little ole me. (This is another post where you can have a good laugh at my expense!)

When I queried my first novel, it was, to say the least, a mess. It was hardly done, barely edited and needed massive revisions. Amazingly, I still found an agent though it took about 100 days, 75 queries, 50-plus rejections and about three major overhauls during the query process itself. The final draft was good, if I do say so myself. But the version that got me my first agent was nowhere near the version I started querying.

Sometimes that happens and it’s nothing to be ashamed of. Sometimes you can be fortunate enough to get feedback from agents who reject you. I received some terrific feedback on pacing, character development and storytelling from classy agents like Michelle Andelman, Liza Dawson and Laura Langlie for my first novel. And their input was instrumental in the revisions I made that landed me my first agent.

But I don’t advise querying in such a slapdash fashion. In fact, my husband and I had a running joke at my house during that time three years ago. I would tell him when I received a new request for my manuscript and he’d ask “For version 2.0, 3.0 or 9.0?” I’m pretty sure I actually had nine different versions of the manuscript floating out there at some point.

Come back tomorrow and I’ll share more specifics on all the dumb, embarrassing and silly things I did while querying.