Meeting publishing pros at writers conferences is something that can’t be duplicated no matter how many agent blogs and tweets you follow, so imagine my excitement when agent Colleen Lindsay posted a contest on her blog, The Swivet, for a scholarship to the Backspace Agent-Author Seminar in NYC! It’s a chance to have your query letter and first two pages of your manuscript read and critiqued by agents and editors! Sign me up! Right now!

Right?

Maybe not so fast. All excitement put aside, I know my manuscript just isn’t ready yet. I’m still in the revision stages, and you know rule number one about querying: Don’t do it too early. This also happens to be one of the rules in the contest (only finished novels!), which confirms my suspicions that these contests are plagued with premature works constantly.

Putting your work in front of an agent before it’s as close to perfect as it’ll ever be is kind of like an actor stepping onto the red carpet without their best outfit on. You can’t risk making a bad impression, unless you want to be the literary equivalent of Bjork’s swan dress:

Source: Marie Claire's The Oscars Best and Worst Dressed List

Source: Marie Claire's The Oscars Best and Worst Dressed List

That was 2001, by the way, and we STILL haven’t forgotten it, because poor choices in how you present yourself and your work leave an impression ten times more easily than good ones will. Most literary agents agree that if they’ve turned a work down once they won’t reconsider re-reading even if you’ve revised. Even if you’ve taken off that swan dress and slipped into Jennifer Lopez’s green Versace.

Of course, if you’ve got your query letter and manuscript ready to go then by all means you should enter the contest, and any other contests that pop up occasionally on the publishing blogs that I’m always tempted to enter before I slap myself on the wrist and say: “One day, oh impatient one, one day.”

If not, be a sponge in the meantime. Learn everything you can about the writing and querying process so that once you start it, you don’t shoot yourself in the foot. There will be plenty of other contests in the future, and the best time to enter isn’t now, but when your work is at its best.