What is my vibe these days? Frazzled sentence slicer. Prose tightener. Voice recognizer. (Professional overthinker, depending on who you ask.)
Why am I doing this? Because I’m querying agents and my pages need to be perfect.
Perfectionism is My Vibe
The word perfect tweaks my husband. He thinks I’m chasing some impossible standard. That nothing is ever good enough for me. Something can always be tweaked. One more change can be made. And maybe…he’s a little bit right. But when it comes to querying agents? It’s more.
Every time you submit a piece of work to a literary agent, you’re basically applying for your dream job. It’s your resume and job interview all rolled into one.
You wouldn’t hand a potential employer a typo-riddled resume. Or show up to an interview late or in dirty clothes. Not if it really mattered.
So why would I waste my time or an agent’s, by sending less than my best?
Agony is My Vibe
That’s why I’ve been spending long hours staring at the computer screen (two of them actually!), agonizing over every word. Eliminating passive verbs (“was” is my new arch-nemesis). Cutting down on repetitive body part references (there’s only so many times a person can furrow their brow or clench their fists before it gets weird). Hunting down stray “she” and “her” pronouns that clutter the flow. Tightening, tightening, tightening, until every sentence feels clean and alive.
Oh look, I just used ‘tightening’ three times!
Ugh!
Obsessing is My Vibe
So is this polishing or something more?
IDK. Maybe a little of both?
But I also believe that this stage, the meticulous, hair-splitting stage, matters.
When you query an agent, you’re asking them to bet their career and reputation on your work. You want them to see, right away, that you take your craft seriously. That you respect their time. And you care.
Being a little obsessive is a good thing when words truly matter. When each sentence you string together is the difference between landing that dream job or working the fry station at the local burger den. (Which, honestly, might not be the worst outcome. At least I’d have employer-sponsored healthcare.😜)
Invisible is My Vibe
This is the kind of work that is invisible to the reader.
As a reader, you might read a sentence and think, Huh. I wouldn’t have said it that way.
Well, maybe I didn’t either. Not at first.
But when you have 99k words to stare at and stress over, things get said differently.
This is the part of writing that, unless you are deep in the craft, you have no idea how hard it really is. Telling the story is only a fraction of the process.
Kind of like making dinner.
You can throw a frozen pizza in the oven at 425 degrees for 20 minutes, and—presto—dinner’s served. Or…you can make the dough, boil the tomatoes, shred the cheese, chop the vegetables, slice the meats.
Is it dinner time yet?
Both get the job done.
But one tastes way better and might even be talked about for years to come.
While the other?
Meh. What did we have for dinner last night?
So yes, I might be spending an absurd amount of time tweaking sentences no one else would notice. And even though it’s exhausting, there’s also a quiet kind of pride that comes with it.
Because done correctly, maybe, just maybe, readers will still be talking about this story years from now.
Thanks for being here with me. Maybe check in on me before the end of next month.
~ KTG
© K.T. George 2025 | This post was first seen on ktgeorge.com | Photo by Photo by Marcus Ganahl on Unsplash