Sunday, January 3, 2016

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to all the writers out there!
 
If last year is any indication of a popular resolution for writers to make, then there will be a pile of manuscripts in our email coming soon.
 
Congratulations to you for finishing your manuscript. This is an exciting time to move it out your door and into ours.
 
We thoroughly vet every ms that meets the submission criteria found here:
http://www.cactusrainpublishing.com/submissions.html

Spend time working out the perfect industry standard query letter. There is no prize to be first to submit. The prize (publication) is in submitting your best work. You get one shot at making a good first impression. Take your time and show us your best work.
 
The advice I give you, whether you submit your manuscript to Cactus Rain Publishing, another publisher or a literary agent, is to print your ms on paper and read it aloud before you submit it to anyone. If the voice in your head tells you that you don’t need to follow that suggestion exactly, then you probably aren’t ready to send your ms to us.
 
Printing it on paper will show you how it will look to us. You should be willing to fund the cost of a ream of paper when you expect someone else to spend hundreds of times that cost to publishing your manuscript. If it isn’t worth your investment, them it might not be worth ours.
 
Reading it out loud will help you catch content mistakes where the person walked out of the room, then four paragraphs later, walked out of the room. Right, there is no mention of returning to the room after the first exit. Another thing that reading it aloud will help you catch are the miles long paragraphs. Creative use of a semicolon doesn’t really impress us. Read about pacing and see how your work improves by shortening some of those sentences and paragraphs!
 
That last sentence reminds me to warn against excessive use of the exclamation point. If everything that the character says is followed by an exclamation point, they need to get put on medication and dial it down a bit.
 
Whether your manuscript is finished or is still a work in progress, when you submit it, make sure you are submitting your best work.