Back to the Query-Go-Round

You're probably wondering why we've been veering off the writing path, skidding through some embarrassing childhood stories, and finally careeing into some crazy story about a Notabat. Well, there's a good explanation for this, and it's not because we lost our minds. Well, we did, but that wasn't the only reason.
For the past 9 months, we've been overhauling our manuscript.

Read for Relief

A week after our initial high of getting 3 requests nearly nine months ago, we came across another inevitable crash.
After participating in "Read for Relief", we won a first 50 pages manuscript critique from the Suzie Townsend's fabulous assistant, Sarah Goldberg.
Excited and nervous, we sent her our story. After finally getting some good query results, we were pretty much on an emotional high.

Some Tough Love from Sarah Goldberg

The high didn't last. Here's a breakdown of Sarah's comments:
What she liked:

• "The world...I was wowed by your imagination"
• "The mystery: ...I was left wanting to know why...What a cliffhanger!"

What she didn't like (this goes on for 6 pgs so I won't include it all):

• "You've created a strange, fantastical world...but after fifty pages I don't have a good enough sense of the characters or where their story is going to make me want to keep reading."
• "the voice often feels inconsistent, both in age and in tone"
• "I'd hold off on querying until you've done at at least another round of major edits."

So there you have it. This is the reason for our long hiatus from writing-related posts. After picking ourselves off the floor, hosing off the stench of failure, it was full steam ahead with major revisions.

Or at least, I sure hope that's failure...

Manuscript 2.0 is FINALLY done!

And when we say major revisions, we mean major. As in, we tore up 2/3s of the original pages and rewrote them from scratch. We rejigged huge portions of the plot. We even even had to usher off tertiary characters into an isolated cabin in the woods and sent them to the big shredder in the sky.
Even though it was hard to hear, Sarah's feedback was crucial for improving our story and making us better writers. So a big shout out to her for being so honest and amazingly helpful.
We're on our last round of edit sweeps, so in two weeks we should be riding the Query-Go-Round again.

It's like a regular merry-go-round, but with 100% more horror.

So how about you? Where are you in your writing journey?