Mistakes Were Made

This year, I wanted to give my romcom one more fighting chance. I felt like it really deserved it, especially after finding out from an editor of a pub house that I needed to nix an angle from one of the two MC's. Was there a revenge angle in there? Maybeeeee... and maybe, just maybe, romance readers don't want that.

Here's the thing: sometimes as writers, when we're brainstorming, we think there needs to be way more to the story. During first drafts, I was in that mindset. After brainstorming with a friend about it, we did the villainous laugh and thought yes this is it!! Side note: it would've worked in a romantasy but alas this isn't that. It wasn't it.

Lesson learned. Did some rewrites, got it ready for querying as I not only removed a big angle in the book, but also added some smex-iness to it - another thing the editor suggested. So here I am, sending this book out and I got rejection-ville right out the gate. I whined to my friend and collectively we said holy hell the word count. The word count! It wasn't in the zone, but nicely (not really) highly above it. Again, side note: it would've worked in a romantasy but alas this isn't that.

So, I withdrew my submissions, did another round of edits and knocked off 6k words, and currently am back in the trenches and it's been deathly quiet for a few days which is better than when I was instantly getting a few rejections a day. My friend and I collectively sighed: the word count, yeah...

With all that said, let me tell you a few things, agents don't really give your stuff a chance if the word count is off. They're like clearly you don't know your stuff...bye-bye. Oopsy. Also, don't waterboard your book with so much stuff it's not as clean and concise. I definitely didn't listen to my own intuition about keeping the story simple and thought I had to make it have more twists. But I didn't. I really didn't. Just tell the story... Really.

That is all... And now I fade out for another year. :)