You're Finished. Now What?

Okay, so you've finished your novel.  Now what do you do?  Well, a guest post by Kater Cheek over at Ask Daphne (KT Literary Agency's blog) has some really great suggestions on what happens after you get to THE END.  Considering that the post is mostly about editing, and that's what my brain's been focused on for the past few months, I thought the whole thing was particularly educational.

For instance, one suggestion I thought was pretty awesome was the idea that you change your whole manuscript's font.  She suggests Comic Sans, but any different font would work.  The idea is that it jerks your brain out of its groove and forces you to see the words you wrote in a different light.  Hey, any trick that helps find errors is okay in my book.  In fact, I'm going to try this on my next go-round with DLN.

Additionally, she suggests something I already do - PRINT IT OUT.  The only problem being that the process can get expensive - especially if you're printing after every draft.  Still, sometimes you have to spend money to get it right.  Having said that, I'm probably going to take Bloodflow and print the damn thing out so I can see where I went wrong.  I've been working on this manuscript off and on since May of 2008, and I really like the writing, but the plot has flaws.  Maybe this time around I can fix them.

She also gives some hints on synopses - which I'll be doing for DLN shortly - and query letters.  All in all a pretty informative post.

Your turn:  Do you have any suggestions / tips / tricks to help with editing, synopses or query letters?

Playing in my Head: Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol