“So if you want to know if your edits are improving your book, consider all these points. It doesn't matter how many times you check for typos if you don't have an active plot or your main character doesn't have an arc. The book should feel TIGHTER with each edit.

Here's some tough love: It's very rare that your 1st book is the one that will get an agent or a sale. For most pro writers I know (NOT ALL; DON'T @ ME), our 1st book is great practice that is ultimately trunked. Start writing book 2 while you query. Forward momentum!

How do you know when it's time to trunk your 1st book? * When you honestly can't think of a single way to improve it further * When you've got 60+ rejections and are out of agents to query * When you're sick of it and have a new story idea WRITE THE NEXT BOOK and query again.

The painful truth is that if your goal is to be traditionally published, you can't cling to 1 book forever. You can't write 7 books in the series and expect someone to buy them. You've got to write 1 great book, query it, repeat-- until you get an agent/sale. Period.

And as I say with every one of these writing advice threads: This is all based on my experience in the world of traditional publishing. YMMV. You may disagree. Every journey is different. There are outliers. You do you. May the odds be ever in your favor.”

Explore more quotes:


About the author

This page was created by our editorial team. Each page is manually curated, researched, collected, and issued by our staff writers. Quotes contained on this page have been double checked for their citations, their accuracy and the impact it will have on our readers.

Kelly Peacock is an accomplished poet and social media expert based in Brooklyn, New York. Kelly has a Bachelor's degree in creative writing from Farieligh Dickinson University and has contributed to many literary and cultural publications. Kelly assists on a wide variety of quote inputting and social media functions for Quote Catalog. Visit her personal website here.

Kendra Syrdal is a writer, editor, partner, and senior publisher for The Thought & Expression Company. Over the last few years she has been personally responsible for writing, editing, and producing over 30+ million pageviews on Thought Catalog.