Put the Damn Thing Away Already!

I have to say that to myself sometimes. PUT THE DAMN THING AWAY ALREADY!

I used to hate the advice about shelving your WIP and getting back to it weeks or months later because I thought, I'M READY NOW! I wrote it. I edited it. I packaged it up with a really great query and even have a pretty darn good synopsis to go with it. Why shelve it when I'm pumped enough to query NOW?

I hate to admit when I'm wrong and all the advice is right. So I'm not going to say that. I'm just going to let you know it's there in the back of my mind and I'm fully prepared to allude to it. (Hey, stubborn people can get far in life just like everyone else.)

NaNo had this really great way of forcing me to shelve that WIP I really thought was ready to go as well as a tiny bit of feedback I received on  a partial I sent out last June.

Now, my advice to everyone else is since you've written your book and edited it, maybe put a query together and a rockin' synopsis, SHELVE IT!

You have at least twenty other story ideas to write, get to it. That's what I did. I wrote two other books while I was letting my first book marinate.

Now I'm back to the first book and ready to query the second book which marinated while I wrote the third book. See how the cycle goes?

Maybe, if I'm lucky, within the year I could have three books ready to query. Who knows?

IS THERE ANY REASON YOU DON'T THINK YOU NEED TO SHELVE THAT MANUSCRIPT FOR A COUPLE OF MONTHS BEFORE YOU QUERY? HAVE YOU SHELVED ANYTHING AND THEN GOTTEN BACK TO IT?

(P.S. Hello and welcome new followers and Crusaders! I'm about to go around and return the follow and start getting to know all of you a bit better. I'm not a daily blogger. At most I get out and around the blogs twice per week. I usually only blog once per week as well. If you have an Email Subscription box on your blog then know that I'll be following via email. I tend to focus my short window of spare time on my WIP's. If you don't have an Email Subscription box and want to know how to put one up, email me and I'll let you know.)