If you’re waiting around and around and around for publishers to get back to you – that’s normal. The process is like one long assembly line of backlogging and querying – the author edits their manuscript prose and sends it to an agent, then the agent edits the manuscript prose and sends it to the editor, then the editor edits the manuscript prose and sends it to the marketing team.

It’s a linear train of backlogged queries and editing and pitching that takes time, but once it gets there, it’s well worth it – whether the feedback is good or bad.

Clearly, with good feedback, you’re ready to sell your book, but without good feedback? Typically an editor will reply with notes on what felt out of place or disjointed with a book, either with structure or dialogue issues or generic character cliches or whatever the issue may be.

In my eyes, the situation is always a win-win for the writers, but sometimes, in the midst of those moments when you’ve submitted a manuscript to an agent or even when the agent has submitted the manuscript to the editor, that doubt starts to creep in. 

We question if the story is good enough. We question if we should have even gone ahead and written a book in the first place, we question if all of the time and devotion and editing and reediting is really worth it.

This past week I had a client who grew increasingly antsy and impatient with a publisher who seemed reluctant on a book deal, pointing out that there may have been some structural flaws with the story that ultimately impeded their decision for a traditional deal. These kinds of rejections along with this kind of feedback is quite common, and typically there is some back and forth between author-and-agent and agent-and-editor. 

My client, however, felt his book was already over-edited. Twelve times, he had it revised and paid for professional editors before it fell into my hands, and I also polished it up to make sure we’d hear positive responses from the publisher. And honestly, we heard mostly complimentary things, a product that was close but not there yet.

I felt his questioning of how much more would his book need to be editing, and perhaps questioning the entire process from that exchange alone. I felt for him, but I also feel strongly that an author’s work is never really done. Like my ‘Monday quote of the week’, when working an art, everything really is a draft. Progress is everything in art. It’s the lifeblood of our work. Even with my published book, I never felt it was truly done, and that it can always be better, and I direct that energy into writing the next one.

I feel it is this competitive nature and the desire to be better that forms truly great writers, a competitive nature shared by the likes of Hemingway, Twain, or Poe, who each were highly critical of the writers of their time, who inevitably made themselves and the writers they criticized better by their passion and devotion.

But how good is good enough? Must a book really be drafted and edited twelve times before it’s ready for publishing?

Honestly, I’ve written and rewritten stories countless times, and it never once bothered me or made me stop to think. 

The question was never: am I a good writer?

The question was always: how can I be a better writer?

Sometimes, it is the convention of the thought more than the thought itself that is important to realize. As writers, or editors, or agents, we cannot let doubt impede upon the progress of books. It is an occupation and lifestyle filled with revision and editing upon more editing, and that’s a good thing. It is as iron sharpens iron … you all know the proverb. 

Negative feedback or criticisms of writing are essential. As much as we hate them, critics are a part of the writing process. Their criticism is not to deter us, but rather to remind us that we are not perfect. 

I think a lot of writers, including myself, have fallen into the trap of thinking “we’re the shit”, that “no one’s ever thought of these ideas or written as well as me”. There’s arrogance in more writer’s rooms than you think. Narcissism, not criticism, is the real deterrent of good writing. 

So when you’re out there querying agents or your agent is out there querying publishers, remember to practice patience, let the process do its thing, and one way or another, either through acceptance or rejection, it can reward you.