2. Premature Submission

To a publisher. To an agent. To a competition. To a crit service.

It's all too easy to be tempted to prematurely submit your work for evaluation just to test its brilliance. I think I waited a day after typing 'The End' on my first MS before lobbing it out to God and everyone. In the weeks and months that followed I learned SO MUCH MORE about the craft and the industry and my work change significantly. When the competition feedback forms started rolling in I cringed at the glaring errors in them - stylistic, genre-related and grammatical.

Long time Aussie author, Anna Jacobs, talks about the art of letting it sit on her website where she says:

Most of the unpublished writers I meet are making the same fundamental mistake. They are submitting their manuscripts far too soon - and quite often too soon by a matter of years. In fact, they are still at the enthusiastic amateur stage.

By splashing your unready work all over the industry you risk publishers/agents connecting your name with an inferior product. Particularly if its spectacularly inferior. That will get remembered!

So the how-to-books aren't kidding when they recommend letting a MS sit for weeks and even months (Anna says at least a year!) while you work on something else. When you go back to it with fresh eyes, you'd be amazed what you find to fix. Then... after many more sits and many more amazements... you're ready to submit.