A New Day Dawns And It's Another Up...So Far

After posting last night, I helped a family friend prepare a job application and the accompanying resume. At a guess, I think they are the 5th or 6th person I've helped in this way in the last six months - maybe I should start a business.

Anyway, doing the application left me no time to do my own writing or reworking of the assignment I have to resubmit. I should have taken it to work today as it was another fairly quiet one. I've got plenty to do, but nothing pressing.

So I critiqued another 4 chapters of a friends manuscript. When I got home, a single piece of mail was waiting for me - a returned assignment.

I opened it with trepidation. It was my "Writing Dialogue" assignment from module 1 - and I got an A.

See what I mean about ups & downs. I've received three assignments back this week: A-, resubmission required, A.

Can't get any further apart really, can you?

Tonight is cricket training so I won't be able to get on till late and then I have to finish off the application for the family friend. If it's again quiet at work tomorrow, I'll do some more critiquing before sending the manuscript home to finish off over the weekend.

To break things up, I'll work on the resubmission assignment as well.

Still no replies from any of my story submissions. Hopefully no news is good news.

One last piece of information everyone should read. Over at BookEnds, Jessica has given us an insight into what she asks her interns when they read a manuscript submission. It makes interesting reading. It would also be an excellent checklist for an author to run through during the outline and revision parts of writing a book. Go read it here...

I'll wait...................

I say it should be a checklist during outlining as well as during revision, because why would anyone want to invest huge amounts of time in writing a book if it doesn't have at least some of the characteristics listed there? True, books come that buck the trend and spawn a whole new way of doing things: Carrie, The DaVinci Code, Harry Potter - just to name a few, but look close--even they check off most of the things on that list. If your manuscript doesn't, and you think that's because yours is something completely different which will blow the socks off of an agent, then submit it a couple of times. If it gets rejected, it maybe worthwhile revisiting this checklist.

Good luck with your submissions

BT