Young Writers Society

I've been working on my third novel (Captive) on-and-off for three years. We're talking three drafts, lots of rounds of revisions, multiple people reading and giving feedback at various stages. I want to traditionally publish.

I worked with a reputable freelance editor on my query letter (because I am the WORST at query letters). She was fantastic and gave amazing feedback and help. I polished up my third draft, sent the required materials to ten agents, and heard nothing. I tried my hand at a couple of writing contests (winners get to work with freelance editors for free and gain exposure to literary agents). Nothing.

I feel like my novel is close. I've gotten a lot of great comments from the people that have read it (along with some constructive feedback). But now I'm starting to feel like it's not quite good enough to get attention. So I'm not quite sure how to proceed.

It's possible that the ten agents I queried simply weren't right for the project and there was nothing wrong with the writing/story/query - it was simply bad luck and ten others would feel differently. But, I don't want to waste my chance with agents if my story isn't ready.

I have some ideas for how to tweak some things in the current draft, but I'm not sure if they're the right things to tweak or if it's even worth tweaking. I'm not sure if the problems I see are me being overly nit-picky because I'm close to the work, actual problems, or if there are other problems with it.

So now I'm considering whether or not it's a good idea to hire a freelance editor to read my novel and tell me what's wrong with it. The way I see it, the pros are: getting feedback from someone with a lot of experience with editing novels and making them the best they can be, lots of English education, etc. The cons are: expensive, and no guarantee it'll land me a book deal.

I don't know what to do with my novel anymore, and although I've had some success with betas/critique partners/English major friends in the past, part of me wants feedback from someone that really truly knows what it takes to be published. But I don't know if hiring a freelancer would really be worth it.

I apologize because that probably sounds really ramble-y and wishy-washy, but I'm at such a loss. I want my baby traditionally published. I thought it was in great shape and now I'm not sure. Any experience with freelancers is greatly appreciated as is any advice about where to go from here!

Hey there! Firstly, I'm kinda very happy to see another person on here who's really serious about getting their works published in a traditional way Personally, I can't wait to finally reach the actual querying stage and start talking to agents and---I digress.

As someone who's interested both in writing and in agenting side of the whole thing (I'm really hoping to get a literary internship at some point), I would actually vote against hiring a freelance editor at this point. True, they might know what they're talking about, but they, as well as, in the end, agents, are just people, and they have opinions and preferences and whatnot. And unless you're primarily looking to get feedback on your grammar and whatnot along with your plot and characters, I think you can get just as constructive criticism for free as well.

The first thing I'd look at, honestly, is your QL. You said you worked on it with the editor, but have you also let other people read it? Have you checked some invaluable resources for writing QLs, such as QueryShark's blog? I'd say it's very important to get more than one opinion on it, preferably from people from different branches (Shark is an agent, helping out with queries in her free time, and several other agents do that periodically as well, for free, as well as some editors, authors and even publishers), because it's very often the query letter that's the problem.

In any case, why not share both or one of those here? As you probably know, YWS has a copyright policy that assures everything you post remains yours and does not count as published, so you're safe to post your novel and get some more opinions -- and you're just as welcome to post your query letter. Just remember to keep out all the personal information and stuff you don't want us to know from it.

(If you don't feel comfortable sharing those publicly -- which I can somewhat relate to, but I'm a known paranoid when it comes to the most important works of mine, lol -- you're also free to PM me. I absolutely love critiquing query letters and sharing others' publishing hopes, so my inbox is always open. I might also have some resources to share, in case you need them.)