The agent rang me today. She likes the ideas, the writing, thinks it could have enormous potential - if I completely re-write it. And turn the whole thing into a full-on adult love affair... well, dearie!
When I started writing the novel I had alternative versions in which there was a love affair - or a murder - and so on. Should I go back to these, or do something new and strange? Or turn the encounter at the wedding into something else... make the children older, to get them a bit more out of the way...if I re-wrote then I might get to re-do Phillip and a lot of other things which I've been meaning to do.
Alternatively I could continue to put it about to other agents in the hope that someone else might take it. I felt that Agent wanted me to write the great feminist romantic novel - to answer the question what does love mean to a feminist? And that's a bloody difficult question, because perhaps I would have to side-step it and say - either that Lucy is overwhelmingly a romantic - or maybe that this love isn't any more than a sexual thing that got out of hand.
In one way I want to re-write, in another way, I feel unable to be sure that re-writing to one agent's preferences might be a problem. I told her a bit about Conscience she didn't seem keen - but said "those are the circumstances - what's the story?" I suppose I'm not used to thinking of things in that way - the story is the tension I suppose - the struggle - will he desert and divorce, will he "do the right thing" and stay with her, or will his own desire for a family life mean he has to leave the church... etc. The emotions make the story in that sense, it's just that I don't think in quite those terms, but it will clearly be an improvement to my work if I do!
I am still thinking about what to do.
This morning I dreamed I was going to S Africa for a fortnight in the October holiday - I was rather panicking about how it would work, but also thinking what a lot of people I could see. It felt so incredibly real, that I still feel as though we are going to do this. Perhaps we are.
When I started writing the novel I had alternative versions in which there was a love affair - or a murder - and so on. Should I go back to these, or do something new and strange? Or turn the encounter at the wedding into something else... make the children older, to get them a bit more out of the way...if I re-wrote then I might get to re-do Phillip and a lot of other things which I've been meaning to do.
Alternatively I could continue to put it about to other agents in the hope that someone else might take it. I felt that Agent wanted me to write the great feminist romantic novel - to answer the question what does love mean to a feminist? And that's a bloody difficult question, because perhaps I would have to side-step it and say - either that Lucy is overwhelmingly a romantic - or maybe that this love isn't any more than a sexual thing that got out of hand.
In one way I want to re-write, in another way, I feel unable to be sure that re-writing to one agent's preferences might be a problem. I told her a bit about Conscience she didn't seem keen - but said "those are the circumstances - what's the story?" I suppose I'm not used to thinking of things in that way - the story is the tension I suppose - the struggle - will he desert and divorce, will he "do the right thing" and stay with her, or will his own desire for a family life mean he has to leave the church... etc. The emotions make the story in that sense, it's just that I don't think in quite those terms, but it will clearly be an improvement to my work if I do!
I am still thinking about what to do.
This morning I dreamed I was going to S Africa for a fortnight in the October holiday - I was rather panicking about how it would work, but also thinking what a lot of people I could see. It felt so incredibly real, that I still feel as though we are going to do this. Perhaps we are.
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